By Tim Condon, Tampa PC Users Group
tim@free-market.net

Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid!

Yeah, yeah, yeah, what am I whining about, you all wanna know. Well. Consider this. We’ve all heard the old saw within the computer-literate universe…if cars had improved as much and as fast as computers over the last 20 years, they’d travel at the speed of light, get zillions of miles per gallon, and cost $1.98 brand new. But they haven’t, have they.

Which brings us to what I’m complaining about. The Internet. Look, admit it or not---and most now do, even the Big Doubters of yesteryear, like Bill Gates---the Internet is the biggest thing to happen to humanity since, oh, language, or fire, or agriculture, or something similarly small like those. We all just love to peruse the Internet and the inexhaustible (to each of us, at least) supply of knowledge, entertainment, prurience, wisdom, comedy, etc. that it has to offer, right?

Which brings me right back to what I’ve been talking about here: It’s coming! It’s imminent. I really mean it! Any time now! Better watch out! What? Why, the appearance of a simple appliance, about the size and shape of a book, that can be cradled in our laps or on our chests when we lie in bed, in order to comfortably enjoy the cornucopia of all that is the Internet.

But it doesn’t exist? What??? Shocccccckkkk! You figure we’ve got just about everything, here in the computer-Internet universe, right? Well, if it ain’t here already, why, it’s just over the horizon. Sing along with me! "Soooome wheeeere, Over the rainbow…Soooome wheeeere…" But Stop! That’s what I’m tellin’ ya! It ain’t happening.

What have we got that we can comfortably hold and clutch to our bosoms, to peruse the Internet? Not those "lightweight" laptops! No in my bed! Uh uh! It cuts off the circulation in my arms and legs. Oh, well then, why not just stop being lazy and sit up in front of that big fat monitor on the desk, and peruse all ya want, till your heart’s content? Well, because it’s uncomfortable, you dolt! That’s why we’re all sitting around thrumming our fingers, wondering when the geniuses who brought us the computer revolution (and they are geniuses) are going to give us something comfortable and convenient that we can read anywhere comfortably and conveniently!

Is all that too much to ask for?

Well, yes, apparently. There are all kinds of reading appliances out there right now. But of course most are linked up with one big fat publishing conglomerate or another. And you think their main concern---or any concern at all, let’s-face-it---has anything to do with allowing us to read what we want and when we want to? NOOOOOOOOO, of course not! They’re all scrapping around about what kind of encryption schemes they can use to make sure we don’t read one of their precious books more than once, or that more than one set of eyes don’t get to peruse the same pristine orthography.

Hell, by this time more electronic reading appliances and e-reading appliance companies have gone bust than are now available. Rocket eBook and Softbook: Both gobbled up, acquired by Gemstar last year and replaced by the Gemstar REB 1100 and REB 1200. And, of course, you can only read Gemstar ebooks by downloading them by a modem (part of the reader) from Gemstar’s collection of stuff to read. So sorry, can’t just scan the Internet, or download stuff from the Internet to read later. And these two barkers cost $299 (for the el cheapo REB 1100) and $699 (for the REB 1200). How’s that for a deal to get locked into someone else’s small library? (Oh yeah, you can’t share books with the Gemstars either; you can only transfer your entire library from your reader to someone else’s---they wouldn’t want you to be able to re-read a book while someone else was reading it.)

Okay, let’s blow off the Gemstars, and go over to the Franklin eBookMan offerings. The EBM-900, EMB-901, and EBM-911 are three devices that share some characteristics. They all have Franklin’s proprietary operating system---can anyone scream out LOCK-IN SCHEME?---they’re all expensive ($130, $180, and $230 respectively), they’re all slow, and they all try to do too much when they’re just supposed to be ebooks. What? Oh, Franklin is screwing around with them being PDA’s (personal digital assistants) and listening devices (unencrypted MP-3’s only, of course), including both audiobooks and music.

