Colin David wrote a post called “Your Library Is Dying” in a web magazine Splice Today. David reminds us that our libraries are woefully underprepared and or untrained in the latest social media. Librarians aren’t familiar with many of the new information resources like blogs and RSS feeds or how to conduct advanced web searches in order to help patrons. They might not have an inkling on the ebook revolution.
It’s an interesting read, even if it might not match your experience in your library. I think it’s a really mixed bag across libraries. I’ve been able to visit many libraries in the two cities I’ve recently lived in. They seemed in some branches to be well equipped. I think libraries try to be very diverse. Is your experience like mine? My libraries have a decent collection of DVDs, now replacing the many VHS tapes (thankfully), with selections in features, documentary, educational and kids. They have a sizeable number of PCs equipped for Internet access. They have a great deal of books and sections with new releases, both in print and audio.
My libraries also hold events with authors, they mini galleries on display, their meeting rooms can be reserved and often are, they have computer classes on basic subjects. Seasonally they offer tax preparation and have awareness programs e.g. for Black History Month or Asian-Pacific Heritage Month. They show feature films and even film series in whatever branch has the cinema-style venue.
Libraries are designed to be very diverse. They attempt to reflect the culture and community around them and attend to those diverse needs. They also as you might sense, are constantly running activities as a test bed to see what sticks. Like any business, they will play up or downplay them as interest waxes and wanes over time. If nobody attends the Hitchcock film series, then they won’t likely be holding it again next year.
It’s not necessarily the library’s job to teach since they aren’t schools. Nor are they community centers. They also could be forgiven for being behind the times if none of their patrons were requesting the latest and greatest information, programs resources etc. If they are giving their patrons what they want and satisfying people coming in the door, are they doing a good job while still dying?
Regardless, you can only carry on without evolving for a few years before you start to lose the older patrons while not gaining younger ones. Younger patrons will want to use it to perform in school and take multiple library resources to synthesize new ideas or output an intelligible paper. Adult patrons will be seeking to research specific subjects, to become someone by supplementing a career path. Very young and much older patrons might just be looking for entertainment and interesting things, maybe even an escape or a meeting place for discussions with peers.
You might agree that a library needs to change with the times but also believe that young people who only used their web-connected phones will miss out on a lot of the tactile benefits of books and the atmosphere of a library, you are not alone. The library can serve the connected culture while maintaining a non-electronic classic atmosphere.
I think you’ll find that most libraries have been looking at these issues over the past 5 years or so. How they act on them will depend on their funding, their staff’s abilities and from their education and experience from other libraries. As dull as some libraries can be, they can come from a very creative place. So the problem solving to maintain relevance will occur. And there are many commercial partners and resources available to bring things like ebook and audio rentals to beef up the library offerings so they don’t have to go it alone.
Following a favorite author on Twitter, @DaveCullen, we saw this page at Oprah.com. When your book collection becomes unruly. It’s time to purge. They have a useful checklist of what might make a book worthy of keeping or tossing when you must regain some space. But they fail to mention a very clear solution to the problem of annoying book clutter. Ebooks barely take up any space. Your home library compressed properly probably fits on a 16GB Flash drive.
Initially I wrote this discussing the possibilities and challenges with book scanning. But except for somebody willing to completely destroy a book by stripping the spine in order to feed into an affordable excellent home document scanner, it’s simply too annoying a process to recommend to most people. The books you are thinking of getting rid of are mostly the ones you don’t really want all that much. Otherwise you’d find a way to make space for them.
If you’ve been collecting hardcovers for years and have a beautiful library, you keep those and save space another way, downsize your bed or something. The problem of books for people are the ones they aren’t using, they’ve partially read and didn’t care enough to continue for the time being. Nothing wrong with that. In that case you simply don’t need that book. If you wanted to read it, you could pick it up at the library.
So the answer really is, to get our public libraries to the state where you can borrow books, all books on demand. This could be many years away though. Right now, borrowing ebooks from the library you need a specific device type and the books available are very small. A company called Overdrive powers many of these systems in place at libraries now. I’m not even sure the rationale behind the available books actually. Maybe every library website is just showing the boring titles that aren’t checked out in an scroller. I do know this, the system is based on artificial scarcity. People will “return” a book and then you can check it out. This is ridiculous. Say what you want about government money systems and how it’s all artificial. But an artificial scarcity of information is just disgraceful. “The book is right there, why can’t I borrow it?” Because somebody made an agreement somewhere and it was decided to give one group the control over the information. I’m willing to entertain the thought that libraries should be able to transmit freely working for the public good outside of the control of copyright.
