I know you all were probably already aware of this thing, but I wasn’t. Amazon is selling out of these at $400 a pop. It’s an electronic book, one which I have never seen but am at least somewhat impressed by. It is essentially an electronic book that receives book content over the cellular network and displays it for reading.
I had two thoughts. One is that I experience eye strain while reading from a computer monitor for too long. This fact makes me extremely curious about the electronic paper display in this device. The pictures on-line make it look like a page from a laser printer. If that is truly the effect they have achieved, I might enjoy reading on this thing.
My other thought was I wouldn’t want to pay for more cell service to give this thing access, but I was surprised to read that Amazon takes care of that. So you pay $400 for this thing which will do at least the following:
- Hold 200 books
- Expand to hold more books
- Download a new book on the fly (waiting for wifey’s haircut to be finished) as you think of it.
- Release the 700′ of wall space you have dedicated to bookshelves.
- Allow you to subscribe to and automatically receive magazines and newspapers.
Of course you must pay for each book that you decide to download. Those appear to be something like $10 per book. I don’t have a clue as to the competitive pricing on the subscription items. I am also not sure about the ability to back the device up in case of a failure or if the media you download is viewable on any other device or not. It is shipped with a USB 2.0 cable but the system requirements claim a computer is not required.
All said, I think it’s a great little device. $400 still sounds steep even though your entire library could fit into the space of a single (small) book. With the included cell access (which is a HUGE convenience here) and the apparently competitive book prices per download, maybe the $400 would be worth it?
Anyway, it’s still very cool.
