Why Aren't Smart Books Popular?

SmartBook G168A
Originally uploaded by thegadgetguy.

Smart Books and Smart Book readers have always seemed like a good idea. Why carry around heavy textbooks, hard backed novels and the like, when you can dump almost anything on to an SD or similar format card, read it on a screen, underline passages, make notes in the margin, bookmark pages and transfer your notes and thoughts to another format or device for research purposes and to insert into reports?

While its true that you would, for the most part, have no more need for a big library filled with dusty looking titles to impress people, think of how much more room you would have on your bookshelves to display your "Yu Gi Oh" cards. We seem to have no apparent problem in giving up our CD collection and putting our entire music collection on to MP3 or other format - why the reluctance when it comes to books?

Maybe what is needed is the iTunes and iPod equivalent for books - something that would make it so practical and easy for people to download books and read them on a reader that the excuses would be gone. Anyway, the next generation SmartBook appears ready for release (but why cripple it with USB 1.1?). Looks appealing, but I don't quite think that this is the "one". Click on the headline for link.