[cutterjohn42]

I'd've been interested in an Astak reader had they managed to do a reasonable price on their EZ Reader, however the only truly competitive pricing was offered by Fry's who have no stores within 250m of where I live(assuming that there is one in either Chicago or Cleveland) and offer no shipping of the reader. The direct pricing was a joke as even w/o discounts and comparing sales tax v. shipping costs it would've been cheaper for me to buy a Sony PRS-505(readily available from several retails at $299 and below -- or IOW effectively cheaper than Astak) or the PRS-700 also readily available from several retailers for $349(slightly higher overall cost, but possibly worth it to some) or overall for somewhat less(505) or slightly more(700) I could pick up a reader in about 15m.

Anyways the moral of the story for Astak and other smaller players is that I ended up with a Sony PRS-505 after being able to actually look at display models in a store AND being able to pick up one in about 15m for a slightly lower overall price. (Very good build quality for a Sony consumer product, which is usually awful...) [EDIT] Yes, I could've gotten the 505 for a bit less online as well, but the instant gratification played a role here once I decided to live with the feature regression(and higher pricing) of modern (e-ink) reading devices... [/EDIT]

Hopefully Astak sticks with the base netronix OS and adds to it, although I suppose by the time that it comes out openinkpot will have perhaps made it to at least beta...

(Off to figure out how to do some conversions for the new reader now, specifically web pages w/o resorting to plucker(or some similar older app) then converting it back to a more "modern" formatting with 505 specific sizing clues... I used sitescooper alot way back in the day, then plucker for downloading various web pages to read in the morning. I'd just use my notebook today, but I ended up with a 17" that while small/light(for a 17"), is still a bit unwieldly. The 505(and I'm sure other similar models) do a remarkably good job at rendering web pages once you've got the download/conversion setup or at least based on my experience with the defualt calibre recipes as compared with sitescooper & plucker, although in many ways plucker was easier to work with, with the more admittedly limited GUI interface(v. python 'recipe') and converting single articles or large chunks of sites. I guess that I'll finally shutdown my sitescooper installation which I still use from time-to-time now...)