The situation is sad enough to make you want to create or contribute to a pirate culture for books. At least until balance can be achieved again. Until then, desperate times, desperate measures. Scanning looks like a better idea because at least I have the power and the control there. I’m not subjected to the whims of Overdrive and whatever legal limitations are being imposed in these library partnerships. (Note I’m not blaming Overdrive, but the system is a farce when you can get access to all the books whenever you want, at least for a temporary amount of time, that doesn’t amount to permanent download ownership.)
Let’s take a look at another favorite author, Lawrence Lessig and examine the copyright / credits page of his book Free Culture published by Penguin.
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
Ok, nicely done. Now let’s look at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, of which Lessig is a contributing member and their Fair Use FAQ.
4. What’s been recognized as fair use?
Courts have previously found that a use was fair where the use of the copyrighted work was socially beneficial. In particular, U.S. courts have recognized the following fair uses: criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, research and parodies.
In addition, in 1984 the Supreme Court held that time-shifting (for example, private, non-commercial home taping of television programs with a VCR to permit later viewing) is fair use. (Sony Corporation of America v. Universal City Studios, 464 U.S. 417 (1984, S.C.)
Although the legal basis is not completely settled, many lawyers believe that the following (and many other uses) are also fair uses:
Space-shifting or format-shifting – that is, taking content you own in one format and putting it into another format, for personal, non-commercial use. For instance, “ripping” an audio CD (that is, making an MP3-format version of an audio CD that you already own) is considered fair use by many lawyers, based on the 1984 Betamax decision and the 1999 Rio MP3 player decision (RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia, 180 F. 3d 1072, 1079, 9th Circ. 1999.)
Making a personal back-up copy of content you own – for instance, burning a copy of an audio CD you own.
So the courts have ruled in favor of making personal backup copies. “MAKING” backup copies, not trolling the internet for rogue PDFs and ePub files. There’s no ruling in favor of getting the ebook source from a torrent website or newsgroups just because you own the physical book. My opinion, it’s just a legal issue. My ethics tell me it’s perfectly fine to get the ebook file available somewhere and as long as I’m not sharing it, it’s a convenient backup for me. Not everyone sees it that way. But I wouldn’t feel at all guilty about it. For me to obtain it though, remember it means somebody else is infringing copyright. Unless there in one of those countries who doesn’t recognize it.
If you MAKE your own book scan as a backup. You could freely destroy the original and your digital backup becomes your main copy. And since the only way to store a digital backup is in within a personal “retrieval system” then keeping a small library of backup files on USB, SD cards or what have you, is the only choice.
I write this knowing that it’s within a very strange and sometimes incomprehensible framework known as copyright law. And of course I’m no lawyer and cannot be trusted. Books shouldn’t be so troubling though. We were all fortunate that CDs were digital content widely distributed on a physical entity. Ripping them to a compressed digital file (mp3) to make portable became so easy, it is now most likely an included feature in your computer’s operating system.
The answer ultimately for the public’s future is within portable connected devices, with cameras, scanning and downloading books. The other thing is to make these books more affordable and in more hands. Either we want to limit potential, or we don’t. If libraries get to where they can’t maintain their inventory due to funding, and books aren’t there, we have to supplant that with downloads. And these downloads need to be instant. Because people have projects, deadlines, interests. I’m not gonna wait for the 89th person to “return” one of the two available copies of the John Steinbeck book when my kid’s paper is due. If somebody isn’t getting paid, we work that out without stifling the entire population by artificial means from getting to books to make said population richer and more capable.
Plastic Logic announced today that their Que reader is dead. They, like us, and like many others knew that nobody is gonna spend over $800 on a Que reader for business, when iPads, netbooks and even the Kindle DX offer similar or much more capabilities for nearly half the price.
“We recognize the market has dramatically changed, and with the product delays we have experienced, it no longer make sense for us to move forward with our first generation electronic reading product,” said Plastic Logic CEO Richard Archuleta. “This was a hard decision, but is the best one for our company, our investors and our customers.”
