Amazon E Ink reader?

[Mediamania]

Many thanks for posting the manual. Anyone grab the pictures before someone in Seattle called and had them pulled?

[yvanleterrible]

The one with the pictures is 2.25megs. It will not upload because of the 1meg limit. Anyone know how I can work around this?

[NatCh]

The only thing that comes to mind is to screen cap each page and post them as pong files (PNG -- I call them that in honor of the Pioneer), or some other compressed variant.

[yvanleterrible]

I only have reader installed

[yvanleterrible]

I tried to open it with Photoshop. It refuses because of a security lock. There is a security signature preventing extraction and copying content.

[NatCh]

Open it in Adobe Reader and do Ctrl+Print Screen to get a screen capture of each individual page.

Or do you have a MacPuter? I don't know how to do a screen capture on MacPuters....

[lordvetinari2]

Oh dear, even the manual is ugly! A5-sized pages printed as A4, and all the images have bitmapped text. Doesn't say much for an ebook reader, I'd think.

This thing looks like a prop from the original HHGG TV miniseries (c'me on, someone say another TV series, this is fun!). I don't care much about design: I don't own anything Applish, but this is just plain stupid. I don't really need a keyboard, either, and that occupies too much room.

Oh Sony, where(fore) art thou, Sony?

[NatCh]

I've been thinking about the ... odd format of the manual -- my theory on it is that they mean the text part (minus the margins) to be the size of the screen.

Okay, how about Lost in Space?

[NatCh]

It just occured to me that the way the side edges slant in toward the top face might make this thing a bit annoying to pick up from a flat surface.

[pitcher23]

Now that Amazon owns Mobipocket, I hope this new device of theirs doesn't kill any chance of Mobi being available for the Iliad.

[TadW]

Now think about how smart it would be if iRex approached Amazon and told them "dump that ugly duckling and get our iLiad instead"... we'd see lot's of happy iLiad customers with a big e-book retailer supporting them, and a happy iRex company for selling lots and lots of devices.

[bingle]

Originally Posted by lordvetinari2

Oh dear, even the manual is ugly! A5-sized pages printed as A4, and all the images have bitmapped text. Doesn't say much for an ebook reader, I'd think.

This thing looks like a prop from the original HHGH TV miniseries (c'me on, someone say another TV series, this is fun!). I don't care much about design: I don't own anything Applish, but this is just plain stupid. I don't really need a keyboard, either, and that occupies too much room.

Oh Sony, where(fore) art thou, Sony?

On the other hand, though, reading the manual, Amazon seems to have made some good decisions. They included a cover, you can change the battery (although it does seem proprietary...), and of course the content is king. Also, in black-and-white manual drawings, with the cover on, you can almost forget it looks like the early '80s ;-)

The choice to go with EVDO instead of WiFi is... confusing. Cell service is certainly more widely available, but EVDO is still fairly rare, I believe. Wifi, on the other hand, is becoming prevalent very quickly.

Also, of course, this is about the worst example I can imagine of the "platform" model that I rant about every chance I get ;-) I can't imagine Amazon is invested in making the best reading hardware possible; they're just trying to sell more books. And that's evident in the formats they support and the fact that they require conversion before reading popular formats like DOC and PDF.

The fact that Amazon is getting into the hardware business, though, gives me hope that the e-reader market will become a hot battleground. Maybe then we'll see some better options.

[segatang]

It looks like some space craft in "STARTREK".
It is powerful, not bad.

[Mediamania]

Interestingly, ALL the files posted regarding this device earlier today on the FCC site have now been removed. There's now a "Request for Dismissal" letter from a Florida engineering firm -- identified as a firm specializing in FCC approvals -- stating as follows:

"We would like to request the following application to be dismissed due to problems with confidential exhibits listed on the website and updated exhibits the applicant wishes to provide in place of exhibits that have been submitted for this filing."

Hmmmm. For all that disclosed information to be pulled seems unusual. And for Amazon to withdraw their application seems odd, if it means starting the FCC approval process over again.

Is this a PR move? Or is there something else going on here? Anyone with expertise in these matters (FCC disclosure) have any insights?

[hkabir]

Hi DaHer,

The link for manual is not working. Did they remove the pdf manual? Does anyone have the manual saved when it was available? It would be great if someone upload the manual for others who missed it. Definitely I'm one of them.