Drobo S: Add a port and double the price.
Drobo Elite: Add a port and double the price.

I guess they want to make a killing on the early adopters or existing customers.

And funny how their enterprise products have the same one year warranty as the 'consumer' stuff. And these prices, warranty should be for five years at least. Or do they not really stand behind their claims of reliability?

Which would you think is easier to follow or enforce:

If your product contains an ingredient on this list of allergens:

a) you must list the ingredient(s) in the allergy section of your label.

OR

b) you must list the ingredient(s) in the allergy section of your label, unless the ingredient(s) is included in the name or sub-name of the product, or is represented by a picture on the label, or can be clearly seen through the packaging, or can be used to classify the type of the product, or is the only or main item in the ingredients list, or if the ingredients list uses a 6 point font.

I know it has esata. As for usb cablecard tuners, we can go with ATI or a future 4 tuner option from Ceton. The only unknown is if this little box good enough to support Windows 7 Media Center with at least four HD shows recording / streaming.

The reason I don't want everything in one box is because I want to keep components that don't change much out of the main box, such as the tuners and storage. I have PCI-based tuners that are now mostly useless in new PCs. I have IDE harddrives that are mostly useless in new PCs. And if the little PC dies or underperforms, it doesn't take major work to swap in a replacement.

I hope this is competitively priced compared to the ion-based $200-$350 net-top boxes.

My wish is for something this small designed to run Windows 7 Media Center with usb-connected cablecard tuners and esata connected external storage. Or do people still favor packing everything for their HTPC into a single large box?

By investment, do you mean something you get now but you won't enjoy the benefits of until much later, if ever? If you are not a reader, this is probably not for you. You should probably invest in your other more frequently used reading device, such as buying a bigger nicer monitor. And gadgets are outdated soon after you get them so you must be able to enjoy them right away, or are you the type to store tons of unopened impulse buys in the garage for when you have time?

Oops, forgot about the announcement with AT&T from July. No mention of bluetooth so I wonder what they meant when they said at the October Semicon Europa conference that their reader is designed to be combined with a smartphone for wireless connectivity. Perhaps a locked-down business version? http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=220301369

Most likely no replaceable battery, no expandable storage, and reduced contrast due to resistive touch-screen. The company had previously mentioned wireless access via bluetooth tethering to the user's phone, which probably means no 3G connectivity.

I see no real benefit for the color LCD display. Do we really need to browse books in color or that fast? Multi-touch is interesting, but scrolling and zooming will still be limited to e-ink speeds. The only compelling reason I can think of is for the LCD strip to show banner ads for reduced pricing of the reader.

It is nice that this is not yet another re-packaging of the same old e-ink display. I would be interested if the resolution was higher for pdf and comic viewing.

I played the original Sierra published version on PC and you basically need to be a master of the number pad to control it. It has been a while since I've needed to pose my hand over the keyboard number pad with my fingers in the the 'claw' stance.

Thanks for the info concord. It's looking to be the e-reader to get and will be available this year, as long as most menu navigation doesn't require the stylus and the battery can last at least a week with wireless and stylus off.