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don't be disappointed, jaime. it's actually _great_ news for book-readers.
why? the fact that they're charging you a _fair_ price for the _hardware_
means they're not going to try to subsize it on the back of the _content_,
which is the _books_ that you are going to buy. since you're gonna spend
a _lot_ more on books than $400 -- if you're a real book-reader, that is --
you will be spending less money this way in the long-run. and if they are
charging you a _fair_ price for the content (instead of trying to gouge you),
they won't have as strong an aversion to letting you load your own content,
and that will be good for you in the long run too, because it'll pressure them
to keep their prices honest. once they start gouging you, it keeps escalating,
like the price of popcorn in movie theaters, until it's totally unreasonable and
the market collapses entirely, which we _really_ do not want to have happen
with e-books. especially as this was the vicious cycle that doomed p-books.
e-books -- if they're cheap -- let us rediscover the midlist, even the long tail,
and that's the way ideas should be, wild and free. so this is great news, jaime.
sure, it'll be tough to bite the bullet at the start, but that's the (high) price
that early adopters have always had to pay, i'm afraid to say, so that's life.
and yes, you were sold a bill of goods by the constant "news" from places
like teleread, that a $50 machine was "right around the corner", but hey,
-- i hope you'll pardon my french -- that's what you get for being a sucker.
now you know who you can and cannot trust.
-bowerbird
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