I bought one. And I'm very impressed by and happy with it. A few of my technically-minded friends have remarked critically, merely on a conceptual basis, but those who have actually seen it (especially the `normal people') have responded very positively. I was sort-of thinking of the device like one of these `electronic travel guide' things, e.g.: ... except that it's far more expansive and generally-applicable, so I might find myself pulling it out and looking things up in response to something I hear on the radio, or when I'm trying to figure out what kind of hammer I need at Home Depot (that was embarassing...). It'd probably also make a nice museum-going companion. And if it could also hold a copy of Wiktionary (or some other dictionary), then that'd be pretty awesome. But it's really not evident just how profound the device is until you find yourself amongst friends who are trying to remember the details of something of which you've never even heard, and then suddenly `you're the expert' in the group. My first such experience involved a couple of friends who were trying to make sense of their vague memories of `trying to read' Nikolai Gogol's book, `Dead Souls'..., and there it was in my WikiReader! Suddenly I was an expert (the designated expert) on the book. The big question was, `what was the point of the protagonist's scheme to buy already-dead serfs who counted as taxable property for him?'; the answer was `he was going to retire by mortgaging them'. My wife and I received a `this is what the mercaptan additive in Natural gas smells like' scratch-and-sniff note in the mail from the local gas-supply company, the other day, and I was able to instantly start a conversation with my wife, in our kitchen, about the history behind these odour-additives (which turns out to be quite an amazing story, actually). We're having amazing experiences like this semi-regularly, thanks to this device. People do say `$100 seems a little expensive', but then they concede that maybe it isn't so expensive when reminded that just the 8-GB micro-SD card (included with the WikiReader) would, by itself, retail for as much as $50; and I note that more simplistic devices than the WikiReader--many in the same best-seller list on Amazon, such as the Scrabble-dictionary--also sell for $50+.... After actually having the profoundly-wowing `instant expert' experience a few times, it becomes easy to accept the device as being worth $100, even though it's terribly difficult to `just explain it' to someone who already has a perspective like `well, I already have a $500 device with a $100-per-month subscription and a favourable (and mostly fixed) location that alows me to be connected to the Internet all the time, and anything that doesn't provide wireless real-time updates and news with updated charts, graphs, and other pictures... has all the appeal of the Pet Rock'. Now I'm just wondering... why I can't actually find much in the way of traditional(?) electronic travel-guides--there's just that `travelmaster' one, and it took me ages to find even that. Weird--I could've sworn that I'd actually seen them somewhere (else) before I went looking. I guess I should post this all on Amazon's WikiReader review-page.... [Reply] |
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