Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward
I'm using an ereader without WiFi every day. It's just no longer is in production. (it has a semi-standard battery. I'm on my second.) It is a Hanlin 6 inch. (a BeBook and an Astak) I expect to keep using them until the EARL comes out, or they finally give up their ghosts. Which might be decades...if I can keep getting replacement batteries.
No ads, nobody looking over my shoulder and easy to crossload.
EARL (if it ever comes out), will have such useless geegaws as walkie-talkie, topographic maps of the Continental US, music player, GPS, and a built-in solar charger. I may never use any these features, but it was worth it (at $300 a pop) to get a front-lit paperwhite reader with a MicroSD chip reader and a user replaceable battery.
It limits me to 128GB, (a full size SD chip is currently up to 512GB) but I'll live with it.
Finally, I don't see any reason why a e-ink device can't be multi-functional. No more so that making a cell phone multi-functional. An e-ink device can't do full motion video? So what? A cell phone can't last a month on a charge, either. Mutli-functional doesn't mean every function, just many functions....
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There are e-ink tablets out there. The glaring difference between them and your average ereader is that they tend to cost a lot more and have
hardware support for all the things the dedicated ereaders DON'T have.
It adds cost, and dedicated ereaders are targeted towards being dedicated ereaders.
The same way the iPod was a dedicated music player. Until they bolted on extra stuff and it wasn't a music player anymore, it was a multipurpose device.
The same way cellphones were dedicated phone-calling devices. Until they bolted on extra stuff and it wasn't a phone-calling device anymore, it was a multipurpose device.
THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT.
If you started similarly bolting on extra stuff to dedicated ereaders, they too would become... well, the Onyx T68 & Co.