Quote:
Originally Posted by griffonwing
Robert says they will ship by August 31. Sony says they will ship last week of August (last I checked).
Even if Sony ends up shipping a week before Astak, they still don't hold a candle to what Astak is offered up, if you compare them side by side. This is, after all, my own personal opinion and is subject to copyright 
However, to one who has already invested heavily in Sony format BBeB books, LRF/LRX, then frankly... I dunno. I used to think they had a good, solid point. But now...?
Sony plans on switching over their entire bookstore to ePub by then end of the year, which is only 4 months away. In 4 months, Sony's books will be readable on the Pocket Pro, and any other ePub device.
After that, the phrase "I have all these BBeB books" will be moot, and the 300 will be even further outclassed. I do like the direction Sony has taken, but their ePub conversion, combined with the extreme limitations/expandability of the 300 make for a very poor business decision, and is very likely gonna end up hurting the company.
Unless there is something that I have overlooked, and am just not seeing clearly... |
If you don't mind - I'm going to play Devil's Advocate for the moment. The Astak Pocket Pro clearly looks better on paper, but the fact is that no one on MR (except RobertB who is under NDA) has really handled it. Further, I'd go so far to say that there's probably no one who's had the opportunity to compare the two units side by side.
I don't know anything about Astak products from personal experience, so I can't speak to them - but I do know about Sony products as I've owned many of them over the years.
Sony generally makes excellent hardware with superb build quality. Even the much-maligned PRS-700 is a very well-constructed device. There are going to be people who go for the 300 purely because it's Sony hardware - and that number may rise if the 300 has a metal shell. And moving away from Sony proprietary software is a good thing for many people.
Meanwhile, no matter what the build quality of the Pocket Pro is, it doesn't have the reputation that Sony has. It may be better, it may be worse - but most people do not associate Astak's name with quality the way they do Sony's.
There's also the fact that Sonys are going to be everywhere. I live in a small town of 25,000 people - and we had the 505 on the shelf in four different locations.
Not even Amazon is holding a candle to Sony in retail presence. Yes the Pocket Pro looks like a great machine - but the Sony is the one people will see if they walk into a store.
For what it's worth (and I'm a Sony owner) I'd go for the Pocket Pro over the 300 (so long as I could get it in the price parity window). However, I think the 300 will sell quite well and satisfy many purchasers.