Comments on: $100 e-reading device: Pierre Schweitzer’s dream

By: Rick

Rick — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 17:16:41 +0000

I fully agree with you. They really need to re evaluate their marketing. It would profit them greatly to try to put one in every persons hand that you see at Starbucks as opposed to keeping it for the elite. This is all old technology. Most of it anyway. I’ve had mine for 6 Mts. now and I don’t want to go back to paper. I’ve given lots of books away over the years. Now, I buy them, I’ve got them. Storage is no longer an issue. But despite the ones I really liked, I got the one that I could afford. (The cheapest one on the internet I could find.
Please, manufactures, come up with a universal machine and keep it affordable.
This man has the right idea. I wish him success.

By: David Rothman

David Rothman — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 18:21:25 +0000

Hi, Mike. Wouldn’t matter with the Sony, now $299 or so, but if you’re talking about a $75 reader, which ideally will appear n the future, it could matter. Great to have diff views on this issue. Guess it just shows how diff people use e-readers in different ways. At any rate, I doubt there’s any danger that readers with batteries will vanish Thanks. D

By: Mike Cook

Mike Cook — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 18:15:52 +0000

I guess the question has to be how much cheaper will it be.

* You can buy cell phone batteries for $15 USD.
* I picked up a replacement iPod battery, including shipping, for $40.

I suppose the addition internal workings may add a little extra but is really going to be make that much difference?

Still, take away the battery and the mp3 player from the Sony Reader and I wonder how much cheaper it would have been.

By: David Rothman

David Rothman — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 14:53:27 +0000

Mike: How about some extra-low cost models for cash-strapped folks who do most of their reading near electricity? No piggybacking, nothing fancy. But I can appreciate your point. My hunch is that the battery models will prevail in the marketplace by far. This would be just another option. From a digital divide perspective in places like the U.S., U.K. and Australia with almost 100 percent electrification, such econo-readers might be helpful. Thanks. David

By: Mike Cook

Mike Cook — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 09:15:35 +0000

This has to be the last thing you would to do! I do a lot of reading on the train, while down at the coffee shop, in these kind of places. No doubt many other people do the same.

Would not having some ‘lumpy’ battery add-on actually make the device heavier that with it built in?

iPod, cell phone – if a reader battery is anything like these, they really don’t weigh that much.

By: David Rothman

David Rothman — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 18:39:17 +0000

Pond re low-cost e-readers: Great idea! Most of my e-reading is done with easy access to an outlet, and I suspect that’s true of other people as well. Appropriate memory media could take care of the issue of, “What happens when the juice is off?” – David

By: pond

pond — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 17:40:29 +0000

It occurs to me that all ebook devices could be made and sold for a lot less money than currently by making them non-portable. Eliminate the battery and associated chips (li-ion batteries in particular require expensive regulators to make sure they don’t burst into flames) and the device gets

- smaller
- lighter
- cheaper to make and sell.

Designing a device with a ‘piggyback’ optional battery-back would make it portable when and if the user wanted.

The hangup with my idea and Schweitzer’s is that they all need a big consumer-electronics firm to design and build them. That takes a lot of capital and those firms would need to have the lure of highly-likely big financial returns before taking the plunge.