An Opportunity To Whine.

...You know, I frequent several tech-oriented sites, for news, and commentary.

Those sites are largely ad-supported, and the way this works is that from the moment you load the page until as long as fifteen minutes after you close your browser, depending on how many popup windows they decided to spawn, you get barraged with advertising.

Since they're tech sites, the ads are what's called "demographically targeted."

What this means is that since you're all nerds - you're reading, say, Slashdot, therefore you're a nerd - you must want to buy goofy "technology" crap that does useful things like shoot foam arrows into distant office cubicles from a desk-mounted cannon powered by your laptop's USB port.

Actually, now that I think of it...







...Thank God for Paypal.

Anyway, as I was saying, they try to sell you all sorts of junk, most of which doesn't work at all, and the majority of the rest of which isn't very good.

So, I'm used to being barraged with gadgetry.

But the other day I saw one that made me take notice.

You see, I read. I read a LOT. I typically read a 300-page book every 2 days during the work week, and a book a day on the weekends; if I'm stuck in a queue somewhere, that number can go as high as five books a day, depending on the length of the line.

I cannot NEARLY afford to keep up with my book habit.

More importantly, I can't constantly carry a satchel full of books with me; I would develop a permanent hunch, and look even more like Igor than is already my lot in life.

I would rather avoid such a *hrm* hideous fate. *cough.*

So, my attention and interest were piqued by the latest Sony e-book reader. Enough storage space for literally hundreds of books; the really cool e-Ink technology that lets the screen only use power when you change "pages," thus letting your battery last long enough to read War and Peace, Moby-Dick, Atlas Shrugged, the Nosler Ammunition Hand-Reloading Guide, and the complete Linux Bible, end-to-end, twice; and best of all, compatibility with basically every document format known to man, allowing me to use the huge library of e-books of various types that I keep on my computer on the go.

Cool.

So, I decided that - it being Sony - it was probably a bit out of my price range, and went looking for a bargain version.

The flaw in my master plan was twofold; first, the definition I had held for "a bit" and the definition Sony - and, indeed, every other manufacturer of these ingenious devices - holds, are quite different.

Second, there is apparently no such thing as a "cheap" e-book reader.

Now, in this day and age, let's be realistic; most people don't read at all. Those who do, typically read one, or at most five, authors exclusively; they don't make "impulse" book buys, they don't use e-books, and by and large would have no use for such a device at all.

Which means that I am mystified by the electronics companies. Why can they not understand that to make such a device popular amongst a public that reads less and less every year, the crucial factor is price?

A new e-book reader costs MORE THAN A MONTH'S RENT ON MY HOUSE.

Let me be blunt with you, electronics executives.

There is no way on God's green earth that I can be persuaded to part with a sum of money sufficient to keep a roof over the heads of my family for an entire month for something that is a "convenience."

Especially when the device itself, fundamentally, is a crippled PDA with a cool screen. Think about this; it can't go online wirelessly, it can't browse the internet, it can't run any programs other than the reader software, it can't message my friends, let me check my Multiply inbox, allow me to make annotations on various things as they occur to me, or do any of the other nifty things today's PDAs can do; it just - exclusively - reads books.

Now, a half-decent PDA - which can do all of those things - runs around $275. So, would someone like to invest some time in explaining to me why the Sony e-book reader has to cost $299? I'm at a loss. It's bigger, heavier, and doesn't do as much; so what's up?

The Kindle reader from Amazon is even worse, as it supports ONLY DRMed media bought in the Amazon online store.

There are other brands, but the only decent price I've found so far is on eBay.

That's pitiable. Why don't these guys understand that if you want this to take off, you have to actually make it affordable? I mean, come on, we churn out a billion cellphones a week, or some such, all of which by now are at least as cool as an e-book reader; and yet the book reader costs as much as an iPhone?

I finally find a gadget I really want, and it's manufactured by drooling, retarded monkeys with no comprehension of the price system.