Quote:
Originally Posted by Dulin's Books
this is, i think, the Que in a nutshell
"What we are driving on is the paperless briefcase,” said Richard Archuleta
Madam-Perhaps having them think of it as more of a wireless printer will allow you to use it. If you can print from your system and stuff it in your briefcase then "printing" to the Que is essentially the same. It would be a wireless one way transfer so there wouldn't be the issue of viruses uploading as there is for USB keys etc.
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I understand your observation here. But I would add that this ability to "print to the Que" is in no way unique to the Que. I can "print to" any device that reads PDF files, or any other file format that one can either save a file to or can grab a printer driver for...it can be directly to the device if it appears either as network resource or to a directory/network location that the device monitors then grabs any new content or notifies me or I can visit manually.
I would add I also get what the Que is trying to push as something special. but I would also add that it is nothing new nor special. Hell, I made stuff like this work for mobile sales rps and even setup data deliverables of our analytical lab for out clients if they would call our dial-up server to grab the results...this was in the early 90s under DOS/Netware and eventually Windows 3.x. The marketing staff used Goldmine and we had rudimentary ability to sync info either via dial-up or when they landed back at their home network...and all of the documents were their for anyone who had the right access permissions from any of our branch offices...seems to me PL is proud of re-inventing the wheel so there has to have been something special in the presentation we aren't seeing.
I am not trying to sound like this product is bad, nope it's not...but at the same time it is absolutely nothing new beyond the hardware being large format.
OK, so they are promising some sort of email client, and a couple other clients for some data like a calendar or what have you...can't we already do all of that with the simple port of a couple Linux email clients, there are apps which sync with Outlook and/or Gmail and all it's various bits and pieces.... The digitizer is nice, but not a huge deal as they have gotten cheaper as more companies are using them in devices...
My only guess is people are being charged for the 2ish years of promotion of the Que. I guess I just need to see more as this thing could be only a small portion of some rather spiffy backend.
Last I cannot believe that after all their R&D they came to the conclusion that a glossy bezel for a business grade device is what business users want. Nothing will show scratches and look shabby faster...glossy is for those who are drawn to "shiny" and will write all their checks when they see "shiny".
So maybe someone can explain why this thing is so great? I really do not see anything worth a $400 premium over some other large format options, even over the Kindle we are only talking about less than a 0.8" difference in scree size...and the PPI is lower than the Skiff by over 20-pixels and half the greyscale range. And the Skiff is 1" larger at 11.5".
BTW, I am also not sold on the Skiff since we don't know much about it either...but based on specs, it's better all around.