[nekokami]

Originally Posted by akira28

I also use a stylus from time to time, one that has a smooth, soft rubber tip. Unfortunately dragging rubber across glass is not smooth and it can stick. Is the Pogo Sketch tip made of rubber too? (BTW it sells for $14.95 on the web site unless you know where to get them cheaper?)

I think I got mine at Amazon (oh, the irony!) but in any case, the tip is made of some kind of foam, and it slides easily across the screen. I read a lot of user reviews before I bought this, and I specifically avoided the ones that users said couldn't be used to write or draw. The Pogo Sketch is designed precisely for those two activities, which is how I use it.

Originally Posted by deltop

http://blogs.adobe.com/digitaleditions/

Although just a blog entry it seems that the iPad won't be using Adobe's drm but Apple's own flavour. So no good for library books or ebooks bought from other stores. Unless we do see some 3rd party apps with that capability.

"Although Apple has standardized on the EPUB format, because it employs its own DRM to protect eBooks consumers will lose out on much of the benefit of an interoperable format simply because they won't be able to transfer content across devices. "

Ok, that's a problem. I'm not getting into another DRM scheme-- at least, not until it's been cracked.

Originally Posted by cmdahler

Although it took a while, they did eventually get rid of DRM on audio purchases. So it's not inconceivable that DRM might go away for books as well. In any case, DRM is generally pretty easy to get around. It won't be very long (I predict about a week or two) before the iPad is jailbroken, and it may take a month or so before Apple's DRM is cracked. So if it's important to you to be able to de-DRM your book purchases, you'll likely be able to in short order.

Yes, we can usually rely on the hacker community when it comes to super-popular Apple products.

Originally Posted by dioib

I think something in the vicinity of what Windows XP offers to users should be a reasonable norm to expect from a tablet. I think they stuck with iPhone OS rather than Mac to save some battery time for users on the go (apart from keeping their app store alive/booming) but that's a biased/imposed statement of what an OS on a tablet should look like.

I think this isn't a tablet in that sense. It's a new category, a large iPod Touch, or, as someone else suggested, an "internet appliance." I don't know if I want one, but I see the appeal. A lot of people don't mind the rigid control as long as the unit keeps working-- and it's more likely to keep working if it's tightly controlled. Game consoles (e.g. Nintendo) operate on the same premise, and people buy those.

If I had one of these, I'd probably immediately want to jailbreak it, though. I haven't bothered with my iPod Touch, because I don't expect to be able to do all sorts of things with it, but then again, that was a gift, so I'm happy with the incremental value it offers. If I shell out hundreds of dollars for a piece of electronics, I want to be able to customize it as I choose.