They took too long to figure this out or make the announcement. And too bad for those attendees at D7 who were told they were getting the device for free. Bummage. Plastic Logic should probably just continue with the product as is and just drop the price. Nobody said it wasn’t going to work., just the price is wrong. My thoughts lead me to that’s exactly what they’re doing and the Que 2 is really just the Que 1 minimally altered to appease their accounting department standards.
I haven’t been too friendly about Plastic Logic and their Que Reader. Now Wired reveals there will be more delays making it, giving the Que the embarrassing title of vaporware and in my opinion making even less relevant than ever. They struck me as pioneers of their device at first. They had the large screen and had begun working through media publishing channels and to make it compatible with the most formats. When they announced the price, it was evident that either their product is just too expensive to make after all the refinements or they were fully out of touch. It’s unfortunate but by branding and pricing their Que reader as a business tool, they are up against Apple and Apple’s iPad. Plastic Logic announced their product years in advance and have been surpassed by Apple and a lot of other copycat reader companies who actually shipped.
It’s a good lesson I wouldn’t have wanted to experience as a company first hand. But there are still things that Plastic Logic has going for it. The plastic substrate still sets it apart from the others. But plastic and less breakable doesn’t make it a better choice overall. The flexibility of the screen doesn’t mean it can withstand heat or cold. They also have a nice big screen, which sets it apart from most, but not all readers (KindleDX). Unfortunately a bigger screen doesn’t automatically mean it’s built in every way to best utilize business documents. It’s just one factor. The iPad and any other tablet with good battery life and a decent size are probably better suited. Why? Because people can edit, resize, scroll and markup a document faster on a tablet. A reader with slow refresh is going to be just clunky enough to be annoying when navigating through it when contrasted with a tablet or netbook.
All this wouldn’t matter if they weren’t trying to get $700-$900 out of the device. A Kindle DX is $489 and I can almost guarantee it will also lower in price by the time the Que comes out, or that same day. But the problem is the iPad and any decent tablet coming out in the next six months. Because the 9″ screen size, the ability to add apps, the instantaneous feedback, the editing ability all make a tablet better. And a tablet prices are cheaper for all that you get, even without 3G internet. A tablet will also give you more hard drive space and the operating systems are built to let you add programs that can open more documents. Need to read CAD or UML files? Tablets will do it. An e-reader? Not so much.
I’m not trying to simplify the challenges involved, but it is very simple that being both late expensive don’t help your current and future goals.
I have a few recommendations that can increase appeal. But the chances that Plastic Logic will feel compelled to do this is probably unlikely
Release the product at $450 and get it out ASAP
If it’s software and not hardware causing the final challenges, release and then get busy on firmware updates
Include a large book pack and 3 or 6 month magazine subscriptions for free.
Upgrade the storage to 10 GB to diverge from KindleDX
Make the reader water, temperature and shock resistant out of the box
Consider opening the device to make it a hacker friendly to attract another niche or two
Get the devices in the hands of a few celebrities or celebrity CEOs. (Try to where iPads haven’t dominated)
Sell / License the technology to earn money through other channels to bring prices down
Apple has the brand name and the interest captured already. Amazon has the attached book store and Kindle app proliferation on other platforms. The rest of the e-readers like the Nook, Alex, Kobo and others have a little foothold either with their own stores or simply compete on price. Sony has nice all-around affordable readers and spaces in many retail outlets covered. Plastic Logic has a sleek looking large reader that is overpriced and so far has people waiting entirely too long. A Wi-Fi iPad or a netbook from ASUS or Toshiba is a much better buy for corporate types. At least you can edit docs, skype chat, watch movies and store a lot more on a netbook. Given that iPhone and Blackberry have document viewers, the case is even less for an expensive business reader. E-Ink and similar technology compete on battery life and a better-for-your-eyes reading experience. But that’s pretty much it. They are all underpowered and do a lot less for a power user than a real computer or a smart phone.
It will probably be over $1000, but this is a nice looking device by Toshiba called the Libretto W100. Unlike Samsung who is waiting for who-knows-what to post their own pages of their upcoming tablet, Toshiba is all over showing with official pictures and detailed information.
So what does the Libretto W100 have?