HEY! ALL YOU EBOOK COMPANIES! All we want is an implement that can read books in various non-proprietary (and proprietary, if we so desire) formats, including Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Reader, Glassbook standard, Everybook (if it’s still out there) and other formats. Is that so hard???

First, a color screen of reasonable size will be needed, with an optional on-off back light. Perhaps it could be the size of the upcoming Microsoft tablet computer, but an entire computer---with its attendant expense and complexity---isn’t what we need or are looking for. But the size is right. Size matters. It’ll have to be color, probably an LCD, because all those monochrome screens are deadly borrrrrring. And probably a touchscreen so we can navigate reasonably well without mousing around or having to have a keyboard. (Of course, it would have some buttons here and there, to aid in navigating, but this is a reader, stupid, not an incipient AI system or supercomputer.)

Second, the little booger should be fairly lightweight, with batteries that work a reasonable amount of time…say, at least 5 or 6 hours at a sitting (and lots more is possible, given what’s out there in the way of low-power technology). Of course, unless those batteries are some kind of super alien artifacts, we’ve gotta be able to plug the thing into the wall when needed also.

Thirdly, stop screwing around with the proprietary standards and private operating systems in an effort to lock the reader in to a manufacturer’s personal library. We’re supposed to be selling reading implements, not trying to set up a flaming book-monopoly! So the thing should probably run on some kind of Linux-standard operating system and be able to accommodate all or most of the ebook standards out there, including Microsoft ClearType, Adobe Acrobat, the Glassbook standard, etc., etc.

Fourthly, the thing should be able to connect up easily and efficiently to the Internet, whether through a USB port, a PCMCIA port (that stands for "People Can’t Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms"), an old-fashioned ethernet port, or whatever. But it would have to have broadband connectivity, cause that’s where the world, and the Internet, are headed. AND, it would have to have some capability to connect up to your regular desktop or laptop, so as to be able to transfer stuff (books, pictures, what-have-you) back and forth (and thence be able to email stuff to our friends, if we have any).

Fifthly, it would have to have some storage. No hard drives or spinning floppies to run the batteries down. Probably some kind of flash memory. Just a few megs, so you could transfer stuff off the Internet and into your reader to enjoy without running drives whining in your ear.

Sixth…give us a break, will ya, on the price? Sure, you may be the first-to-market, and so you want to stick the early-adapters with as high prices as possible…but if I’m right, everyone is going to be an "early-adopter." So you don’t have to jack up your price structure in the beginning so as to screw the first people who want to use the thing. You’ll still make billions, so how about restraining your socialist greed ("socialist" greed because any kind of socialist political system is the ultimate in locking in a customer base…in the case of communists and Nazis, literally "lock in" and "lock up"). The price, therefore, should be somewhere south of $100. And puh-leeze, don’t give us the fairy-tale that "it’s not possible." It’ll be here soon enough. You wanna be first or not?

Did I get everything? Maybe, maybe not. The rest of you can yell at me. But I think the above pretty much outlines what the market needs…and it ain’t there yet.

Perhaps as important as what features are needed are those features that we don’t want or need! Consider. The ebook-Internet reader doesn’t have to play music. It doesn’t have to read audiobooks to us. It doesn’t have to turn into a salad-maker that slices and dices and shreds and dreads (it rhymes, that’s all I can say). It doesn’t have to play games (my blood pressure’s going up again), because it’s for people with brains who want to read…not teenagers.

And it doesn’t have to have cutesy little features like a clock on the screen and a place that tells you what the date is (if you don’t know what the date is, look at your damn watch; it’s near the end of your arm, on your wrist). Or funny little helpful pictures or cartoons. Or a calculator. Or an address book. It ain’t a PDA, guys!

And---did I mention it before?---No blasted games are needed!

No. Just give us a simple implement that can easily connect up to the Internet and download those books and articles we want to read, store them in a reasonably-sized flash memory, and display them on a reasonably-sized backlit color touch-screen. It ain’t rocket science.