E-bookery

[kate_nepveu]

Because I just know you were all waiting breathlessly for my verdict on Amazon's Kindle e-book reader:

If I had stupid money, I'd get a Cybook instead. [*]

Since I don't have stupid money, I'll stick with my Palm TX, which functions just fine as an e-book reader except in bright sunlight, which is not that often an issue (though if a Cybook showed up my doorstep for free, I wouldn't send it back). Speaking of which, from now until Monday Palm is selling the TX for $200 with a wireless keyboard thrown in, which is so cheap that I'm tempted to buy a spare against the likely day that Palm stops making standalone PDAs.

I love my TX and would absolutely recommend it to anyone who's looking for an organizer, e-book reader, game player, etc., but who doesn't need a smartphone. On the other hand, when this TX eventually dies, I may have other options: Nokia is releasing a Palm OS emulator, and the Nokia N810 looks very cool: bigger screen! Built-in keyboard! GPS! Anyone got one of these, or played with one?

(Because, you know, what I really need is to be gathering information on a tech toy that I neither need nor should have . . . )

[*] References:

• Look At Me, I’m on the Cutting Edge
• 15 Things I Just Learned About the Amazon Kindle - Boing Boing Gadgets
• Amazon Kindle Hands-On and Questions Answered (Gallery)
• The Future of Reading (A Play in Six Acts) [dive into mark] — Critique of Amazon's Kindle, in the words of Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos and George Orwell, among others.
• Comparing Amazon Kindle to E-Book Readers of Yesterday and Tomorrow

Comments

[sraun]

The 700/N800/N810 are not marketed as PDAs. They're marketed as Internet Tablets - basically, a portable web browser, with e-mail & assorted media support. Since I last commented here, I've discovered that there's no native support for the webcam in the N810 - just the hardware and some OS hooks! Nokia is counting on the community to write one or more utilities for it. I'd guess that they're right - I'd bet there will be two or three by the time I buy one.

There's something called the "GPE Suite" that has had a number of parts ported to the Nokia - my check just found calendar, todo, and contacts. It looks like there's another matching suite added since the last time I looked.

The user community has a port of the OS2007 (latest version written for the N800) to the 770 - it's apparently taking some work. I would guess it's roughly the equivalent of porting PalmOS 5 back to run on a Palm 3 device. That's what I call a dedicated user community!