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Originally Posted by wodin
I've had my eye on these for a while now, and am a little afraid that they will never emerge from Taiwan. Sarah, if you get one please post a mini review.
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It's in my sister's hands!
I should have it within the week.
No, they are never going to be officially released in North America. That announcement was made at the beginning of June. If you read between the lines, it sounds like they might work towards a newer version in the works that will eventually be for the U.S. market.
But they can be purchased relatively easily through several eBay listings (almost all from Taiwan, unless you find someone selling theirs used) or from PC Home, a retail outlet in Taiwan from which several people have ordered internationally. So if you like it, it's not impossible to get. It just wasn't yet worth it to me to pay the eBay premium. (Most are selling for almost $300, once you include shipping. And who knows what you might get hit with during importing.) PC Home's price translates to roughly $240 USD, and shipping I think is only another $10 USD, plus you're dealing with a big retail company. But the device is so new for the most part that I don't mind paying less for a slightly used one, especially if it's already been imported into Canada. I haven't heard of many lemons with this product, so neither ordering from Taiwan or picking one up used seem overly high risk.
Truth be told, my entourage edge is a much better pdf work horse than I expect the Eee Note will be. And while I'm home for the summer, not traveling, it doesn't matter that it's heavier than my laptop. But come the fall when we're out traveling regularly again, I was hoping this might be an OK light weight substitute. I was going to wait until the end of August if I hadn't found one at a good price and then break down and order one. But this way I should have a good chance to play with it and make sure it can do what I want it to do while on the road.
the Onyx Boox M90 was also tempting, because of screen size and the fact that writing at different zoom levels seems to be figured out, but at more than double the price for a device that is still designed to be more of a reader than a writer, I think the Asus is easier to jump on board with right now.
So again, to the OP, these are pretty much the options out there:
- Boogie board if you just want scratch paper and don't need to save notes (or wait until the fall and see what kind of basic save feature they'll come out with). Inexpensive, does what it says it will do. For just scratch paper, there's almost no reason not to have this.
- Asus Eee Note EA800 if you don't mind spending $200-$300 and want an decent sized electronic notepad, and can go through some simple steps to convert to English. Not e-ink, but also not backlit LCD, so you have to use it in lit conditions, but also helps to give it a longer battery life.
- Pocket Edge from Entourage (discontinued, but available on eBay or every now and then on Woot) if you want to spend $150 - $200 for a smaller, pocketable notepad that will work VERY well for basic scribbling, lists (and let you save, export to PDF) and also includes the functions of a decent Android tablet so you can check email, browse the web, run a good selection of apps. If you use it regularly, it will need daily charging, if not more frequently.
- Entourage Edge (full-sized) if you want the closest thing to a tablet PC (using wacom stylus technology) in terms of electronic note taking, annotating books and pdfs without paying for a tablet PC. These have been discontinued, are no longer supported, and are more difficult to find than the smaller pocket versions, and considerably more expensive. Probably way too expensive to justify a discontinued product. But it's basically like a tablet PC netbook in terms of functions, minus handwriting recognition. (Although there are hacks people have made to import into OneNote and have the handwriting recognized.) Battery life will get you through an entire day, plus it has a removable battery so a spare battery and you almost can't run out of juice before you can get it back to charge it.
-Nokia N800/N810 if you want a chunky little pocket device that functions as a mini computer, and which can run Xournal (which is very similar to the Tablet PC Windows program Journal Note that comes standard for making handwritten notes). It imports pdfs and annotates them excellently. But the screen is small, and it's just a touch screen (resistive) so the stylus is just a piece of plastic and if you touch the screen while writing, it will register as a handwriting stroke. I'm forever going back and erasing all these jagged lines from something being sensed by the touch screen while I write. But, this is actually what I use for grocery shopping lists. You can conveniently lock the screen, so I just have my list displayed and lock the screen and it will stay there while I shop. A quick unlock to cross items off, then lock again and keep going. While it's a good size for being out and about (think thick iPhone), I find it too small and temperamental to have sitting by the phone for jotting down quick notes in a hurry. That I use my EE for. Battery life is short, but replacement batteries are easy to come by and are standard Nokia batteries, not that expensive either. It's no longer made, but pretty cheap on eBay.
- NoteSlate would be awesome if it existed/came to market. On paper, it does what people want the Boogie Board to do. But they don't have a public prototype yet, and this may or may not ever materialize.
I think that concludes the devices, short of a tablet PC, and not including current tablet devices (iPad, HTC Flyer, Motorola Xoom etc.) that have a writing app because none of them are e-ink or e-ink like. Although I did include the N810 because it's tiny and cheap enough that you might decide it's worth a shot, even if not e-ink. And the Boogie Board/NoteSlate/Asus are all slightly different products that some people might find acceptable substitutes for e-ink, given their dedicated purpose and lower cost. The EE and PE are both e-ink writing surfaces.