Gen3 price in Europe

[HarryT]

We'll just have to wait and see. I don't believe that firm prices have been announced yet, have they?

[DigiPaperShop]

Hi all,
My first post, so be gentle LOL. I'm surprised the prices are rumored to be so high. I know that productions costs are still high at present because this is a new piece of technology and a new product etc. hopefully the price should drop once the unit starts to sell and other similar type of products emerge. The question is DO you wait for the price to drop or buy now and upgrade later ?

Its like the laptop scenario i had a few years ago should i buy the best i can get for my money now or wait for the price to drop... I chose to wait and guess what. When the time came to buy it, a newer model came out and gave me more options so i had the same problem all over again.

350 Euro's is a little high in my opinion if this is to be aimed at the mass market and i will be surprised if its not.

The prices need to nose dive to around 250 or even round 150 ( the same as a iPod's... i know they are different technology), not only for the Gen 3 but for all units regardless of manufacturer.

My thoughts are how quick everyone jumped t the iPod it was because it was affordable. Time will tell....only a few more days until September

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by DigiPaperShop

350 Euro's is a little high in my opinion if this is to be aimed at the mass market and i will be surprised if its not.

The prices need to nose dive to around 250 or even round 150 ( the same as a iPod's... i know they are different technology), not only for the Gen 3 but for all units regardless of manufacturer.

Reading is itself rather a "niche" activity, so I don't think that an eBook reader will ever reach the same kind of sales levels as an iPod.

Prices are determined by the cost of the screen. I'm sure that will fall over the next few years, but at the moment, that's what they cost.

I don't think that the price is unreasonable, personally. It's pretty much the same price as one of the higher-end PDAs.

[DigiPaperShop]

I don't think that the price is unreasonable, personally. It's pretty much the same price as one of the higher-end PDAs.

Hi Harry,
The only problem is its not a PDA and is no-way near ever being a PDA. Yes it has a screen and a small limited computer inside, so i fully understand your point in saying its like a PDA.

I would hope that a new market place would get created and the products be classed differently than it not quite a PDA and not quite something else.

The price should refect its "limited" functionality and must be paramount for its survival. If it's not a PDA then we need to make this known and start making the difference apparent.

If you want to call it a PDA then i want all the PDA stuff, Why shouldn't I get my moneys worth. I want things like internet access, email, word functionality, multiple file formats, telephone etc..... Why pay 350 Euro's or Dollars for a product that doesn't give you the same as a high End PDA.

The common sense thing would be to split the thought process up,
If you want a PDA with all the stuff you expect from a PDA you pay this much.
If you want a ereader to read books, newspapers and other electronic contents then the price should reflect its limited functionality and be set lower.

I for one want this market place to really get moving and it's only going to get moving when the right product comes along, the contents to use the product become more available and not limited to select areas and acceptance from the people that this is better than what they currently have.


I'll keep my fingers crossed and hope

[HarryT]

No, I'm not suggesting it is a PDA . My point was merely that if people are willing to pay a price in the €350 range for a PDA, I believe that they would also be willing to pay it for a reader. Both are, after all, devices which one can "live without", but which make life more convenient or enjoyable.

[Kilarney]

Originally Posted by HarryT

My point was merely that if people are willing to pay a price in the €350 range for a PDA, I believe that they would also be willing to pay it for a reader. Both are, after all, devices which one can "live without", but which make life more convenient or enjoyable.

The major difference is that PDAs allow one to do things that they couldn't do unless they had the PDA. (e.g.: check email while on the road) The Reader is a is a cool gadget, but let's face it - you get just as much enjoyment reading a hard-copy book. In other words, most people view a PDA as a productivity tool, whereas an e-book reader is viewed as a novelty.

I'll admit that an e-reader is more than a novelty to people who need to lug around numerous books or to those who don't have access to hard-copy books, but those people don't exemplify the average reader.

[ricdiogo]

Sure dedicated readers are still expensive if compared with PDAs that allow many other functionalities. Of course the reasons are the recent technology and the market offer/demand rule.
However I see readers as a way of saving money in books. If it costs 300€ ... an average book costs 10€ ... so it's worth 30 books. That's my year average. Since there are thousands of _free_ public domain ebooks in the Internet which I plan to read, in my second year having the device I'll save 300€ in books, plus 300€ in the third year, etc.

[delphidb96]

DigiPaperShop,

I think you're not understanding certain details of the average eInk reader.

