Quote:
Originally Posted by davidspitzer
I tend to disagree with this premise. I believe there is a lot of anecdotal evidence which seems to indicate that most consumers prefer a focused device that accomplishes its primary mission better than any other device, and then adds additional value through the introduction of incedental features. Take the ipod – you can listen to music on your laptop, why do you need an iPod? The answer lies in from factor and features.
Laptops and netbooks , even if the screen issue is addressed still suffer from several fatal flaws in ergonomics
Weight - netbooks and laptops weigh too much
Battery life – dismally low compared to an ebook reader – unless you add huge slab batteries which compound the weight issue
Complexity – I have $3000 motion tablet which seems like the dream reading device - but it is too heavy and the battery life too short but the main reason is Windows itself (or any full operating system) – with its long boot time and occasional crash, makes it an unpleasant and mainly inconvenient reading experience – I can carry my ebook reader with me wherever I go and have it instantly turn on and off and my command - I could not imagine lugging my tablet around for reading, waiting for it to boot or maybe come out of suspend which seems to be at best a hit and miss affair.
Ebook readers, in my opinion, are here to stay but they will go through evolutions much like the ipod did, which also started monochrome and is now is in full color with touchscreens and additional functionality
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The iPod, or at least one incarnation of it, became a PDA. Which is just fine since PDAs can play music too and can be fairly small. The thing is when you keep adding features eventually you're going to cross a border between product categories. Say you take the current 5-6" form factor reader and add full color, high refresh rate eInk (or perhaps one of the other ultra-low-power, high contrast reflective displays in development) and WiFi. Is this device an ebook reader with web capability or an internet tablet that you can also read on?
Anyways, there are different form factors for ebook readers. A tablet-PC style netbook obviously couldn't substitute the 5-6" models, but might potentially fill in for 9.7" and larger versions. Especially as technology evolves. Already there are chipsets in development that will offer the same or better performance as current netbooks but use significantly less power and run cooler. And new screen technologies might not only save power directly, but also by letting other components enter a low power state when not needed (similar to what most eInk-based ebook readers do now). The batteries themselves will get better too. Becoming both lighter and more efficient.
Instant booting is probably a long way off for any complicated computing devices... most ebook readers get around the problem by never really turning off. Though I've rarely had a problem with sleep mode or even hibernation. Also there are heavily optimized Linux distributions you could dual boot.