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Originally Posted by andym
The US vs the Rest of the World is all very amusing, but these readers are meant to be a replacement for paper books which don't use either A4 or Letter paper. Most paperback books are 8" by 5" so a six-inch screen seems like a reasonable approximation.
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I'd really love for someone to come out with an A4/Letter sized reader. 99% of the content I use for work is letter size.
There's a market niche not being served by the current products. As you note, they are laser focused on replacing the paper-back book. That's interesting, but to me it's a lot less interesting than replacing the stack of printouts I carry home every night and keep stacked up on my desk all day: research reports, SEC filings, westlaw printouts, journal articles, court motions, company presentations.
What matters to me: a4/letter, thin, light, e-ink screen, good battery life, processor fast enough to render PDF, keyboard to search.
What doesn't matter: touch screen (nice for notes, but as the iliad has demonstrated very hard to do right), backlight (printouts don't come with backlight), mp3 player (seriously, it's enough of a hassle to keep my ipod updated, i don't need to worry about syncing another device), color (99% of what i read is black and white), content (this is a different product than the sony reader - i can honestly see owning both that and this).
How big is this market niche? Well, the only person I can speak to for sure is myself, but others in finance might use it too. I'd imagine that sales and technical service representatives would dig it. I bet attorneys would find it useful.
The closest thing on the market now is the fujitsu stylistic. I'd buy that in a heartbeat, but $2k is north of what i'm willing to pay.