Andrew Marr reluctantly impressed by the iLiad

But would you be interested in an ebook reader/lawnmower combo if it was electric AND smelled like a library?

(And you thought people texting while driving was bad? Just wait until THAT hits the market!)

[NatCh]

You made me , stxopher, thanks!

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by stxopher

But would you be interested in an ebook reader/lawnmower combo if it was electric AND smelled like a library?

Maybe, if I don't have to pay DRM fees to trim around the hedges...

[NatCh]

That would probably depend on what format you hedges were in -- topiary would, of course, cost you extra.

[scotty1024]

Why I'd never buy an electric lawnmower from iRex:

1. It would take five minutes to start the blades spinning from pressing the on switch. There will be a white paper produces which explains that because of the superior driver chip they use to drive the motor they have to use custom waveforms to drive the motor and the lawnmower has to adjust those waveforms each time it is started to adjust for ambient temperature, coriolis effect and the angle of the moon in the sky. The white paper will provide many details to provide to neighbors and your wife as you stand there waiting for the lawnmower to start.
2. It will be initially delivered only capable of turning to the right. This will be because iRex's president believes mowing in a clockwise pattern is superior to moving in a counter clockwise pattern. After complaints from customers they will add an option to allow the lawnmower to mow in either direction (but the president's unit will get custom firmware lacking this option.)
3. The leading edge high tech room temperature super conductor electric motor, employed to maximize battery life, which makes the device twice as expensive as any other electric lawnmower will be discovered to have a serious unfortunate reaction to water. Initially iRex will recommend keeping water away from the lawnmower but will finally introduce an optional rain guard accessory for the motor. Unfortunately the rain guard will be found to have an unfortunate tendency to dump collected water on the motor when cutting in a counter clock wise direction.
4. The promised battery life, measured in cut blades of grass, would later be restated in terms of hours with constraints on that measurement making it highly impracticable to see that number of hours due to the complex and impractical operation patterns required to achieve it.
5. The promised suspend mode to allow you to change clipping collection bags will never be delivered due to an issue with the design of the lawnmower. Users will have to monitor the lawnmower and chase it down to turn it off and change the bag. Then wait for the lawnmower to reboot before they can resume operations: at the start of the mowing pattern.
6. They would continue to work to improve battery life and implement promised features with many firmware updates released to try and achieve the promise inherent in the very expensive motor. Unfortunately if an upgrade failed you would need to box up the entire lawnmower and return it to Germany for repairs.
7. The lawnmower will require a portable dock and a power brick to connect it to wall power for recharging. The major feature of the dock will be to make you wish they had just designed the lawnmower to allow you to plug the power brick directly into the lawnmower itself.
8. Replacement blades would be available for purchase but shipping on them will be exactly the same as the shipping charge for the entire lawnmower.
9. The lawnmower will come with a scheduling option to allow you to set what time it will mow your lawn. Unfortunately it will only accept times in UTC which will inevitably lead to interesting incidents.
10. Over time some motors will be found to run slower and slower resulting in unacceptable power to cut grass. To return the unit for repairs you will be asked to take videos of the unit to demonstrate that it is indeed not spinning the blade rapidly enough.

[NatCh]

You, um, spent a lot of time thinking about that, didn't you, scotty1024?

[nekokami]

If all negative posts were this funny, I wouldn't object to them anymore.

MobileRead.com: "Chatty, catty and silly but never mean."

Sounds like a web advertisement for polite but blunt people. Yea, it fits.

[NatCh]

Well, clearly the silly means me. Who wants to own up to the other two?

[Riocaz]

I'll take catty. How who's the chatterbox :-)

Sorry, I got dibs on being half a quotation mark. (Not enough time in to be a whole word.)

[branko]

Originally Posted by stxopher

That smell that my adult mind tells me is the books going bad and rotting away as we speak is the same smell my emotional mind says "Books. Good. Read." Isn't smell the sense most linked to long term memories? Maybe that's why some of us still love the smell of old books.

Have you ever smelled the scent of a new Apple laptop? Oooh! That is the smell of everything good about this world at my fingertips.

Fingertips? No way! I know where my hands have been!