[mikecane]

>>>I might be talking nonsense here, but I swear there is a niche market for some kind of affordable (<$100) tablet specifically designed for PDFs.

What would differentiate the hardware from current tablets to make that price possible?

And then what kind of PDF do you mean? Something squirted from a word processing/page-layout file that permits reflow or a collection of image scans (see Google Books) that are static? It's not that easy.

[jamestc]

Less memory. Less research. It only has one job to do, etc. No extra bullshit.

I know I'm being ridiculous. I'm just bummed that I can't read some of these really awesome books with the same leisure that I can a Kindle book or a physical book. First world problems, etc. I have to get over being phenomenologically appalled at the idea of reading a book in the same space I read message boards. There's a weird mental block there.

[mikecane]

Less memory? I don't know about that. There are some Google Book PDF scans of early 20th-century magazines that are close to 1GB in size. It's been my experience that even a good tablet doesn't keep more than 3-5 of these scanned PDF pages all rendered and ready to read if you want to switch back and forth between a bunch of pages.