First off, all of them are monochrome weak-contrast low-res low-speed small size e-readers that make me go, ‘bleh’. I’m not crazy about WiFi, nor limited extension compatibility, but when I read my favorite (yet heavy) book (Biology 5th edition, by Campbell Reece), I love looking at the colorful, yet detailed pictures that I can keep photographically in my head for weeks on end.

Second off, (with the limited exception of the iRex iLiad) most of these e-readers lack touch functionality, meaning… I’m a note taker, all students are note takers, and if I can take notes in class on a single device (rather than killing a lifetime amount of trees), it would make me (as well as a lot of others) really happy. And, I don’t mean the half hearted iRex attempted kind either, I mean, a touch e-reader that can do OCR. That would truly be amazing, and would complete the e-reader (or dare I say e-writer experience. You could really have something that could demolish a lot of wasteful industries and take over entire markets.

Hopefully, you’ll have a product that can let these issues lay to rest, and to say a bit more, you’dd probably have me standing first in line for one of these revolutionary new devices.

Best of Luck to you and your team.

-RRA

I want to comment on your reply as you and I are 100000% in agreement about our experiences using current eink displays. I too have a huge issue reading on them under normal lighting conditions (as opposed to outside in direct sunlight where they are actually excellent.) I find on current day eink I quickly lose concentration. I find my mind wandering and don’t remember what I just read. I have held a suspicion it could very well be because my brain spends more time trying to differentiate the text from the background than it does with absorbing the content.

I also was hoping the upcoming Plastic Logic display “might” offer a brighter white background. Now after looking into the Pixel Qi display a bit more, I am very hopeful that it might be possible to find a device that does more than let me read books and has a “book mode” which does give me the ability for recreational reading that I love so much. A netbook-convertible (converts into a tablet) type device would be the ideal middle ground between the over priced ebook readers we have today and the very affordable netbooks out there. In addition the netbook with this display would be far more feature rich and less restrictive in terms of software/drm protected books that could be used for reading.

I could even envision adding a smaller 6″ reading device for outside that uses the Plastic Logic display to complement a device using the Pixel Qi display.

I am so looking forward to the product’s unveiling in a the next few months. Maybe a new device, with my name on it, will end up under the tree this year…

I dont whether it’s a factor of my weird astigmatism (11PM-5 PM angle) or something else that causes this, but it’s been a problem since childhood and why I find the Kindle/iRex/Sony grey-scale readers unsatisfactory: they’re not bright enough, and therefore the contrast suffers and so do my eyes.

I trust that my signing up for this site produces an email notice of your first product release.

Is this the screen that OLPC are planning to use for there XO2? Are you just a component supplier for them or is there a closer link?

Have you any idea if anybody else will be producing an XO1 clone?

Yours

Joe R