Dual 7″ Multi-touch screens
802.11 N Wi-Fi
Full Windows 7 Home Premium
Webcam
Lightweight at 1.5 lbs
Bluetooth Toshiba Bulletin Board software (for notes and organization)
The screens look quite beautiful, as expected from Toshiba. The video below demonstrates an ebook displaying on both sides. It’s the hinge that looks burly and engineered well. Let’s hope that fans of this device can get their hands on it. Once again I’m wishing if only it had a Pixel Qi screen. But it looks like it could make a nice companion device to have, more protected than an open tablet.
Things we wouldn’t know if it weren’t for Slashgear:
Pentium U5400 processor
62GB Solid State drive
2GB of DDR3 RAM
Battery Life
single USB 2.0 port
microSD card reader
built-in accelerometer
ReelTime document browsing software
A lot of tablets lately are at or above the 9″ screen mark, but for many people this size is more of a burden than a feature. Many want something bigger than a phone, but still portable. And everyone wants flexibility. The Archos 5 tablet is a 5″ Android device that offers a lot of versatility in a handheld package. It has nearly all the capabilities you’d expect in a tablet, and more. Archos has been responsible for a lot of media players over the years and the French company knows how to make devices. They also have a history of supporting more of the open media formats.
Here’s a descriptive video of the Archos below. This 5″ format is interesting. You can put it in a shirt or coat pocket easily. It’s big enough to read on, same size reading area as a mass market paperback and bigger for fat fingers to chat and text than a phone. The Archos built-in GPS allows you to subscribe to a full and enhanced mapping system. The TV antennae dock and ports for connecting to HDTV is unique and useful.
Other things to care about
Archos 5 has the ThinkFree office included so documents from your email attachments will be accessible on the road. The battery life is going to be 7 hours of video playback and over 20 hours of music playback (screen sleeping presumably). Price starts at under $200 for 16GB and includes expansion with MicroSDHC cards. You can go as high as a 500 GB version (but will have a spinning HD.) There’s also an Archos 7″ and 9″ tablet. At this writing, the 7″ is sold out. The 9″ runs windows and has a much shorter battery life.
Buggers
No camera on board. That’s unfortunate. It’s also running Android 1.6 and no mention of updates to the faster and Adobe Flash supported Android 2.2. The app store is not the official Android marketplace so you might be limited in your downloads. No mention of multitouch, looks like a resistive touch screen. No mention of a stylus. This is a short list and all tablets have downsides, many more than this.
Wired has a product review today on the M-Edge Guardian Case for the Amazon Kindle. It looks water tight and absolutely unnecessary. You see the reason for these kinds of hinged plastic cases for digital cameras is that people actually go underwater to snap pictures of family and poisonous jellyfish. Nobody that I know of would be reading a book on sharks or diving safety 3 inches or 30 feet under the sea or at the community pool. Protection from the occasional splash or sudden rainstorm is where a case is needed. The M-Guardian weighs a pound and basically disables the joystick controller on your Kindle. How does this feature or the price tag of $80.00 for this make sense? I’ll tell you where it makes sense. If you tend to set your ebook readers where you might accidentally sit or drop a grenade on them, a case like this would be nice insurance. I suppose reading in bed you might rollover on it or push it off the mattress too.
Weatherproof cases bring the question front and center, why isn’t the Kindle or any other e-reader designed to withstand a little water or a little heat or cold to begin with? Added longevity would seem like a much better upgrade for people than a few extra shades of gray on the their screen. Wouldn’t you love to know your Kindle is just as safe in your steamy hot car on vacation as your car’s factory stereo, or that you could forget the reader on your back deck and the sudden summer rainstorm you didn’t hear coming of won’t kill your chances to read your digital library?
By the way, Wired says that the M-Edge Guardian case is the first waterproof kindle case, but I don’t believe it’s the first and it’s certainly not the only one. The Trendy Digital WaterGuard waterproof Kindle case looks like a much smarter buy at $15 from Amazon and TrendyDigital’s online store.
Do yourself a favor, consider the less expensive and lighter 2.8 oz TrendyDigital WaterGuard case for your Kindle if you’re interested in protecting it from the elements. If the massive savings wasn’t enough to convince you, an added plus is even if you didn’t have your Kindle with you on your float trip weekend, this case is mostly a simple bag and you could protect other items with it such as your wallet, phone, small camera and other thin materials from liquid disaster.
Update: There is a nice compromise called KlearKase that has both the weather and shock protection for a middle-ground price of $40.00 and weight of 6 oz. KlearKase seems to be the right option for watergoers and rough and tumble sit down smashers.
