RicDay on Publishing

The much-discussed Blio eReader launched yesterday and promptly drew a flood of #FAIL messages on Twitter. Now that I have had a chance to look at it, add me to the list.

The first problem is, it is a Windows-only application. It will work with XP, Vista, and 7 on desktops and laptops. I abandoned my last Windows laptop, a top-of-the-lne Acer running Vista, last year because it weighed a ton, Vista truly sucked, and it was slower than cold molasses. My laptop of choice is now a MacBook Pro which runs an order of magnitude faster than the Acer, has a nicer screen, and weighs (with mains connector for road trips) about one-half as much as the Acer.

Nothing on the Blio homepage suggests a Mac version is in the works; nor, apparently, is a Linux version (which is what will go on the Acer when time permits). There is a line which says “iPhone, iPad, Android versions coming soon!” Which does not inspire confidence — Blio has been “Coming soon!” for a long time.

To run Blio on Windows, you also need:

• Microsoft Playready (DRM nastiness installed with the Blio package; partially but not fully compatible with Microsoft's Windows Media Digital Rights Management 10 (WMDRM 10), which could lead to some interesting background events if you have also installed software using the WMDRM application and they get unfriendly, as tends to happen in the Windows world)
• Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 with SP 1 installed
• 250 MB of free hard disk space (must be Blio only, the other stuff in this list is way bigger)
• A Direct X 9+ compatible graphics card with a minimum 128 MB of graphics memory
• Audio output if you want books read to you
• Adobe Flash Player Add-On for Firefox to use embedded browser (I think the Blio downloads page displayed this for me because it confused the Safari browser I'm using right now with Firefox … or maybe not: it shows the same message in Chrome).

That is one seriously porky setup! On my 64-bit Win7 rig, the .NET framework alone eats over 2GB of disk real estate. Laptop owners with smaller HDDs won't love this.

Lots has already been written about things like Blio's use of an OPDS catalog without bothering to ask permission. Read more on The Digital Reader.

Blio was touted as the future of ereading. IT. IS. NOT. In reality, this is not even the “today” of ereading.