Wednesday 9 September 2009

Asus ebook reader


According to the Times Online, Asus is likely to launch an ebook reader with two screens, sometime before the end of the year.
The two screens would enable a person to use the reader like a conventional book, displaying two pages at a time.
Alternatively, one screen could display the book text, while the other allows the user to surf the web at the same time.

This offering from Asus, known for its low-cost netbook, is likely to challenge other ebook readers from Sony and Amazon on price. A single screen version, according to the Times Online article, could cost less than £100.

3 comments:

andrew said...

I've been following these book readers because it would be good for scientific literature etc. Laptop is too big & complex (even netbooks), iphone/smartphones are too small.

I think the biggest gap is on the software side because Sony, Amazon seem so directed towards generic books.

IMHO the crucial requirement is an iTunes style management app that understands scientific literature and autosyncs with my desktop. There are a couple of an excellent examples of this concept on the Mac already (eg 'Papers' by mekentosj). They would just need to work with the book reader.

You could argue the same thing for learning support features.

andrew said...

The following blog post argues against specialised devices
http://kottke.org/09/09/your-company-theres-an-app-for-that

The argument is that the iphone (or equivalent, see footnote 1) is the natural answer because it's delivers so many of the necessary functions in one box.

It still seems mighty small to read more than a news article on though ...

Unknown said...

I don't think I could read much on an iPhone (or equivalent) Andrew. Maybe I'm getting old! But I do like the idea of being able to read (and annotate) work papers, research literature etc on a portable device. For travelling (especially with Ryanair) it would be invaluable.