$13 Txtr Beagle Ebook Reader To Sell For $69 79
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Unknown Lamer
from the could-have-been-cool dept.
from the could-have-been-cool dept.
Nate the greatest writes "Remember that really cheap 5" ereader that everyone was talking about back in October? It turns out that the price was too good to be true. Txtr, maker of the beagle ereader, has confirmed today that the beagle will be coming to the US market in the near future. But it's not going to cost $13. Instead this ereader will cost $69. It seems that txtr isn't having much luck selling the beagle to telecoms (where it was going to be marketed as a smartphone companion device), so they have instead decided to try to sell it in the retail trade, where it will have to directly compete against the Kindle. That is going to be a problem because the beagle is much less capable than the Kindle, even though it costs the same. The beagle won't work without a companion Android app which is needed to transfer files to the beagle over Bluetooth. That app requires Android 4.0 or above."
Re:$69? (Score:2, Insightful)
Sometimes I wonder what kind of asshole would make a device so useless and restricted and then charge so much for it. But then I think, why not raise the price by two hundred dollars, make it white and then it will sell like plastic hotcakes.
P.T. Barnum was right; there's one born every second.
Re:$69? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sometimes I wonder what kind of asshole would make a device so useless and restricted and then charge so much for it. But then I think, why not raise the price by two hundred dollars, make it white and then it will sell like plastic hotcakes.
How is the iPad "restricted" compared to a Kindle? (since that's obviously what you're alluding to)
Amazon has a Kindle app, Amazon Instant Video app, and a Cloud Player app, meaning the iPad can access all the same content as the Kindle Fire, plus all content from Apple's iBookstore and iTunes media store. You can read PDFs on an iPad as well without having to send your documents to Amazon electronically first, as well as read other non-DRMed formats.
And if you're going to talk about how Kindle's OS is based on oh-so-open Android, or how easy it is to root a Kindle to install some version of Linux, save it. It's great you're interested in that stuff but honestly 90% of the market has zero interest in doing stuff with their device the restrictions on their tablet's ecosystem have anything to do with. The tablet is by design a consumer device. As long as folks can surf the web, watch their videos, play their music and play Angry Birds there's nothing defective about the system from their point of view.