Quote:
Originally Posted by cfrizz
Oh good I'm glad to know that I'm not the only one that has simply developed the habit of automatically plugging in when I get home so that I have a full charge come morning. And for those rare times that I forget, I plug it in when I get to work The charger stays at my office that way I don't have to worry about it being in my bag.
As far as not having outlets, that what power strips are for. I have two of them plugged in under my desk for a total of 12 outlets. When I leave the job my charger will go with me, the power strips belong to the job!
Chargers are very cheap these days and every time you get a new machine one comes with it. So it is very easy to have them where I need them. I have one by my pc, 2 around the corner in the kitchen, another 2 in the bedroom and one that stays in the case that I put my GMP5 into when I go traveling and one at work. I can plug up every device I have all at the same time! 
That way I never have to worry about a dead battery. This works for me! 
Heck this little thing will work too!!! How cool.
http://www.luxa2.com/product.aspx?s=113 |
This depends on a device that can actually deliver a day's use from a full charge. My tablet gets a total of maybe six hours with a dimmed screen and no wifi usage, which just isn't good enough. If it lasted ten hours or so per charge I might never have upgraded to an ereader.
I'd believe that ereaders are a niche market - phones and tablets are perfectly fine for most people's needs. On the other hand, it is a niche market in which tablets can hardly hope to really compete - the battery life, text quality, and honest to goodness outdoor readability is just so much better that the two devices aren't really comparable on these fronts. But you don't need all of that to enjoy just reading text on a screen.
I got by - not always happily - with a tablet for a couple years, and reading on a netbook/laptop screen before that. Reading on them, well on the tablet at least, wasn't "that bad", if it were it wouldn't have taken me this long to get an epaper device. On the other hand, the readability and quality as well as battery life really are "that much better" - leaps and bounds better - better in ways that can not be exaggerated..... they are just *that* much better in areas that most people are perfectly satisfied with already.
As you said, as long as you remember to charge your device every day and you actually *can* get a day's use out of it then you aren't faced with a significant problem that needs a ten or twenty fold improvement as offered by switching to an e-reader.
The display improvement *is* amazing, going from a 1024x600 7" tablet screen to e-ink - in fact it is so good that I can't imagine being enticed to upgrade to a newer or better e-ink display since I can't possibly imagine a need to ever improve it (heck I can't tell it is a pixel-based display at all no matter how hard I squint). In fact I doubt if I will be buying another reader as an "upgrade" unless something tragic happens to the one I currently own. What is there to fix? It doesn't need to be faster - even if the battery life halves with age it will be great - I *could* replace the sdhc card tucked within if I ever want more storage, but probably I won't.
So we have a niche market product which is so great at the focused task that it performs that most repeat purchases are likely to be replacements only.