First, there's a single-source for the screens. That means the OEM manufacturers which make the various ebook readers out there who want to offer an eInk screen system do not have a wide range of suppliers, each eager to lower prices in order to get the deal. Oops! We at NAEB priced out the screens from PVI and we couldn't get the cost down sufficiently to break the $250 *COST* barrier - that's not retail price I'm talking here.

Second, what do you mean 'limited'? We're talking a full-blown Linux-capable SBC tucked inside these ebook readers. And the SBCs can load in Nano-X and Nano-GTK drivers to handle graphics control - although no one, TTBOMK, has created an eInk driver for Nano-X.

Derek

Originally Posted by DigiPaperShop

Hi Harry,
The only problem is its not a PDA and is no-way near ever being a PDA. Yes it has a screen and a small limited computer inside, so i fully understand your point in saying its like a PDA.

I would hope that a new market place would get created and the products be classed differently than it not quite a PDA and not quite something else.

The price should refect its "limited" functionality and must be paramount for its survival. If it's not a PDA then we need to make this known and start making the difference apparent.

If you want to call it a PDA then i want all the PDA stuff, Why shouldn't I get my moneys worth. I want things like internet access, email, word functionality, multiple file formats, telephone etc..... Why pay 350 Euro's or Dollars for a product that doesn't give you the same as a high End PDA.

The common sense thing would be to split the thought process up,
If you want a PDA with all the stuff you expect from a PDA you pay this much.
If you want a ereader to read books, newspapers and other electronic contents then the price should reflect its limited functionality and be set lower.

I for one want this market place to really get moving and it's only going to get moving when the right product comes along, the contents to use the product become more available and not limited to select areas and acceptance from the people that this is better than what they currently have.


I'll keep my fingers crossed and hope

[zdevil]

Yet one thing that sets e-ink readers apart from the PDAs is precisely its only strength and most expensive component: the paper-like screen. Traditional lcds on PDAs and (worse) laptops/PCs (reading documents on a computer screen is never a pleasant experience to me) just don't give you this comfort to the eyes. Perhaps what comes closest is the b&w displays of the good old Palms. But as an old PDA user (since Palm Pilot) and a new adopter of ebook readers (mine Hanlin V3), I'd say the e-ink display is just different. Perhaps I can wake up my Palm Pilot from slumber and take some pics to compare the screens.

Then again, the Zaurus also costs about as much as a e-ink reader and runs a *full* Unix/Linux system. Mine runs a complete OpenBSD 4.2.

[HarryT]

Another point to consider is that for many professional people, €350 is not a huge sum of money. In the company where I work, I'd say that a significant proportion of the people I work with would be willing to spend that much on a "cool gadget" merely for fun. Book readers perhaps never will be €50 devices, but that certainly doesn't mean that there isn't a market for them.

[Ravenflight]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Reading is itself rather a "niche" activity, so I don't think that an eBook reader will ever reach the same kind of sales levels as an iPod.

Prices are determined by the cost of the screen. I'm sure that will fall over the next few years, but at the moment, that's what they cost.

I don't think that the price is unreasonable, personally. It's pretty much the same price as one of the higher-end PDAs.

I don't get this assertion that reading is a 'niche' activity. Fact is that listening to mp3's used to be a niche activity till someone (Apple) figured out that it's not about just the device it's the interface and the user experience. There were plenty of mp3 players before the iPod- but you never saw wide adoption till the iPod came out.

Personally I don't know anyone who doesn't read books. My wife reads books, my coworkers read books, and all three of my kids read books. There are more bookstores where I live than music stores, and every Wal Mart and grocery store I shop at carries at least a few hardcover and paperbacks. I can find the latest Harry Potter novel easier than I can find the latest Carrie Underwood CD or the movie 300 on DVD. This would tend to indicate (to me anyway) that purchasing books is at least as popular an activity as purchasing movies or CD's. So how is this a "niche" activity? The largest online retailer in the world is Amazon.com, and they started as a online bookseller- and I believe that is still their core business, despite branching out to sell everything else under the sun.

Personally I see no reason why a beautifully designed reader, with an elegant UI coupled with a seamless cross platform store (ala iTunes) wouldn't do as well as the iPod. Unfortunately nobody out there has both the resources and the vision to have put it together. Yet.

