[koland]

Isn't the cheaper (new) sony a 5" screen as well. So, the same price as a Kindle 1 (still available at Amazon), but thinner and with a smaller screen, no keyboard and no wireless and less selection. It doesn't really compete at all with the K2, if only due to the size, let alone the missing features. Seems mainly to be an attempt to capture the ipod crowd (most of whom want a backlit screen, as they have not yet realized the damage from years of using them and have other things to do outside besides reading) or the old palm pilot crowd (or it's aimed at the Japanese market, where the small size will make a huge difference -- they get all the cool, tiny computers there that we never see). The new Daily Reader is a competitor with the K2 - the higher price vs. larger form factor, no touch screen, no library access, but larger book selections (so far) and limited (so far, free) internet access. It really won't replace a DX, as the screen is much too small 7 vs 9.7 is a big difference), but the screen should be bigger than the K2. The question will be, can they solve the problems in adding a touch screen that the 700 had - it adds glare, reduces clarity and contrast (not to mention ends up smudged all the time and probably will scratch more).

Amazon could add tag support in under a day or two (and a week of testing). The field is already supported in the metadata (in the book file and the associated mbp for mobi, they could use the mbp file to non-mobi books, so add a day of extra programming for them to TRULY support the bookmark file's abilities, most of which they ignore, currently), so it's a matter of adding the ability to pick one (or, preferably, more tags) to display on the home page (add two options to show/sort menu - Show All Tags; Select Tags, then display a list of tags and let you pick the ones you want to see) and the ability to add/edit the tags (Menu option: Add/Edit tags; lets you add tags or click on existing ones to edit/delete them

If Amazon wants the DX to be taken seriously in the educational market, they must add some type of categorization support -- this is both the simplest and fastest way to do so, as well as one of the most flexible. Playlists/collections and actual directory folders are both much more limited in use. If you have directories, a book can only exist in one place (unless you have multiple copies, each with it's own separate bookmarks that don't sync). Where to put that young adult paranormal romance? Do I look under Young Adult or Romance to find it? And then I'd probably want sub-folders under Romance, as well as most of the others.

For school use, folders would be adequate. I could dump each class' reading material into a single directory and use subfolders to further organize them. But for readers of fiction, they would be a poor substitute for true categorization. Even non-fiction readers would need to make some compromise decisions (all alphabetically, use library filing system, with it's arbitrary classification of crossover subjects, or what?).

Add to that, that with non-academic reading, we probably want to tag things with "read", "unread", "read next" and such, while still maintaining the other structure we've set up. And who wants to have to be moving the file around physically on the hard drive (which is what folders would entail), drilling into sub-directories to find the new location as we have finished reading a book. Instead, once you read a book, use the menu to edit the tags (I may not want to delete the book, as another reader in the house may not be finished).