The latest Good E-Reader news has coverage from the D8 Digital Conference showing off a new device aimed at students.
Introducing the Kno dual 14.1 inch screen tablet! Yes you heard us right two dual 14.1 inch full color screens! The Kno is a Tegra 2-powered dual 14-inch tablet running on a custom Linux build. Both screens are a tremendous 1440×900 resolution and accept multi-touch and stylus inputs. Each screen will be just over half an inch thick, and it will weigh about 5.5 pounds. It will also feature a 16 GB Flash storage. Finally it has a built in accelerometer to flip between normal mode and landscape mode at the drop of a hat.
Kno CEO Osman Rashid said the Kno’s Web-based operating system was designed from the ground up to use touch as the primary input. “We are not going to try to retrofit something, we are going to build it from scratch.” It also supports full Web-browsing, including Flash 10.1.
The main idea behind the Kno, similar to the Entourage Edge is to be aimed specifically at students and to substitute your textbooks. The company already has publishing agreements with Pearson, McGraw Hill Education, Cengage Learning and Wiley who have agreed to put their textbooks onto the device. The textbooks will be interactive with video and hyperlinks.
Students can use both screens for the texts or just one screen with the other screen a web browser, notes or any other app. Of course this also means students can just have notes on screen and the web on another. Kno says that in the long term, this device will save you money because of the discounted ebooks you will be able to buy with their partnerships.
The one drawback on this device is that it is slated to cost around $999.99 which is really unfeasible for the market, considering the bulk and size of this device. They are billing it as a replacement for your textbooks, but it seems to be a replacement for your desk! Carrying this around would be less arduous then an armload of textbooks.
This device should come out by this fall, when Kno will ship a limited number of devices to colleges and Universties for a trial run. Although the device is buggy right now with the UI, the company said all of the kinks will be worked out. We would recommend the Entourage Edge if you are a student looking for this kind of device, as the Edge is only $495.00.
You can read their official press release here
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Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