[DigiPaperShop]

Originally Posted by delphidb96

Second, what do you mean 'limited'? We're talking a full-blown Linux-capable SBC tucked inside these ebook readers. And the SBCs can load in Nano-X and Nano-GTK drivers to handle graphics control - although no one, TTBOMK, has created an eInk driver for Nano-X.

Derek

Hi delphidb96

I know that the O/S under the hood is a linux kernal BUT do you think we are going to get joe public thinking, i can buy a reader only to start messing about with it. That is going to be a real enthusiast, you may end up voiding your warranty.

The thing is a PDA is a PDA a reader ..... well I don't what it's thinking it wants to be.LOL

On the other hand having an open source O/S will make licening cost cheaper

[anotherchance]

Originally Posted by Ravenflight

I don't get this assertion that reading is a 'niche' activity. Fact is that listening to mp3's used to be a niche activity till someone (Apple) figured out that it's not about just the device it's the interface and the user experience. There were plenty of mp3 players before the iPod- but you never saw wide adoption till the iPod came out.

Personally I don't know anyone who doesn't read books. My wife reads books, my coworkers read books, and all three of my kids read books. There are more bookstores where I live than music stores, and every Wal Mart and grocery store I shop at carries at least a few hardcover and paperbacks. I can find the latest Harry Potter novel easier than I can find the latest Carrie Underwood CD or the movie 300 on DVD. This would tend to indicate (to me anyway) that purchasing books is at least as popular an activity as purchasing movies or CD's. So how is this a "niche" activity? The largest online retailer in the world is Amazon.com, and they started as a online bookseller- and I believe that is still their core business, despite branching out to sell everything else under the sun.

Personally I see no reason why a beautifully designed reader, with an elegant UI coupled with a seamless cross platform store (ala iTunes) wouldn't do as well as the iPod. Unfortunately nobody out there has both the resources and the vision to have put it together. Yet.

As has been reported recently, few Americans are reading books and 1 in 4 confesses to not having read a book in the last year. http://imparo.wordpress.com/2007/08/...reading-books/ discusses the CNN article at http://www.cnn.com/2007/LIVING/wayof....ap/index.html

I do see an awful lot of people on my daily train just gazing out of the window or listening to their ipod. Sure, there's plenty of people reading books, but there's more who are not. I don't think that eReaders will EVER be as ubiquitous as ipods, but done right, at the right price, I do believe they could become very popular. I think an 8 inch screen would be about the optimum size.

I think our biggest fight is always going to be against the negative, ignorant comments about the latest ebook reader based on "black and white screen", "no note taking capability", "can't display PDF", "no back light" etc. I believe most of these comments come from people who DON'T READ BOOKS anyway and can be comfortably discounted.

How about we start a wiki article with the pros and cons of e-books versus p-books? Something we can refer to quickly when the latest engadget review appears and the flood of usual negative comments appears.

Me? I AM looking forward to getting an e-book reader, and my top 3 reasons are...
1) Sick of lugging heavy hardback books around in my backpack.
2) No space for any more bookshelves. There's only a very few authors I "collect" and keep anyway.
3) Many free classics I want to read for the first time, and many I want to re-read.

Personally, I've NEVER written notes on a book that I've read for pleasure. Textbooks at school sure, but in the last 15 years, NEVER. I open a book, 99% of the time black and white, and I read it cover to cover. I never read in the dark as I always found booklights uncomfortable. And I hate reading off of LCD backlit screens as that's what I do all day as a programmer.

The new Cybook can't come soon enough for me, and I really hope it gets some positive reviews. If it does, I'll be all over it....

P.S. For those clamouring for Letter size PDF on a 6 inch screen, take them to a photocopier and ask them to copy and reduce it to the 6 inch size. Then ask them, "What did you expect?". The only way that letter size PDF will ever become vaguely useful on an e-reader is when they have a clam-shell design with two 8 inch screens next to each other.

[andym]

Erm I'm sure they said that price would be 350 euros TTC (all taxes included) with the dollar price (net of taxes) derived from that.

[anotherchance]

Originally Posted by andym

Erm I'm sure they said that price would be 350 euros TTC (all taxes included) with the dollar price (net of taxes) derived from that.

FWIW the press release said...

The Cybook Gen3 has entered production and will be directly available next September from Bookeen online web store at bookeen.com, in different packs starting at $350. It will be the first product to include the new E Ink Vizplex™ technology, offering the brightest and fastest switching epaper display of the market.