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As much as I would love to get jazzed about a new Sony offering I just don't see them "beating" the Kindle or the "whenever we'll see it" Mac tablet. Being someone who has purchased everything from Sony mini-disc recorders and players in the past as well as the PRS-500 and PRS-505 - I just think they'll shoot themselves in the foot somehow like they have with most things where customers meet convenience and their draconian DRM standards. Not the brightest bunch at Sony...
Honestly, if it wasn't for the Calibre software I wouldn't have even purchased the 505.
I still have the hardest time paying even $9.99 for something that once it's created for digital download costs them virtually nothing to distribute. Age old argument for e-books I know but I still think $10 a book is gouging at the trough.
I still think they should offer the ability to pay full price for the paper book then charge me, I dunno, say $.99 to download the electronic copy? That's $1 more than they would normally get now. Heck, I might even pay $1.99 on top of the tree version - but that's about it.
How much for the e-book alone? Maybe $4.99 - considering that is dangerously close to the paperback cost already and there is no printing, binding, shipping, store-front, salesman fee. The paper version I can lend - the electronic one I can't. I'd even hesitate at that price considering e-books only will get rid of jobs, storefronts and just make publishers margins that much fatter.
Okay... Sorry, I'm (reluctantly) off my soapbox now. It's just that anyone saying "Look at us! We'll drop the price from "ridiculously and outrageously obscene" to only "comically tongue-in-cheek obscene" and expect adulation from an adoring audience - should be drowned in their own Kool-Aid. :-)
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