(urth) The Electric Wolfe

[thalassocrat at nym.hush.com]

On Fri, 21 Dec 2007 16:36:40 +1100 James Crossley 
<ishmael at drizzle.com> wrote:
> 
>I used to work at Amazon, and I still have a friend there who's 
>had one for
>a while.  It's better than other electronic readers I've seen, and 

>I can see
>real early adopter types wanting one now, but I think it needs 
>some tweaking
>before I'd be interested.  It's a nice size and weight, but some 
>of the
>buttons aren't quite where they should be to make use fluid.  Page 

>turning
>seemed a hair too slow for me to feel perfectly comfortable.  The 
>visual
>quality of the text is good enough to prevent eye strain, but not 
>on par
>with actual print.  The system for acquiring books is really easy 
>and
>effective.
>
>The main problem, though, is the pricing.  Simply speaking, they 
>either need
>to lower the cost of the reader or of the books.  I hope book 
>publishers
>figure out a viable model for buying, storing and sharing texts
>electronically more quickly than the record companies have for 
>music.

Thanks for that. All the other readers I've seen are crap. I think 
I'm the perfect target given that I carry a book everywhere. A 
Kindle wouldn't make me any less geeky but at least I'd feel like 
an up-to-the-minute geek. 

Hopefully AMZN will have sorted out the usability and the pricing 
model by the time you can get them down here.