Quote:
Originally Posted by spindlegirl
It's my hope that this technology will be so commonplace that even NORMAL e-readers will go down to that price in the longer run.
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The thing is, there is no *new* technology in the Beagle and the price reduction that is catching everybody's eye is a mirage. (It is a telco-subsidized price. The real, unfettered, price is signifcantly higher.) Even the screen is dated Vizplex eink film.
The thing is just an eink file viewer with no user controls on it; you can achieve the exact same thing yourself on any of the zillion China inc, dirt cheap media players with JPG display capabilities. And you don't have to sign up for a telco contract or rely on a cellphone.
All you need is to use calibre to convert an ebook to pdf and then use Acrobat to save the pdf as a folderful of jpgs. Then you copy the folder to the media player and run a slideshow: voila! Instant "ebook reader".
People have been doing that for ages. There aare even programs that take in txt and HML files and render them out.
The only thing Beagle does is replace the LCD media player with an eink slideshow viewer.
Technologically, this is a dead-end detour for consumers.