Quote:
Originally Posted by petermillard
Well, that may be the smart thing for you to do; the smart thing for me is to buy a mid-range model at launch and use the rest of the year to trial it properly for how I expect to use it; it'll either work out, or it won't. If it does, then I'll have a better idea of what I want from iPad 2.0 by the end of the year, and if it doesn't, then it'll just become the 'house' tablet for a bit of light browsing/email/movies/reading etc...
Win, win.
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<shrug> Your money...
You see, I
have a -1 gen equivalent of the iPad and
have trialed it. It's called a CyBook. (The first one, before e-ink.)
Touchscreen LCD (but no multitouch),
Screen size of 8 1/4 by 6 inches (15 x 20.5 cms)
lower pixel density 800x600
Windows CE operating system (instead of iPod/iPhone OS)
much slower CPU (but you didn't notice it when reading)
PCMCIA card slot (with adapter for CF card or WiFi adapter, I have both)
Built in cover.
Weight - right at a kilo (2.2 pounds)
Battery life - 3 hours
Cost - $600 USD in 2006
When I got an e-ink reader with halfway decent firmware, the Cybook went on the shelf (Just took it down for the measurements right now...)
A Pixel Qi device, by reducing the average need for backlighting, made stretch the comparable battery life from 10 hours to around 40 hours. The Adam is supposed to be out around May/June.
A Mirasol display (if it makes it out) is Bistable, like e-ink, so battery life gets defined as page turns again, not hours. Page change rate is at 20 or so frames per second. The company claims there will be screen by late 2010...
Liquavista is somewhere between the two (Pixel Qi and Mirasol) in energy use. (Still different technology.) Will handle full video frame rates (60 per second). Also targeted to come out in late 2010...
For those of us who are penny conscious, it makes sense to wait. After all, $600 will buy 100 e-books @ $6 a book....