[ProDigit]

Thanks for shredding more light on the software side of the Jetbook.
Mobile read has dug somewhat into the hardware of the device, but not so much into the software.

I have seen video's where TTS works on selected text though...

The educational side of the JBC basically are programs transported from their other devices, Ectaco has plenty other hardware specific learning devices. I guess they hired some programmers to do some quick software changes to port it to the Jetbook Color.

The pen could indeed be changed to a capacitive touchscreen, which would cost about as much (you don't want a resistive touchscreen on a reader that already has a darker background); or a 4 way pad with an enter, which could bring the price down a bit.

I'm less fond of having a layer on top of my reading surface. They could also equip the device with a fingerprint mouse,like found on some mobile devices; it would help clicking on hyperlinks, but one would lose the ability to make hand annotations.

They could also equip the reader with two analog bars on each side, where you can slide your finger to scroll through the paper, and tap to flip pages (kind of like what JVC did with their everio (if I'm correct) camera's.