Pandigital Novel - Color eReader.. FAIL

I first read about the Pandigital Novel a few weeks ago and was very excited about it as a potential "all in one" (minus the cell phone) device that I would be interested in. However, the product has so far been a big bust on multiple levels.

Pandigital inexplicably decided to sell the unit exclusively at Kohls for the first 30 days of the products release. Kohls?!? Isn't that a clothing store? Although it turns out that Kohls does offer electronics on their website, I am very much a touch and feel kind of guy who wants to experience the device before making a purchasing decision. I was originally told by Pandigital (via e-mail) that the release date for the device was Friday, June 4, 2010 so on Saturday the 5th I excitedly called the two Kohls that were within reasonable distance to my house to inquire about the availability of the device. The people with whom I spoke at both stores were utterly clueless -- they had no idea what I was talking about. In fact, one employee said to me "we don't really sell those kind of things." and so I thought, ok, perhaps that particular store doesn't have an electronics sections, so I asked the employee if they knew of another Kohls that did, in fact, sell electronics, to which, after a short pause, I recieved the reply "we don't really sell those kind of things." There is a Kohls about 20 miles from my house and so I convinced my wife to take a short drive with me to the store to check out if they had the device. Predictably, they didn't.

Earlier this week, as I continued to scour the web for information about the device I saw it appear and disappear from Kohls website. Originally it was listed at $259 even though all the press releases indicated the MSRP on the device was $199. Eventually it was listed on Kohls site for $179, however, with a message "This device is no longer available." JC Penny also had the device listed, at $249, but not available until 6/23/2010. Further daily research allowed me to learn that the device, having not even been made available, had been RECALLED due to a software glitch. I did find a firmware upgrade for the device available on Pandigital's website and apparently Pandigital has dispatched a crew of techs to their nearest Kohls to perform the software upgrade on the devices so they can be put back on the shelves. (Or perhaps, just put on the shelves to begin with.)

Anyway, all of this has strongly decreased my interest in this device as it appears to be of limited availability and it has issues from the get go. The only possible reason to purchase one right now would be to take advantage of a 30% discount offer that Kohls has along with the low price of $179 meaning I could get it for about $125 plus tax.