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MP3 is not perfect but has been adopted by and is the standard for every mahine. For e-books every major company is pulling the blanket their way, now it's crumpled up in the middle of the bed, useless.
I'd be in favor of a total PDF machine with Acrobat in ROM installed on board. That could take care of every other format. And if you want to write, for a bigger fee, a machine set up with Acrobat Pro and foldable keyboard will provide ample performance. Acrobat is complete as it is and does not need that much functional improvement, since an e-book reader will be considered expendable like an MP3 player, the latest version would suffice for the life of the reader. It is naïve to build such a possibly inexpensive machine with expandability or updates in mind, because it's a throwaway tool like so many supposedly durable predecessors, and it drives up the price way past what the market needs to begin . Building a totally new engine(CPU) and writing new software is illogical and drives up cost needlessly. All we want after all is a smooth performing reader with e-ink. I drive a Toyota not a Porshe, I would not want one. I am sure a rewritten Acrobat(unix ?) would work properly on a smaller processor.
Case in point. We all have a computer. How many versions of software for an app. have you installed for that particular machine? Every machine has been rendered obsolete or heavily taxed by subsequent operating system versions. This computer I'm writing on has seen Windows 98 and is barely dragging through XP. It will die with Vista. Software and hardware should be born and should die together and have an efficient and long operational life.
The way things are going now, the day is far where e-ink will replace paper. The e-book reader is being politicized into oblivion. Let's stop talking so we can read, preferably under comfortable motionless blankets ...
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