Multi-purpose devices?

[holyschist]

I'm starting to reconsider my fixation on eInk, and thinking I'm more likely to use an reader if it's multi-purpose.

So, let's say I'd like something that I can use for

1. Reading ebooks.
2. Plain-text writing (probably with touch-screen input).

That also has

3. Good battery life.

But neither internet nor color is crucial to me...

Does anyone have thoughts on what the best device would be? I'm not averse to rootkitting, but I am averse to spending more than $300 max, or buying an iPad or other full-fledged tablet. It sounds like a rootkitted eInk ereader probably still has too slow a refresh rate for writing...

Comments

[elf]

AFIAK, there is no ereader (as opposed to tablet) that has any decent note-taking/writing ability.

I consider this a major failing of the ereader market; I think the Jetbook could carve its way into a substantial niche by doing the ebook support it does now, and adding the equivalent of notepad.exe with the Palm OS Graffiti program. (Not gonna happen, I know. DAMN, I miss my Clie. But there are no PDA-sized things with a 20 hours of battery life; as soon as the batteries got powerful enough to do that, they loaded the hardware with other battery-draining options.)

That said... The Jetbooks have the best battery life of the non-e-ink readers; they're B&W. I'm considering a Jetbook or JB Mini when my 505 finally dies, because none of the current options seem to have real support for non-ebook files, like HTML, DOC or RTF. (I think maybe Pocketbook does, but I don't think it's sold directly in the US.)

Jetbook is about the only B&W non-e-ink, because the marketing types all want to push color. (And because there really are a substantial number of ebooks that need it--just not novels. Once you start branching into nonfic, or anything resembling textbooks with charts, color gets a lot more important.)

And, sigh, they all want you to Buy Stuff From Their Store, so they want wifi, and as long as they've got wifi, they might as well throw a browser on it as an enticement, right?

As you find options, check reviews and critiques *carefully*. Most of the current tech craze is about "what bells & whistles does it have" over battery life (why would anyone care how long the batteries last? You're going to plug it in when you get to work, and again when you get home, right?), and very few mention how well the note-taking works, if it even exists. You may wind up looking for a cheap multi-purpose tablet and getting advice on how to extend the battery life.

[holyschist]

Android ereaders like the Nooks can be rootkitted to function as Droid tablets, so I'm less worried about software than performance.

[holyschist]

Anyway, it does look like I could get reasonable tablet keyboards installed, and I don't need more text capability than Evernote and GDocs--it would just require a rootkit and a bit of hacking. OTOH, it would still be a lot cheaper to to do that to a Nook Color than buy a tablet....

(Wireless is a nice thing to have! Just not a strict requirement for me. Ditto color.)

[dreamatdrew]

FTR: for note-grade writing, I actually use my kindle stock with Notepad, and it is non-optimal, but not all that bad really. I would not recommend it for LONG writing, due to limitations of the app, but it works.

[rebecca2525]

I've been looking into reviews about the Sony T1, and as far as I understand, it runs on Android so you can install regular Android apps. The problem with the refresh rate on E-Ink devices is usually that they do two complete refreshs on a page turn to avoid bleeding, that's what's slowing a page turn down, but the T1 seems to be rather flexible and only does a proper refresh when it's needed. You can see it in videos where people are demonstrating the pinch-zoom, or scrolling in the T1's internet browser, which is really quick and only does the complete refresh once you're done scaling or zooming. And I think I've even seen someone configure refreshing behaviour? This is all really vague, but it *might* be possible to find a simple text processing App and a workable refreshing setting.

(I'm considering the T1 but haven't bought it yet. If you find out anything more specific, I'd love to hear it!)