Electronic Paper

Omega Prime writes: "The BBC has an article about the latest advances in E-Paper. That is, flexible display media that is both cheap and reuseable. The possibilities for this are endless, Can you say Holodeck wallpaper?" There's also an AP article. Do you ever get the feeling that electronic paper is going to be just around the corner for a long, long time?

Comments

Further Slashdot coverage

[headkase]

Slashdot has covered this kind of story before - here, here and here.

Reasons why paper replacements are still far away

[TeeWee]

Electronic books and paper have been "just around the corner" for ages. How many times have we heard about this new break through which will make paper useless?

First off, paper is easily portable and fairly robust. Moreover, most people prefer to read from paper rather than from screen. This is due to the fact that conventional screens are just tiring for the eyes.

Also, paper is easy to use, and you can just write on printed paper and make marks in all the colours you have available to you. Easy stuff!

Cost is also an issue, e-paper is still way too expensive. Normal paper is cheap and cheerful.

While the reusability of e-paper is great, it's unclear for publishers how to create a good business model from it. People will be much more prone to copy e-books than normal books (ever seen anybody read a book on photocopied sheets of paper?) Thus, a good business model needs to deal with people copying things.

And people just like to hold some physical publication in their hands. Books, magazines, newspapers, printed paper just feels more real.

And finally, some documents need to be physical to have legal status.

These are all reasons why, even when technology wise e-paper is mature, society will not be leaping to accept it.

Casinos

[MrResistor]

Casinos are the first places you're likely to see e-paper. When I worked at a printing company a few years ago I helped with some of the R&D for developing ways to print electrolumanescent inks with silkscreens. We already worked with conductive inks used in touchpads, and the money the slot-machine manufacturers were willing to pay someone who could mass-produce that sort of thing was ridiculous. I heard rumors of standing orders offering $200 per page (The average order was something like $2-10 per, depending on number of colors and material. Printing on metal was more expensive since it tore up the screens.)

Anyway, slot machines are how whoever pulls this off first is going to recoup their R&D investment. You'd be amazed how many of the strips that go around the wheels they seem to need!

Once the processes are developed and the initial ramp-up is done, the prices should fall pretty fast.