The Kindle is less interesting than a tablet. But it has some very good points to it. Convenience is one, the connection right to the Amazon store is something some people like. It’s light and has a sharp reflective screen that can be read inside or outdoors. On the flipside, though it’s slow and it doesn’t do media or animation. The iPad, which is selling a lot more units per second than the Kindle these days is more useful to people because it gives them abilities to surf, game, and create. Thousands of apps add to it’s feature list. It appeals to young and old. It’s a device you can experiment with, you can add onto it. The 6″ Kindle is half the price of the iPad, but the big Kindle DX is the same price $500 as the lowest iPad with the same size screens. Someone ready to buy either one has to answer the question would they rather read in bright sunlight on something like a paper page, or get something with a lot more sizzle, that you can play with, watch video and produce content too?
The point I’ m making is that if people essentially don’t care about the e-paper screen or the sunlight issue, the iPad makes a lot more sense. You can buy the same books, you’ll get a better view of the photos in color. You can quickly get out of that book and switch tasks in an instant. You can consume AND create. Sure the iPad’s LCD will probably strain your eyes faster, but it might also fill a couple niches in your life. Tablets like the iPad can be the perfect living room device for sharing and playing. (Damnit no camera on this thing?)
So if you were Amazon and you want to continue to sell more Kindles, you need to raise its appeal. Seth Godin wrote today for his Kindle friends that they should get the Kindle priced down to $49.00 and increase the attractiveness of buying ebooks with book-of-the-month club purchases. He added that corporations should be able to buy them for hundreds of their employees and be able to push their own content such as technical manuals or maybe annual reports to everyone in the company. Godin’s ideas make a lot of sense. And if the prices were right, you can turn more people into Kindle users if you can make the ebooks more attractive too.
I have one solution for Amazon that might make a biggest difference though. Amazon really needs to take a very close look at Valve’s Steam store and copy the hell out of it. Steam is a website for downloading PC games (Macs now too). Games are like first cousins to ebooks, both are digital content of an unlimited supply. If you have a desire to play a new game, much like you might feel a desire to read a new book, you can go to Steam and see latest best sellers. But something really obvious on the Steam store are nice shiny buttons to take you to games under $10 and under $5. Something for everyone.
The next great thing Steam has is sales on games on one particular day a week or over a weekend. If you’re visiting the site frequently and paying attention, you can grab a $40 game for $20 for example. Lastly, you can buy packs of games under certain publishers for big discounts too. Valve, the creators of the Steampowered store sell the complete Valve pack. Close to 20 Valve games. Buy the pack, you save a $100. Actually you’re saving a lot more because many of the games are well below their original retail price already. The Valve pack at $99 is enough gameplay online and off to keep you busy for a while. It’s instantly downloadable content too. And you can download it to different locations.
This is the trifecta. This makes Steam a very attractive place to shop for games. Books are a little different yes, and it will take a lot of work with the publishers, but it’s the only forward looking move that you can make with ebooks right now. Amazon has the publisher partnerships, something that Valve had to work really hard to do. Amazon has the advantage of a lot more book titles than games. Publisher book packs could be in many different flavors of collections. For example Penguin Books, who just finally came to an agreement with Amazon on their best seller prices could sell best sellers as a discounted pack of ebooks, or packs under a certain topic, such as a technical area of expertise and make these collections accessible and affordable. Not only that, but publisher packs also help the reader identify the publisher. Readers might look forward to the next Penguin or Wiley book because that pack they bought last time had all the good stuff.
Think how powerful it would be if Amazon could just layout prices of new books at discounts where you really feel fortunate as a Kindle owner. Say 6 months after a hardback book is released, Amazon could have a 24 hour sale on the book pricing it $5.99 rather than $9.99. It’s still a new book and because it’s a one day only, and perhaps a never repeated sale, the lower price doesn’t devalue the normal price or the physical book price. Anyone who missed out, too bad, but it would be consoling to know another sale will come soon enough and they just need to check back often. Sales can be promoted through all kinds of social channels too. Ebook sales are easy. The supply is unlimited. If nobody buys, who cares! Everything that happens or doesn’t happen is a valuable and instant learning opportunity.
