Stephen Fry on his new tech toy:

On a happier note, I have added to my collection of unnecessary but pleasing technological doo-dads. I have not spent any time in the bathroom with you yet, so I am very happy to report that Oral-B has come up with a mad new electric toothbrush. It is so over-engineered as almost to defy description. A base station, where sits and charges the toothbrush itself, transmits by radio to a receiving element. The receiver substation is a plastic cartouche complete with obligatory LCD screen called a SmartGuide (phrases compressed with UpperCaseLetters such as this are DeRigueur for today’s sad MarketingPerson), which gives a reading of how long you’ve brushed, and how long you’ve got to go in each of the quadrants of the mouth, according to “professional” brushing standards recommended by dentists. It also tells you the time and rewards you with a smiley face when you’re done. Sigh. I think I’m in love.

It is basically, of course, an electric toothbrush, a class of good that appeared to be in the doldrums a few years ago. They would sit mournfully gathering dust in locked cabinets in Boots, along with Philishaves and weird objects made by BaByliss - foot spas and ceramic hair rollers, that kind of thing. Recently, thanks to cheap, battery-operated models and the low cost of charging units and components, they have enjoyed something of a revival. With this model - the Oral-B®, Professional Care™ Triumph™ (with Wireless SmartGuide) Oral-B (”powered by Braun”) enters the luxury end of the market. I suppose, given the low cost of a basic model, the margins are so tight that it has to consider every possible way to “add value”. It is the same with shaver and razor manufacturers. The core technology has not changed for 50 years, so they have to find a way to dress up new products. Although all this wireless tosh is senseless and functionally meaningless, I love it. Brushing my teeth bores me to tears and anything - anything - that relieves the tedium of the procedure is good.

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eta: I find it impossible to read this without hearing it in Stephen Fry's voice....

I got my Kindle.

So far, it is pretty great, except that Sprint coverage in my house is basically nonexistant, so I haven't been able to play with the wireless features much. It is ridiculously easy to put books on there using USB, though it's not super-intuitive how to get the Amazon purchased files to your computer (by default, they get sent wirelessly, and the only way to download the actual files is through your Amazon Media Library, rather than just choosing "download" as an option at purchase). Once I figured that out, though, it's a simple copy-to-USB-drive to put them on the Kindle. Besides the books available from Amazon, manybooks.net has put their books in Kindle format, so there are lots of out-of-copyright books available for free. Neat!

Also tested the conversion feature on a long word document (a draft for a book a friend wrote) and all of AJ Hall's Lopiverse HP fics (which were compressed HTML files). Both conversions seemed to work perfectly, and it's free if you transfer by USB. The only annoying thing is that it puts my e-mail as the Author, instead of asking me the real author's name.

In terms of reading, I haven't had time to really sit and read it for long periods of time, so I can't comment on ergonomics yet. But the screen is beautiful. Really looks almost exactly like paper, with the ability to change font sizes and look up words on demand. It's pretty light - lighter than most hardcover books - but not as light as a paperback, so we'll see if that annoys me. Of course, the fact that it doesn't close if you put it down on a lap, etc, means I can read in ways outside of the norm, and I'm sure I'll be experimenting with that on my long car ride tomorrow.

ETA: I really can't get over this e-ink screen. Except for the fact that I SEE IT CHANGING, I would assume that every screen was a printed sticker on top of the screen. It's exactly like reading printed material. Just astonishing.

I saw a woman reading one in the Seattle airport this afternoon--she said she was loving it.

tommyrot, I just read that entire thing in Stephen Fry voice, then saw the end of your post. Hee!

If I had a bit more time, I'd write you a program to do that Wolfram. If you don't have one by Wednesday next week, I could probably write one in my dead time. Just a polling thread to check the directory, a UI to set up emails, email server, the directory to check etc.., a little save and load code, and a thread synchronization class.

Thanks for the offer, Gud! Somebody suggested I contact tech support to see what options they may have before doing a workaround so I'm going to follow up on that this week, but I'll keep you posted.

Given everything I've read about the Kindle, I think that I might want one. I have a visceral love for real books and will always buy them, but for traveling?? I would kill to not have to drag books and books in my carry-on.

Kindle rocks hard at reading and purchasing books. The web browser is less awesome being rather slow and buggy (posting now from it) but usable. if i didn't have a treo with unlimited data I might use it often. I will definitely be checking for most books in Kindle format now, though.

I have no real interest in it as a web browser anyway, so that's not a problem. I think they're totally oversold right now anyway, but maybe by next summer I can pick one up.

I'm sick of my Treo crashing all the time. What should I replace it with? (OTHER than an iPhone...something with a real keyboard that I can actually afford would be nice.)

I'm amazed Apple hasn't hopped on the eBook train with the iPhone yet. They've got all the technology already out there, they just need a bit of software and to integrate it into iTunes for purchasing.

By the way - a month of iPhone thoughts: battery life sucks, software bugs are just stupid (why oh why can't you web browse and listen to music without it crashing? Seriously?), "Notes" function is pointless 'cos it's not synchronised, camera isn't very good, lack of Flash support in browser is seriously annoying. I still love it, but it's gonna take them a while to fix the software issues.