[Godzil]

Originally Posted by Snuffi

Of course it's possible to activate a driver just when the hardware component is present but I assume there will be some functionality implemented which uses the accelometer. All these functions will have no use in a Cybook and for all functions in the UI which can make use of the accelometer there has to be another version without the accelometer or otherwise the Cybook users could not use that portion of the UI.

I don't agree, this is not true, there could be some part of the code that only apply in some case and you can never use it. Look for Windows or Mac OS X for exemple, there are a lot of things that maybe 70% of the user didn't use, or even didn't even know it exist. There is even some things that only depend on some hardware. For a simple exemple, if you have no Wifi network card, you will not install a version of windows that have not Wifi support, you will install the same version as everyone, even if the wifi drivers/application is never run on you computer.

So basically when using the accelometer you would always have to think: Ok, good. Now, how do we implement that for the Cybook users.

There is no real difficulty to say "this part of the code will only run if there is this or this conditions" etc..

And think of what happens if you have to update the driver for the accelometer or change some code for checking the position of the accelometer: You would always have to do a full test cycle with the 2 Cybook versions before you could release it, even though they are not (and therefore should not) be affected by the change.

Of course not, if the accelerometer is piloted by a driver, the only thing on the gen3 you have to test is that is say "ho there is no accelerometer here, I will do nothing" that will not take a long time to do.

Also it's certainly makes no difference where the buttons are places but as far as I could make out on the screenshots the Opus has a different number of buttons and different functionality for the buttons (e.g. the "back" und "menu" is not in the Cybook). This is based on what I saw on a few screenshots so I might be wrong there, in that case disregard the argument :-)

You are wrong, there are only two more button on the Gen3.
On the left side of the gen3 you have "Music", "Menu", "Back", "Delete" and on the right side "+", "-" and the fiveway button on the front.

The Opus have "Menu", "Back" the fiveway button and "PageUp", "PageDown"

(and changinn "dynamicaly" (hum thinks it's less dynamic than static) the mean of buttons is not a hard task) If there is a button driver, it only need to say different thing for a button, even if on the other board it is driven the sameway.

I really doubt that booken have the time and manpower to manage two or more different board that will need for each a special version of the firmware/application. I think that they, for now, prefere to have the less to do about differences of the Gen3 and the Opus.