The only way the DX will *really* work for text books is if you had three or four of them and had the ability to open up multiple pages and sections simultaneously and spread them out on the desktop like you do with textbooks now.

I mean really, how are you going to get any work done when you have 3500 pages worth of textbook material for a semester and you can only view one of those pages at a time??? It's an information starvation diet. I suppose you could get the work done, but oh so slowly. Either that, or the student starts photocopying pages out of the the DX in order to have more information available simultaneously, which undermines the whole "paperless" aspect of these things.

I have a Kindle 2 and I find that non-fiction is a pain to read on the device. It can be challenging to navigate backwards to review a previous section and then it can be a bear re-finding the furthest page I have read when I forget to bookmark my place before I start backtracking.

Maybe someone will come up with a different methodology which makes it all go smoothly, but to call these things the iPod for books is a horrible misconception. Music listening is basically linear and non-tangible. Once you cue something up to listen and hit play, the player requires no more interaction and you can navigate successfully with minimal visual cues. iPod portability does nothing to diminish the listening experience (except for the issues of compression for the true audiophile).

ePaper solves the eyestrain problem of reading on a computer screen and the Kindle 2 is great for flying through novels and other sorts of light reading, but as a serious learning tool? I think it poses too many barriers except for those truly gifted individuals with photographic memories who only need to read and review a text but once. That crowd would love these things.

From a firmware stand point, I think they could work on handling line breaks more cleanly. For the most part it works fine but once in a while some odd word combination comes up or a multi-hyphenate word like jack-in-the-box which the reader does not handle very well.

I would also ask the publishers to spend more time scrubbing the text they submit for the Kindle. I see a lot of stray hyphens left over from the print edition with do not belong there at all. That's sloppy publishing.

This news did not come as any surpise to me. Amazon is in no position to fight this battle. They need content for the Kindle and they want that content to expand as quickly as possible. Get into a pissing contest with the authors and books get held up.

I want content for my Kindle and if that means losing the TTS option once in a while, so be it. Authors should get paid and should have rights to the audio presentation of their work.

I don't expect a free lunch.

I have never gasped when I saw a phone (not even the iPhone). This one made me gasp. WOW. I WANT one.

What's the chance (slim to none I suppose) that Verizon would pick it up.

I Want This Phone!

Is this a legitimate company? I tried leaving my contact information on their site and it kept looping back. I love the idea but for a company I'm supposed to trust with my medical information, something's wrong.

Answer me this...will the Dash allow editing of Office documents or is it a view only device? That was my biggest gripe with the Q phone (and what kept me from buying one), I wanted the ability to work with Word and Excel documents.

Thanks.

Any odds on them managing to keep the price under $200.00???? Actually, I would prefer to buy it through one of my regular book sellers like Barnes and Noble or Borders rather than have to rely on Sony. I never did like their music download software. Why should this be any different?

Do you think we will ever reach a point where these executives and investors understand that technology people should do technology and media people should do media and that the two don't mix in the same company very well? Sony should make the reader and then get out of the way. Not to d*** likely but I can wish.

BT

One of these days I will buy an ebook reader. I would love to carry around books this way. Only it needs to last more than six hours and it has to work outside in bright light. Don't think they have the right combination with this one either.

Any guesses on the final purchase price? I can think of a DOZEN different places I would like to have something like this. Get that final retail price in the right zone and would buy a dozen of them.

Media outlets could give them away as a promotional item preprogrammed to grab content from a website! NASCAR has Nextel phones, why not something like this for the home office to post newsflashes from the world of stock car racing.

Seriously, where do I invest in this company? They have TREMENDOUS idea at work here.