Kno Movie from Kno, Inc. on Vimeo.
Big players have tried and failed to bring out a “textbook replacement” e-reader. Kno won’t be shipping their entry until Christmas at the earliest, but it’s a serious candidate that’s worth a second look.
Kno’s form factor is essentially two slightly-oversized iPads on a giant 180-degree hinge. It has two 14″ stylus-compatible touchscreens, which you can keep separate for a textbook or multi-screen layout, unify for a single widescreen display, or fold back for a single tablet.
(I’m guessing you could also lay one side flat and use it with a software keyboard like a notebook, but I haven’t seen that configuration advertised — maybe you can’t make a hinge fluid AND stiff enough to pull that off.)
Under the hood is a 16GB hard drive and an NVidia Tegra 2 processor. You could compare it to Microsoft’s scrapped Courier project or a larger take on the Toshiba Libretto. The Libretto, though, is a warning sign; Kno wants to keep their price under $1000 (preferably under $900) but Toshiba’s smaller entry is stuck starting at $1100.
That said, it just might work. Kno’s CEO Osman Rashid has raised a lot of venture capital money, brokered deals with most of the major textbook publishers, and already has one education-market success with textbook-rental service Chegg. He’s been making the rounds, giving interviews talking up the product. Your college student just might discover a Kno in his or her stocking, just in time for Spring semester.
Story via Fast Company and TechCrunch.
See Also:
- Dual-Screen Tablet Maker Hopes to Reinvent the Textbook
- Toshiba Dual Screen PC Folds Like a Book
- Startup Gives Digital Textbooks the Ol' College Try
- Amazon.com Kindle DX
- New, Black Kindle DX Now $380
- Colleges Dream of Paperless, iPad-centric Education
Full story at http://feeds.wired.com/~r/GearFactor/~3/ceUp66c5hWg/
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