Wednesday
Jan062010
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill What I want for Christmas...
Jan 6, 2010 Tech ...and it will probably take that long for it to be available in the UK, but doesn't the Skiff e-reader look sexy?
Jan 6, 2010 Tech
Reader Comments (7)
I don't know about sexy but it is just the thing I've been waiting for - it can display diagrams, and you don't need a magnifying glass to see them.
Electronic paper finally? Readable in bright light? Where in the world do I get one?
Just B&W at the moment :-(
What I want for Christmas is AGW-related.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PbiX36WRME&feature=player_embedded
Not much use, there's no handle, you'd soon get bored shovelling snow with that!
Ohh.. gadgets. Bet it can't be used in a woodburner though. Potential downside to Skiff looks like it's tie to Hearst content, at least till modders get their mitts on it. As for Michael's comment, I've found my Sony PRS-600 does reasonably well in bright light, providing it's not too directly on it. But that's a drawback with all the readers I played with. Biggest drawback I've found is ergonomics.. I find the 600 more readable than smaller screens, but it's slightly too large to fit in a jacket pocket.
I live on a boat. I bought a kndle2 - the smaller one. Now I can read all the old books that I could never find at the library, like Adam Smith, Hulme, MacCauley, Hobbs, Thyucidides, Hesiod, Gibbon -(the whole thing) on and on. And we don't accumulate a pile of tomes we don't have room for. These things are a real boon for anyone interested in pre-1920 things. For example I'm just finishing Churchill's "River War" about the 1896-98 Soudan Campaign. Free.
I know UK copyright laws are more restrictive, so likely I can get books for free here in the states that you will have to wait for the 70 years after the death of the author, but still...........
And the Skiff does indeed look wonderful.