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I would like a large screen e-book reader too. I'm not so much about reproducing the original printed page exactly, with all it's "period feel" (though I have nothing against that, and especially not if it expands the big-screen market to the point where there's a chance of actually seeing one of these readers hit the market.)
No, what I really want is something I can read, annotate, and search pdfs of scientific journal articles on. I know pdf isn't a great format, but it's what the articles all come in, darn it. No, I don't want to mess around with changing formats. No, I don't want to mess around with cutting pages in half and displaying them in landscape mode. No, I certainly don't want to put everything into the equivalent of six point type; I'd have to use a magnifying glass. I just want to read the articles with minimum messing about. I want to be able to search a stack of 200 articles for "murine RNR" with a few keystrokes. I want to be able to write "Paydirt!" on the head of an article, and to be able to pull it up three weeks later by searching for that annotation. I want to be able to carry a file cabinet's worth of articles in one hand. If it also had the ability to go online with a minimal web browser to download the articles wirelessly, that would be tops.
I'm not making the perfect the enemy of the good enough--good enough is already out there in the form of several e-book readers (I really like the Kindle myself, though ymmv) and more on the way. Now I want good enough for science reading too.
So yes, I'm keeping an eye on developments with Astak and Plastic Logic and others. If they hit a price point / capability combination that's good enough, I'll have 2 e-book readers, and happy to do it.
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