Readius? iLiad?

Fortune magazine has an article on these potential Kindle rivals. I haven't given it a thorough reading yet. If you do, what do you think? Worth waiting for?

Link? Is the article online?

I haven't heard of either of them, but just in glancing at the names, the capital L in iLiad makes it look like it's called "I Lied."

I did a quick Google and the Readius looks pretty neat, since it uses the flexible screen that rolls up really small... its not out yet though and I couldn't find a price estimate anywhere.

The iLiad looks a lot like the Kindle in the pictures, except has a touch screen with a stylus... the price at $700 makes the Kindle price look reasonable now.

I'm sure there will be more readers using the e-ink technology real soon, which is great. The more the better, I say.

I'm still glad I have my Kindle now, wheather its better to wait for the newest technology? I think that is probably a personal decision... there are benefits to both waiting and not waiting... speaking of which... I have to run.

Those are the names of actual products? Readius? iLiad? That's sad.

Yeah, and people have been complaining that the name Kindle is lame...

Update!

I just found out that the Readius is in mass production and they say they will be available to consumers by the end of December. Still can't find the price, though. It is a really neat looking gadget, even with the silly name.

Here is a link: http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/19/polymer-visions-readius-rollable-display-gets...

The real question for any reader is how much content is there for it and how easy is it to get that content onto the reader, and what will the content cost you?

I bet in a few years we will have many ebook reader options but for now I still think the Kindle is the best if you want to read books. If you want to view pdf's, browse the web etc.. then maybe something else is better.

I must admit something like the readius looks very cool, that would actually fit in your pocket if you wanted it to. But again, what about content? I would love to see amazon allow other e-book makers to use the azw format on their devices. It will be very interesting to see what happens in the e-book world over the next few years!

Your question about ebooks worth waiting for vs. buying now ends up being very personal. I want a ebook reader badly, but I want to think through the decision. I have written a blog entry comparing the Kindle with the Sony Reader and the iRex iLiad, which may be useful to you. http://mlipan.blogspot.com/2008/05/amazon-kindle.html

I just found out about another entry into the ebook market called the Astak Pro Mentor 9.7 ereader at http://www.astak.com/97Ebook_Reader.html. See also: http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Astak_Mentor
They make 3 sizes, but the one that interests me is the 9.7 large screen as it is perfect for reading pdf pages on a full 8.5x11 inch page. Their smaller ebooks are expected to be available late July (about a month later than originally announced). The Astak will be marketed through Costco and Walmart. Astak already sells their cameras through Walmart. Here is the announcement I happened upon first: http://www.teleread.org/blog/2008/06/17/astak-e-ink-machines-five-and-six-incher...

As is usual with deciding when to buy, you have to factor the usefulness of the product to you over say a 6-month period vs. the savings in money and addition of new features you would gain by waiting. In my blog entry, I tried to get to the details of using each machine as a way to judge the answer to this question.

I went to the Astak site and notice they don't support the mobi format, this means you could not get books from a lot of the ebook seller sites. That may not be a big problem but something to consider, maybe they will add that format? I do like the size of it, it would be really nice for pdfs and also certain types of books where it would be helpful to see more on the screen at a time.

These are the formats it supports. TXT, PDF, RTF, HTML/CHM