Right now on the web page for the Kindle store, they don’t have a bargain bin, though they do have some cheaper books. Finding ebooks at $7.99 and even $2.49 didn’t take long. But it’s not presented in a way that’s good for impulses like a retail store is. If you look at the best sellers category for example, they actually think crossing out the other price is a good way to make the Kindle price look better. Look at the price(s) for the top left book in the photo below. Oops! Funny thing is, I’ve hardly ever buy a book at list price. Do they even use the list price at Borders or Barnes and Noble? Seems like all new books there have a discounted sticker of at least 10%. Amazon fails to entice me with this overused cross-out original price tactic. I’ve never bought a book at full price at Amazon. If that’s what they sold them for, I doubt I would shop there as often.
Next we have a page with best sellers in the Kindle Store. 2 columns. Top 100 paid, and Top 100 Free. Once again we have a problem. The good news for consumers. About 10% of these top 100 were priced under $5. The bad news for Amazon, you have to pay attention to see that. Why don’t they just have the $5 or even the $2.50 category?
I love a top 100 free category, but if they have the free column, there’s no reason not to have top 100 under $5.
Multiple surveys I’ve seen have indicated that people think a reasonable price for an ebook is $5 and under. Why is this category not here and promoted on the front page of the Kindle store? If it was, anyone getting a Kindle will at least know, hey this is cool and there are a bunch of books for only a couple dollars. They know they’ll have plenty to read, they also know they might be rewarded for paying attention to discount days.
Publishers need to get it through their heads, Unlimited supply changes things. They need to help these e-reader stores become attractive through book pricing and big 50% and 75% off sales. And they need to start yesterday. If they’d rather wait, they might as well choose to not do ebooks and face the consequences of being paper only. Ebooks fit the model of selling more at a lesser price. Publisher have repeatedly said that the cost of printed books is negligible, but this is the biggest lie. Because it’s not just printing. It’s shipping, it’s employee and warehouse handling, inventory, real estate, insurance, etc. Ebooks eliminate much of this and allow for more affiliate marketing opportunities.
Looks like a Courier will come to life after all. Well not really. It’s not the Microsoft Courier project recently shelved, it’s actually much larger dual-screen tablet based on a custom Linux variant. The Kno is a lovely and very large tablet device created for reading text books and taking notes. It’s screens are bigger than all tablets and e-readers currently available or in the works. The size of the Kno screens, 14 inches! The creators say that the reason for this large form is so it replicates the students textbook experiences in size, but their aim is to revolutionize learning with it’s functionality. With current technology, it looks to be a heavy device, but that doesn’t mean it would put off students carrying book bags already anyway. The Kno was announced yesterday at the AllThingsDigital conference. CNET was there covering the event and posted Youtube videos talking with the Kno company founders Babur Habib and Osman Rashid which are embedded at the end of this article.
The Kno exists in a working prototype form at this point. It runs embedded Linux with a custom browser-based operating system centered around reading, notetaking and organizing clips of information much like the Microsoft Courier project appeared to specialize in. The Kno interface looks spacious, custom designed and visually organized though the prototype had a few input response issues. Kno is currently posting jobs for several development areas to refine the device and OS. They have partnered with major publishers and expect that rather than having a dedicated app store, apps written for the device will come from many places including the educational institutions, publishers and the students themselves.
According to the Kno website, to develop the device they created a student panel to understand how to build it for their needs. And they observed the way people study to create how the user interface behaves and organizes things. There are a few student reaction videos on the site as well, spoken in a way as if these students already use it, but the device isn’t available yet. Rashid said that they will have their pre-order system in place for this fall with the tablets ready by the holidays.
Things we like:
The large size serves a clear purpose. It has a clear target student market and a custom embedded OS, which means the processing requirements and power consumption could potentially be lower and the startup could be faster.
The blue alternating hinges are a nice fixture
The form is sleek and original
Touchscreen supporting a stylus gives it drawing and sketching potential.
Linux Kernel and a custom interface might break new ground for the future of tablets. Every little bit helps.
Supports Flash Player for video and animations – very useful considering the content on many online course sites include flash components and media.
As I’ve known for a while and have been trying to share, the Pixel Qi screen is the right solution for most of these tablet devices right now. Look at this outdoor view. Pixel Qi IS in monochrome in the e-reader mode (reflective) but it’s very clear crisp and much better for looking at content. Kind of gives the movie an interesting tone, with a metallic sheen.
Charbax over at ArmDevices.net comes through with the video.
