New BeBook eReader: adds Wifi and touchscreen!

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

You can get prepaid SIM cards in the US too Dale. $3 a Mb? I assume he mean MB but DAMN that is expensive.

BOb

It's the same in the UK too, Bob. Mobile internet is relatively cheap if you pay a monthly tarrif (eg most of the mobile operators provide an "unlimited" plan for about £25-30 per month, which in reality has a download limit of about 3-5GB/month), but it's damned expensive if you don't have a monthly payment and you want "on demand" usage. With my mobile operator, for example (Vodafone) it costs £2 per MB.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by tompe

What do you mean? Are you referring to the different 3G frequencies?

No, I was trying to be funny. Having a free feature that only works in Sweden would unlikely be a great design decision if Sweden wasn't a major revenue source. Besides downloading of eBooks that costs money isn't free anyway. It may be cheap but that depends on how much spare money you have. The US does have pay as you go plans but I would not call them free, or even cheap. YMMV

Dale

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It's the same in the UK too, Bob. Mobile internet is relatively cheap if you pay a monthly tarrif (eg most of the mobile operators provide an "unlimited" plan for about £25-30 per month, which in reality has a download limit of about 3-5GB/month), but it's damned expensive if you don't have a monthly payment and you want "on demand" usage. With my mobile operator, for example (Vodafone) it costs £2 per MB.

Yea. I guess it is the same way here too. People think I am crazy when I tell them I pay $.18 a minute on my pre-paid Virgin Mobile phone. But, I have very low usage so I only do the minimum $15 top up every 3 months needed to keep it active. So, I may pay more for each minute but I'm paying alot less than you average $45-$50 a month + taxes cell phone bill.

I'm just thinking that at $3 a MB you aren't going to want to be d/l books with that. That's gonna add about $1.5 to each book

BOb

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It's the same in the UK too, Bob. Mobile internet is relatively cheap if you pay a monthly tarrif (eg most of the mobile operators provide an "unlimited" plan for about £25-30 per month, which in reality has a download limit of about 3-5GB/month), but it's damned expensive if you don't have a monthly payment and you want "on demand" usage. With my mobile operator, for example (Vodafone) it costs £2 per MB.

In Sweden you can get unlimited for £15 per month and you can get up to 1G per month for £7 per month.

My point was that for books maybe the "pay for actual use"-cards will work OK since the amount of data is no so much.

I think it is per MB and not Mb as I mistakenly wrote.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

No, I was trying to be funny. Having a free feature that only works in Sweden would unlikely be a great design decision if Sweden wasn't a major revenue source. Besides downloading of eBooks that costs money isn't free anyway. It may be cheap but that depends on how much spare money you have. The US does have pay as you go plans but I would not call them free, or even cheap. YMMV

The tariff works the same in nearly all countries.

Notice that I wrote "status information". I was referring to things like synchronizing page numbers and annotations. Downloading books is not what you need the net connection for.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by tompe

The tariff works the same in nearly all countries.

Notice that I wrote "status information". I was referring to things like synchronizing page numbers and annotations. Downloading books is not what you need the net connection for.

I suspect Kindle folks would disagree with you. Download books is exactly what they use their net connection for and for most of them that is all they use it for (I am include subscriptions to newspapers as downloading books). I seldom, if ever, need to sync page numbers.

Dale

[tompe]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

I suspect Kindle folks would disagree with you. Download books is exactly what they use their net connection for and for most of them that is all they use it for (I am include subscriptions to newspapers as downloading books). I seldom, if ever, need to sync page numbers.

Yes, it is convenient. But the real interesting thing will happen when the readers are always connected in a way that people can develop applications for it. Obvious things are synchronizing what book you are reading with facebook or twitter. You can also collect statistics about you reading habits. I would also love to have images of all fish and birds mentioned on a page automatically being displayed when reading the books since I am so bad at knowing these names in English. And this kind of functionality can be added if you have a net connection so not all processing have to be done on the reader.

Just thinking that a net connection can be used to buy books is a very limited view. Think in terms of social networking instead.

[Chrise123x]

Well the first photos of the Bebook 2 are out, looking good:

http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/06/b...at-cebit-2009/

Now how much will it be and when can I place an order ?