Hasta La Gadget!

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