The much expected Kno, an oversized reader/tablet targeted at students as well as teachers, is receiving preorders to boat only prior to Christmas. Prices run in between $599 for the 16 GB single-screen inscription as well as $999 for a 32 GB dual-screen folio. That’s with an tutorial bonus.

Sound costly? The 14″ Kno has a same attribute to a 6″ Kindle which college textbooks have to trade paperbacks. Textbooks have been big, heavy, they price the lot of money, they’ve got expensive illustrations, as well as a publishers have been all dissimilar.

Kno doesn’t review itself to alternative e-readers, or even alternative tablets. It compares itself to brand-new textbooks. Considering a thousands of dollars students outlay upon books, a association says — as well as a tens of thousands they as well as their parents spend upon college — $599 for the entry-level section is the discount.

“Kno’s unusual benefits paint only the little fragment of a overall cost of college, but the stroke upon a student’s career – as well as the appetite it adds to the knowledge, a disturb of learning, as well as the ultimate class – is thespian,” said Osman Rashid, Co-Founder as well as CEO of Kno, Inc. “Even improved, when you do the math, it essentially pays for itself as well as still saves $1,300 in digital textbook costs.”

That figure is dubious, given it assumes the tyro purchases all their books brand-new as well as doesn’t sell them used. What’s some-more, Rashid, owner of textbook-borrowing site Chegg, knows it.

The Kno is an intensely able device as well as deserves to be sold upon the own merits. It’s got either one or dual 1440×900 LCD touchscreens that await both fingertip navigation and stylus notetaking. It supports possibly the practical or the bluetooth set of keys, as well as it’s corroborated up by an considerable library of electronic textbooks.

It doesn’t have third-party apps, which will make relatives happy: it’s built to read, write, and crop a web. But it can play the vital audio as well as video formats, together with Flash. It’s got an NVidia Tegra 2 graphics chip with an A9 dual-core 1GHz processor as well as 512 MB IMPEL. Despite this hulk display of video energy, it still claims up to 6 hours of battery life upon “normal campus use” (whatever which means).

The Kno is complicated (2.6 lbs for a single-screen, 5.6 lbs for a dual-screen) by e-reader as well as tablet standards. But again, that’s not indispensably a applicable comparison. Compared to the bag full of first-year biology as well as calculus textbooks, 5.6 lbs is light as the plume.

A lot of companies have attempted to make e-reading in this space work. It’s some-more complicated than direct-to-consumer traffic announcement, since there have been just so most stakeholders: students, parents, teachers, authors, publishers, retailers. The timing is tough because a economy’s forcing most people to diminish their educational spending, not ramp it up on brand-new gadgets — which is a single reason a company is pushing a money-saving angle. But Kno’s hardware looks good, the pricing is high though reasonably rival, a company’s plan is sound, and the people understand those complexities as well as anybody.

I consider you can design a gradual rollout of the product this semester for holiday-season early adopters, as well as if it’s successful, the large pull for back-to-school next tumble. we’ll only have to see either it clicks.

Kno Announces Pricing as well as Pre-Order Availability for Tablet Textbook; Pays for Itself in 3 Semesters [Press Release]