Colour Cool-er by Christmas for less than $300?

[griffonwing]

Originally Posted by ProDigit

Yet another device.. The ebook sector is kind of following in the netbook footsteps, having more devices out than necessary,with nearly nothing to differentiate them from one another..

I put my hopes on the improved hardware! 4GB MLC flash costs next to nothing, I wonder why none seem to have something close to this.
The controller chips board and the housing can be made very cheap, if it's just made in plastic.
The e-ink display is the only thing that costs, but I thought they vamped up production since last year, no?

The new EZ Reader Pocket PRO 5" devide will support a 16GB SD card. I'm not sure if this is the same as the MLC you speak of. The controller is the new EPSON with lightning fast page turns.

So yeah, the hardware is becoming faster, storage is becoming greater, soon the production of the screens will be increased with less overhead.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by griffonwing

Folder support, format support, software problems...these can all be remedied with updated firmware.

Hardware issues, such as horrible button placement, hard-to-press buttons...these you will be stuck with FOREVER!!!!!

Muahahahahaha!!!

But why would it have "hard to press" buttons? It's the same hardware as the CyBook Gen3, which certainly doesn't have any such issue.

[Tuna]

Originally Posted by griffonwing

Right. But even if they don't fix the firmware, you can use OpenInkPot, providing they have a version for your reader.

As I understand it, OpenInkPot is currently designed for a reader with numeric buttons, so something like this or the Cybook could be hard to use having only cursors to get around menus.

If Interead are concentrating on getting this into supermarkets and other outlets, they aren't going to care too much about firmware and what the 'hardcore' ebook crowd think. So long as you can read your books it'll be good enough.

In answer to the other post I think the reason for the hard to press buttons is that though the electronic hardware is the same as the Cybook, the buttons are part of the case. The Cooler is not an industrial design exercise, it's a straightforward 'homage' to the iPod styling. The difference here is that the iPod will have gone through hundreds of design iterations to get it right, whereas the Cool-er will have been designed and tooled up in a few weeks.

It's a reasonable strategy - all of these choices have been made to get the device to the market quickly and at a good price. The problem is that Interead have not developed anything unique, so they're vulnerable to any of the third party no-name brands in Hong Kong and Taiwan taking the same Netronix hardware and banging out a 'Cool-ER clone'. Unless they have some sort of exclusivity license with Netronix, they could find their brand value lost in a few month's time by even cheaper copies, with similar styling and identical functionality. That is a big risk, as without the end-to-end chain from writer to reader the added value of 'yet another bookstore' is lost.

I have no idea what their business strategy is, but my feeling is that they are going to have to work very hard to differentiate their product and evolve it rapidly to keep ahead of the market. They've said as much in interviews, but the real test will be to see if they're capable of delivering incremental changes thoughout their offerings at the same time as introducing the products to new markets, promoting their service and servicing existing customers. That's a lot of balls to juggle.

[rixte]

Originally Posted by HarryT

But why would it have "hard to press" buttons? It's the same hardware as the CyBook Gen3, which certainly doesn't have any such issue.

That's one reason, though, that I am looking forward to somebody from here posting a review. Because to me, the placement does look similar to the Cybook - and I didn't find that either awkwardly placed. It is harder to press than the Kindle, though - so I'd love to find out of 'hard-to-press' is actually 'this will hurt your fingers after a few pages' or just 'not as soft as the Kindle'. The former is bad, the second is absolutely fine from my perspective.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by rixte

That's one reason, though, that I am looking forward to somebody from here posting a review. Because to me, the placement does look similar to the Cybook - and I didn't find that either awkwardly placed. It is harder to press than the Kindle, though - so I'd love to find out of 'hard-to-press' is actually 'this will hurt your fingers after a few pages' or just 'not as soft as the Kindle'. The former is bad, the second is absolutely fine from my perspective.

Yes, I agree. I prefer the page turn on the CyBook, with buttons that you have to make a deliberate decision to press, to those on the DR1000 with its capacitative sensors which are rather easy to inadvertently activate.

[Godzil]

Originally Posted by griffonwing

The controller is the new EPSON with lightning fast page turns.

The EPSON didn't make the screen faster, and it can't be faster than an Apollo on the same panel. The display time is the same for all panel (or nearly.)

The Epson chip only add some method to refrech only a portion of the panel instead of the whole panel like for the Apollo(PRS500/Cybook GEN3) or the Metronome (PRS505.)


But I can't understand how they could manage to sell a color eBook reader at less than $300 when they don't even ship their current device and it's price is at about $250/270...

(and it seems to me that even the cases is not an exclusivity of cool-er, I don't remember where but I'm pretty sure that I already saw such cases on other "cybook" clones)

(And I don't understand how they can claim and be proud of making this in only 3 weeks... Saying this is just a demonstration on how long they work on the product and what they do in it: absolutely nothing except design the Cool-er logo!)