How expensive are touchscreens exactly?

I recall the Iliad will have a touch-screen. Librie, Sony eReader, Jinke V2, V8 do not (though the Jinkes do have a small touch screen on the bottom, separate from the eInk main screen).

Digitizers cost money. The digitizer is the principal reason that TabletPCs cost so much more than plain laptops.

I consider the addition of the digitizer to be a bit of a mistake for the Iliad, and they would have been well advised to have produced one model without it. For doctors and sales reps, the digitizer is a welcome addition, and the Iliad beats TabletPCs also in weight, which is an important consideration when you’re thinking about schlepping a device around with you all day long.

But for us ordinary readers? The touch-screen helps in surfing the web, but not in reading offline content (i.e., books instead of periodicals that would have hyperlinked ads embedded in them).

If you follow a link to the “Chinese” iLiad from earlier posts (for example, here: http://www.baizhan.com.cn/index.php?showtopic=47080&mode=threaded&pid=57856) and take a close look at the enlarged pictures, you’ll notice that the long bar to the left of the iLiad’s screen appears to be recessed and that there is a tab that protrudes from this bar along its entire length. Additionally, if you look close at the top and bottom of the bar, there seems to be a slight curve downward on either side.

I’m guessing that this is the mechansim used to flip pages. Using your left thumb, you can quickly flick the bar to the right or left to move forward or back through pages. May not be earth-shattering, but it’s a nice concept (if actual) that may prove to be more ergonomic in design than the competing products, and further differentiates the iLiad from the Reader and the V8.

And to David Moynihan: I’d hate to see content and hardware tied to each other via Gemstar-style exclusives. But the book club approach might make sense in terms of newbies who can’t afford the e-book devices up front. What’s more, iLiad is doing the right thing in worrying about the easy availability of content. As for the Chinese, I agree with you totally: they are among the masters at price competition. In fact, I suspect this is one reason why iLiad may want to bring content into the mix. In fact, note the other just-posted item about the Chinese version of the iLiad–apparently at a much lower cost. I doubt they can match iRex in terms of the total quality of the user experience, at least not for now.

- David

This got me to do some other calculations, too.
- An 8″ display is 78 % larger than a 6″ one.
- A 1024×768 display has 64 % more pixels than a 800×600 one.
- An 8″ 1024×768 display is 8 % less crisp (i.e. has larger pixels) than a 6″ 800×600 one.
(Not that anybody is interested or anything… )

Politely and kindly, of course.

But to our Volish Dutch Amigo:

Given that, contrary to the statement

HW offered as support of content.

on Iliad’s homepage, pretty much all ebook device companies (Palm, NuovoMedia, Franklin, Ebookwise, etc.) have attempted to merge hardware and content in a razors and blades model, in the process alienating independent publishers, enraging free book sites (don’t make me bring Eric Eldred in here), and failing pretty miserably at achieving their expected sales goals (after all, these days the top ebook retailer other than Amazon is Ellora’s Cave, not Fictionwise or Palm or whoever), why should we care about anything other than price of new e-ink device?

2-inches more of screens are great, but Sony’s going to blow your company away at marketing, and has a retail presence… beginning with its own stores. That firm’s “Itunes for ebooks” is also likely to fail, for reasons too dull to get into, but the device will likely predominate.

I speak here as both the proprietor of a wireless ebook site, and as the guy who with blackmask pretty much single-handedly put Mobipocket and the ex-gemstars over the top, and I gotta say, I don’t see much in the Iliad save “another E-ink device”–one that costs more.

Should the first Jinke/Sony/HP-maybe’s/whichever not include wireless, the second ones will, but while the Chinese are what they are, they are trying, they are listening, they are getting better, they are already much cheaper, and they come from a competitive environment that’s uniquely focused on bringing down costs.

From what I’ve seen of the Iliad, I could probably reformat everything on my sites to custom-fit your device with a batch script in like a weekend, but other than a slightly larger screen, I’m not detecting much that motivates me to do so.

In a competitive environment, cost matters.

David Moynihan
Disruptive Publishing
http://www.blackmask.com
http://www.olympiapress.com

The ebookwise 1150 retailed for 99$ when I bought it, and it’s still at $130. for the core base of existing readers, there has to be a compelling reason to switch from this device for public domain reading.

the more expensive a device becomes, the riskier it becomes to buy it. What if it breaks? Is saddled by DRM problems? Never gets enough commercial content? these are still cutting edge products, and nobody wants to be stuck with an expensive device that never quite caught on.

On the other hand, I’m guessing the Sony device will receive more visibility and user acceptance (warts and all). If people come in contact with these devices more often in everyday life, they might be more inclined to see more value in it.

the big thing is selling a device already loaded with content. Not only public domain stuff, but several mainstream titles (preferably of the owner’s choice). That suggests a need for collaboration with content providers.

What currencies are those supposed to be? 400 EUR = 476 USD at the moment.