I want an Amazon Kindle about as bad as Amy Winehouse wants her next fix. But unlike Amy, I am exercising self restraint, mostly because the Kindle just doesn't cut it for me - yet. Neither does the Sony Reader, and the iLiad is just ridiculously expensive. So, with all of the iPods, laptops, and phones available, why can't tech companies manage to churn out a decent ebook reader that doesn't cost as much as a crappy computer?
Amazon has a long way to go before their so-called revolutionary Kindle actually becomes revolutionary in my eyes. As far as I'm concerned, you're paying $359 to gain access to the $9.99 (or more) DRM bookstore.
I know you can't expect everything from one device yet (the iPhone is proof of that), but I think it's a logical step to be able to read PDFs on the Kindle. There has to be some incentive to paying $359 for a device, other than being able to purchase cheaper (and DRM protected/locked) versions of current books. Especially when you can annotate and highlight your novels. Imagine how useful that would be to academics and their plethora of PDFs?
If you think about it, the Kindle is just a failed iPod. With iPods and other similar devices, you can load your own music and you can purchase music at a discounted price through various online music stores. But with the Kindle? All you can do is purchase discounted books. Sorry, that doesn't work for me.
The Sony Reader, while a little cheaper ($300), doesn't have annotating and highlighting capabilities that the Kindle does. So while you can load PDF documents (and scads of other file types) onto the Reader, all you can do is, well, read them. Thanks, but no thanks, Sony. You can get it in shiny fire rocket red though...
The iLiad (and the iLiad Book Edition) are too expensive. At $700 and $600, it's basically the same price as a crappy PC. With the iLiad, you can load almost any file type onto it, annotate, highlight, and use it as a tablet. You can draw, write, etc on the iLiad, and you can even export what you do on the iLiad to your computer. On top of that, you can zoom in and out - something the Kindle and Reader both cannot do.
The iLiad Book Edition has all of the same features, minus the tablet writing and drawing capabilities - although you can annotate what you are reading. It also comes with 50 fairly impressive free ebooks, which, let's be honest, isn't going to make up for the $600 price tag.
If the iLiad and the Kindle could make a little baby ebook reader, all of the features, but for half the price, I'd be the first in line to purchase it... and name my first born after it.
Again, I ask why it's so hard for a company to put together a great ebook reader, with a price tag that isn't frighteningly close to $1,000?
Image from Amazon.com