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The Cool-er E Ink reader isn’t, says New York Times columnist David Pogue—or at least not so far
May 28, 2009 | 3:30 am
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By David Rothman
The $250 Cool-er E Ink reader is no stranger to TeleRead community members.
We’ll look forward to a hands-on. The Cool-er is extra-slim, comes in eight spiffy-looking colors, and will offer more book choices than the $359 Kindle 2 does.
But New York Times gadget columnist David Progue is underwhelmed so far.
Granted, the Cool-er has a memory card slot unlike the Kindle 2, and it uses Adobe-DRMed ePub and PDF instead of the more onerously corseted Kindle format. And yes, the related store already offers as many books as the Kindle, 275,000, with a contract with a distributor expected to boost the total to 750,000. Plus, come fall, you’ll soon be able to sell your own e-books in the store and collect half of revenue, far more than through Amazon.
The catches
But there are catches at least for now. Laments Pogue: “No Harry Potter, no John Grisham, not even ‘Freakonomics.’ Of 15 of the top New York Times best sellers, the Cool-er store has only 9, costing $16 to $23. The Kindle store, by contrast, has all 15—for $10 each.”
Furthermore, Pogue concludes: “The hardware and software design are, to put it kindly, unrefined.” The case is flimsy, the layout of the control buttons is a disaster, and “on one test machine, Adobe Digital Editions would not recognize my downloaded books, and therefore they could not go onto the Cool-er.”
The good news is that the reviewed machine is version 1.0, and Neal Jones, head of the company behind the Cool-er, says the machine was developed in a mere four and a half months. So patience, please. With Amazon so eager to flex its corporate muscles at others’ expense, the e-book world could well stand the competition.
Speaking of hardware: Techmeme’s roundup on the Plastic Logic e0reader including a quick hands-on by Joanna Stern.
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Comments:
Pogue’s comments about the lack of titles/pricing in the Coolerbook store completely misses the point. You don’t have to buy your books from their store, as they are any number of stores/libraries that you can acquire the content on.
The more telling comments seems to be about the fit and finish of the hardware and software.
>>>“on one test machine, Adobe Digital Editions would not recognize my downloaded books, and therefore they could not go onto the Cool-er.”
Wow. What kind of company is so damned desperate for press that they shoot themselves in the foot by giving reviewers DEVICES THAT DON’T WORK?
And will *any* of these reviewers bother to do follow-ups? I doubt it! Caveat emptor!