[CCDMan]

I think that everything changes quickly and trying to predict what the situation will be in a year, much less 5 or 10 years, is hopeless. Clearly, within a couple years, Amazon and others will be able to respond with color touch displays that will have battery lives way better than the iPad's LCD. In turn, the iPad and similar devices may go to OLED, also more efficient but very bright and responsive.

We can predict all we want, but really will just need to wait and see. Too many variables here to make any kind of reliable prediction.

Will I buy an iPad? The jury is still out on that one. I will wait for more details. I am pretty sure that other DRM content will not be allowed on the iPad because it makes no sense given Apple's history on this sort of thing. What I am waiting to see is whether iBook will read non-DRM content like BAEN or public domain. I would suggest that it will since Apple will not want to lock users out of the huge number of public domain books and their publisher partners probably do not feel threatened by either public domain or publishers like BAEN.

Overall, the reactions (not so much here - for some reason Mobileread users seem to be somewhat more sane <G>) have been the same as to most new high profile products. There are the folks that love it. There are the folks who (like me) tend to say "wait and see". Then there are the usual "this stinks and I hate it" folks who are VERY LOUD and often somewhat obnoxious. Devices change - people don't.....

IMHO, what will make or break the device is not so much books, most of which work well on e-paper readers, but newspapers and magazines (which do not). It will be interesting to see what publications sign on before launch. Given the recent financial failure of the paper versions of many publications, the newspaper and magazine publishers pretty much have to embrace this and other similar devices. It is that or cease to exist.