Tech: … nearly. The Sony Reader EBR-1000EP. 170 pixels-per-inch is a nice resolution, and in general it looks very cool, esp. considering the E-Paper aspects (ie. looks like paper, back-lighting not required, easier to read). However — never mind that it’s only available in Japan so far, even once it becomes available in the US, its pricing structure is moronic:
All three of the Impress Watch articles say it will cost around 40,000 yen – approximately $400 USD. And this is just for the reader, subscribing to the e-book service costs $5-10/month. They do, however, have the option of just purchasing single books for 350 yen, about $3.25.
Dammit — I don’t want e-books and their DRM and lock-in — I just want a HTML viewer like Plucker or iSilo, so I can use Sitescooper!
Also, it’s not yet foldable. Once I can fold up the reader into a little ball in my pocket, then fold it out again into an A4-sized ‘page’, I’ll be a happy man.
Still, getting there — let’s hope they get a clue and kill off that DRM. Otherwise, I can’t see myself buying one, even once the price comes down.
Funny: (in a geeky way): mentioned on LWN — ‘granted, drawing circles w/ GIMP is a bit like finding 2 + 2 by evaluating the integral of 2dx over the range 0..2.’
(jm: worth noting that the same applies for Photoshop, for that matter — in this respect GIMP has emulated Adobe’s ‘you need to buy Illustrator to do that’ attitude. That’s really quite bizarre when you think about it. Wonder if GIMP 2.0 fixes that?)
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