This one might be mine!

Holla!

Definitely a medical tablet from the Digital Health group.

Kindle has this market locked down.

I am completely mystified by the attitudes of 95% of the people providing comments on this thread.

Perhaps it's because I'm not a huge music enthusiast, but I've never understood why so many people view pop music as some kind of essential public good to which they have a right to obtain on terms they deem acceptable and if they don't find the terms acceptable then they theft is justified.

I understand stealing music. Personally, I haven't bought music in years and have torrented dozens of albums during that time. But that doesn't mean that it's right for me to do it.

Yeah, the Amazon video made it look really incredible, actually.

My initial impression was that (1) it was extremely ugly, especially in comparison to the Sony, and (2) that it was plagued by feature-itis and really needed to ditch all of the peripheral functionality like the keyboard input and be as svelte and simple as possible.

Then I actually saw it in a usage context and realized that (1) it's diminutive size goes a long way towards compensating for it's appearance, and (2) the keyboard and selector wheel and other features that I had been turned off by initially were actually vital in enabling the device to be used without a computer, which is the real killer app here.

Frankly, I'm blown away by the idea that the newspaper would be waiting for me on the device when I woke up each morning, and that I can check the latest posts on Engadget without powering up my laptop and draining it's battery. The fact that the costs of the universal connectivity are completely embedded in the hardware purchase is incredibly smart and attractive.

And people complaining about the $0.10 fee for converting other media types need to understand that this fee only applies if you want it delivered wirelessly. They will convert any unprotected document and send it to you via email for free.

And as for the DRM, whatevs. You're paying >$10 for a book produced and delivered in a way that has a minimal environmental impact, and can be replaced for free if the file or hardware is broken. If your DRM-free physical book gets lost, stolen, or damaged, does the publisher send you a new one? No. So you've got to take the good with the bad here.

In my view, Amazon really knocked it out of the park here.

Here's the most ironic thing about that whole episode yesterday:

When I was reading the critical comments and Ryan's defense of his review, my first impulse was to make a comment praising Ryan for not stooping as low as Arrington over at TechCrunch and suggesting that the criticism was staged by Microsoft employees and PR staff...

Then I saw that he'd turned of comments completely. Even worse!


:-)

Ugly.

As.

Sin.

The key thing with the N81 is that it's freakin' HAWT as a phone/media-player combo device even without taking gaming into account.

The gaming's a bonus.

Amazing how full-of-themselves Apple fanboys are, huh?

"People don't LOVE Apple and everything it sells!? I smell VAST CONSPIRACY!!!"