• Personal computer / media viewer / player.
• Paper-back book sized.
• 1000dpi screen (similar quality to printer paper)
• Long battery life.
• Consumer product priced (ie. comparable to a discman)
• Note-taking, pen entry

That would be great but add one little element :

• Cheap + permanent wireless internet access

Now my question is, should we get this magical munging of non-existant technology, would it kill the newspaper and/or magazine?

Newspapers survive (in theory) from advertising and the cost of purchase. I've heard some argue that the purchase price of your average newspaper only covers the printing costs, the real profits are from advertising. But I have no numbers to proove that. Maybe I made it up.

Already newspapers on the net are trying desperately to become the same as their paper cousins. They want you to pay. They cover their articles with ads. You can't view archives easily, if at all.

If we all recieved our perfect media reading device tomorrow, so no-one purchased paper media products anymore, would Newspapers on the net simply become electronic versions of their paper cousins, or would they die? Would the people turn to free alternatives, or would they be happy to still pay $1 to read the same content?

What would happen?