Borders announces pre-orders for 150 USD Kobo e-reader | Hacker News Reader

Borders announces pre-orders for 150 USD Kobo e-reader

borders.com

4 pointsableal5 comments

Tech specs link: http://www.borders.com/online/store/MediaView_koboereaderspe...

1 GB, SD slot, USB, Bluetooth (good move). No specs about the screen, except for overall device measures in a small picture. Looks like a 5 inch Vizplex e-ink screen, which is normally 800x600 pixels. (Good for fiction, not advisable for technical documents.)

I found the comparisons page more useful than the tech specs page:

http://www.koboereader.com/comparisons.html

Oh, yeah: I googled it and ended up on Kobo's site rather than Borders'.

Thanks - I was wrong, it's the 6 inch screen (also 800x600, normally). I have one of those (Hanlin, branded BeBook). Fine for fiction, as I said, not too big, but I might not mind a 5 inch if buying now.

P.S. vs. the Kindle: Amazon tosses in a 3G modem, but remember it's their line, on their dime. It's a loss-leader, to get customers into the store. Outside the US, only English Wikipedia is free, as far as I can tell. (Not that you can pay to access anything else, besides the store - it's not your line ...)

The specs for this one say it supports ePub and PDF. USB file transfer, or plug in an SD card. That's pretty attractive to me (especially at this price point). No native text, rich text, or graphic support, it seems, but I guess I could mash what I need into ePUB or PDF.

I also wonder whether it will be hackable.

I'd like to try an e-reader, but I'm not particularly interested in playing the price of a netbook. Plus, I've always preferred the Borders stores over B&N (if I'm restricted to a big box book store); the staff are helpful and, at least at a couple of the stores in my area, long term -- I kind of hope the latter means that management treats them ok.

I wouldn't count too much on hackable, though you might look up what's going on at http://openinkpot.org . Those things are usually ARM Linux, I believe.

Just the reading material over at http://www.feedbooks.com/books/recent has tidied me up nicely - worth the price of the reader ;-). Check also over at http://www.mobileread.com/ , they also have opinions and their own books.

(I used to go to Borders when they first expanded in the US - nice stores.)

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