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Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
It was the part where you suggested older people wouldn't need that stuff...
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Aww...fair enough. But I'll stand by it. Older people are less likely to be playing video games, watching videos, listening to mp3s etc., more likely to be retired than having a job where they want/need to use that cutting edge technology.
Not saying there are older folks who DO need that stuff--just less so than younger generations who are more wrapped up in that kind of stuff.
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That's why I suggested that multifunction devices can (and certainly will) improve, increasing battery life, lowering weight, and improving visual quality... at which point, the advantages of digital devices will be lessened, and they may need to come up with some new tricks in order to stay relevant. Like... becoming multifunction devices...
And don't forget, so far we haven't seen the magazine or textbook media really break into e-books. As that media tends to be more visual, with added color, photos, diagrams, etc, you need larger screens to properly display all that... tablet- or letter-sized would be better than the standard size of most eInk screens available today.
So, if the present dedicated devices don't optimize themselves for what might ultimately be a much larger market than text-based literature, they could easily find themselves seriously marginalized by the multifunction devices.
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Agreed. Technology will improve. Though I'm still not sure I'd want to do my leisure, "paperback" type reading on something with a big screen even if it's very light etc.
But I need a big screen for all the other stuff--and especially for textbooks, academic books, scholarly journal articles etc.
So I could see at least myself wanting both a small screen reader for novels and a larger screen multifunction device.