OK, so the Google presentation didn’t exactly live up to all the expectations (or hopes) about $200 thin clients or whatever.
But I’ve just been reading about the Sony Reader, their new ebook machine, and there are couple of interesting aspects that are worth commenting on. The first is that the memory is pretty tiny. They’re talking about the machine being capable of holding 80 ebooks at an average 800k. That makes the flash memory on this device something like 64MB – pretty puny really, albeit that you’re unlikely to ever need 80 (unillustrated) books in one go. In Tesco the other week they had 256MB MP3 players for under a tenner (not in my one sadly), so flash memory has really come down.
The second curious thing is that it’s expandable via Memory stick or SD card. The inclusion of the latter is really unusual. There may be the odd Vaio with an SD card slot, but Sony conceding ground to SD cards is a little like the time they finally got around to launching a VHS VCR after firmly sticking by Betamax for all that time.
Overall, I really don’t see this being that big. The screen’s probably great, but it’s mono (less important for books admitedly). All the various file formats it plays need conversion and the price is high at $349. Indeed, wouldn’t it be easier to run the software on the much cheaper (and smaller) PSP?
Speaking of which, Sony are going to be making 4GB and 8GB Memory Sticks this year. They’ll cost a small mortgage I’ve no doubt, but that’s great news for carrying content around on your PSP.