The mass market for E-readers is “already well served”? Suuure it is. It isn’t well served until I can take my E-reader into a Borders/B+N, and with a few taps on the screen, download and pay for the magazines I want wirelessly from an access point in the store. No to required subscriptions, proprietary “push” networks, cellular bundling, monthly fees. Yes to single-copy book and periodical sales with no lock-in. For newspapers, just pass the newsbox on your way to work and update your device in an instant with an ultrawideband (wireless USB) link. For that matter, two-way interaction with the wireless access point isn’t really required; the paper can be continously transmitted in a rolling update and the reader just receives it. Radio amateurs have been working on this technology for years; it’s called Multicast.

Specifically, the Astak line is supposed to use the FlexiScreen (and I believe its from Plastic Logic) in its 9.7 inch model. Not because they need flexibility, but because the standard screens are too brittle at that size. Additionally, to Marcus’ comment Astak is planning to use a new controller from Epson to get the speed much higher.

At this point in time I believe that Astak has the best spec’ed solution, and if you are going to see something like the Plastic Logic device I believe it will come from Astak.

On the other hand, I fear Astak is chasing the holy grail. Original plans were for a late summer release at under $149. As they work with user reviews panels they have come up with a significantly improved device. They wanted accessories available at launch, and based on user feedback they developed a plan for a (clip on?) light attachment. They have covers planned. They added in support for the Epson controller to get the speed up there. They added in the FlexiScreen on the larger unit. I do want all this stuff, but I fear that the quest for perfection will lead to ongoing delays as just one more neat feature rears its head (swype would be great!). I’m sure between now and launch we will find something else we could wait for

So the August launch has slipped, and the base price has risen from under $150 to under $250. The current best guess on availability is October. There have been no official statements out of Astak, but they did mention that the new Epson controllers would not be available until October or later. Assuming they are waiting on these for even the first unit, we are looking at a November launch. The 9.7 inch unit would depend on 1st half ’09 availability of the FlexiScreen. It also is awaiting the inclusion of some kind of pen/annotation capability and its revised price is unknown.

It’s a little perplexing that they haven’t thought of a name for the device yet. It kind of makes me think that they are looking to be acquired…

I find 2000-3000 ms page flip times utterly unacceptable. I was almost annoyed with my QReader’s 200 ms page flip time, but then I adjusted the font and disabled antialiasing and now it flips the page in 70 ms. (70 ms is quite acceptable, as is anything less than 100 ms, which is the standard causality delay threshold. (Or at least 100 ms was the standard before people’s brains started to adapt to those huge delays in webbrowsers.))

FYI, Swype works by using a dictionary of 65k words and it tracks your movements across the keyboard. Say you want to spell out David: You plop your finger down on the D drag across to the A down to the V up to the I and to the D. Wiggle your finger up and down on a letter for a capital and wiggle it side to side for a double letter. Supposedly the gestures can be fairly broad — you don’t need to hit each key dead center.

The smart play for Plogic is to hook up with NY Times, Washington Post, and other newspapers, get subsidized and bundled into a subscription basis. The key, however, would be wireless connectivity — that gives you ‘push’ updates of the newspaper at all hours — but that also means:

- building in some sort of wireless
- dealing, probably, with some telco
- beefing up battery power to support the wireless chips

At the very least, we are now seeing a blossoming of the ebook reading devices market, and Plogic’s entry is keeping ebooks in the ‘hot news’ item column for a few more months.

All good, bring on Kindle 2.0 and all others!