Quote:
Originally Posted by GlenBarrington
On the other hand, as a consumer, I'd like them to pursue this a bit further, I could be all wet in my conclusions and radical new ideas aren't always bad.
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New ideas aren't bad, no.
But this particular approach doesn't really bring anything useful to the table--the cost savings are illusion (on both ends) and to get them the user has to jump through hoops and agree to conditions that the mainstream market long ago discarded.
It also ignores the primary lesson of Kindle one: consumers prefer their ebook readers to be as independent as possible. So, at this stage of the game, coming up with a reader that is nothing but a peripheral device--and a cellphone peripheral, at that, runs counter to what the market has *repeatedly* said. (C.F., Gemstar, Sony Librie)
The Beagle is clearly designed to address every possible concern the publishers and the carriers might have about customers breaking the intended usage pattern and the lack of onboard rendering to a proprietary bitmapped format is the ultimate form of DRM. It also takes away pretty much all forms of user control and anybody who actually pays for the device is quickly going to be seriously annoyed by its limits.
However, there *is* one use for which the Beagle would be eminently well-suited: as a B&M Library checkout reader. Txtr is currently owned by 3M and 3M is looking to get into the Library ebook business so delivering a turnkey system of an ebook kiosk and a couple dozen Beagles would allow patrons to check out up to five ebooks at a time in a form that not even the most paranoid of publishers can object to. So *if* Publishers were willing to license ebooks through such a system at substantially better terms and prices than they are currently demanding from libraries (enormous "if") the Beagle's limitations could be turned into limited virtues for people willing to travel to a physical location to borrow ebooks.
Other than that scenario, the Beagle is pretty much an attempt to answer a question no user would ask: "how restrictive a reading device will consumers pay for?"