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Good Luck Reading a Book on a NetBook

I’m a big fan of netbooks, but they are not the magic device for all one’s needs, and they should not be. PC World has jumped the shark with a bombastic title: Bye-bye Kindle, E-reader Screens Coming for Netbooks.  It’s all about start-up Pixel Qi’s new screen which can operate as traditional backlit color LCD or as a black-end-white e-paper that hardly consumes energy and most importantly reduces eye-strain.  PC World jumps to the conclusion:

E-reader makers have reason to fear such innovation because people will be able to buy devices with more functions for about the same price. 

I beg to disagree. But rather than speculate, I’m challenging  authors Dan Nystedt and Martyn Williams to do a test: hold a 3-pound netbook for several hours, in different positions, not at their desk, while trying to enjoy an e-Book.

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CrunchPad: a Keyboard-less Netbook

I admit I was skeptical when Mike Arrington first announced he wanted to build a  lightweight  Web Tablet.  Skeptical partly because I had just witnessed Ismael Ghalimi of the Office 2.0 fame feverishly work on the Redux Model 1.  I had been doubtful about his effort, too, but his energy level was just radiating, he actually convinced me, I started to believe…  But in the end, all the effort (and quite some money Ismael spent along the way) came down to nothing, he nuked the device, and the Office 2.0 Conference gadget became an HP 2133 Mini-Note PC.

Fast-forward half a year, and TecCrunch is showing off a prototype.  Granted, it’s not as cool-looking as the initial sketch above, but this one is working.

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