The elephant in the e-book living room is the . I believe the device will ship by summer. It will probably succeed wildly, and hammer both the e-book and .

Copycat devices will also flood the market. What that means is that any old-and-busted e-book reader you give this year will seem horribly old and hideously busted when the new smartbook-style tablets (tablets that run cell phone, rather than desktop, operating systems) hit. Everyone will have one, and they'll all be brilliant e-book readers. Buying an e-b0ok reader now is like buying a non-cell phone PDA a few years ago. We're on the brink of leaving those gadgets behind, and integrating their functionality into a multi-purpose device.

The Great Recession has sparked the most discounted, low-price holiday season in history. Other gadgets in nearly every other category are slashed to near or below cost. eBook readers aren't really getting swept up in the cost cutting. While some stores are actually paying you to take free BlackBerry phones, for example, eBook readers still cost hundreds of dollars. And there aren't a lot of deals to be found on them, at least anything that compares to the prices of other gadgets.