Slashdot Mirror
Sony To Launch E Ink-based eBook In April
Holly Gates writes "Sony will launch an ebook based on E Ink technology in Japan in late April. The screen is about as big as half a paperback book and has a spatial resolution of ~170ppi. The device includes various edictionaries and audio playback functionality. I am a hardware engineer for E Ink by the way, but I figured slashdotters might be interested." An anonymous reader notes that it is supposed to "display over 10,000 pages on a single set of batteries."
That's a marketing department gone bad.
"display over 10,000 pages on a single set of batteries."
;)
:(
I wonder how fast you have to read then
OK, I don't know what the hell E-Ink is
"display over 10,000 pages on a single set of batteries."
Great! Now I don't have to recharge my batteries in the middle of War and Peace!
Setec Astronomy
It seems that no matter what I try, I have a time time absorbing and retaining information from e-books. Something about reading off a screen as opposed to paper just seems to shut off a part of my brain or something.
- In Capitalist America, law violates YOU!
Good viewing in direct sunlight (or so they claim) might make this the first ebook platform worthwhile. The only problem is, if it costs more than $200 it will probably be a tough sell. I can get a lot of books (especially used) for that, and not have to change to batteries. But for those who like to take their entire collection of books with them (sort of a book iPOD) this might a neat device. The biggest question in my mind, is just how much support are publishers going to give this thing? Judging from ebook platforms of the recent past, probably not much.
"The Electronic Paper Display is reflective and can be easily read in bright sunlight or dimly lit environments while being able to be seen at virtually any angle - just like paper."
by far, thats my biggest complaint with handhelds (palms, etc). The screens are so hard to read in the daylight. Infact, the black and white palms seem easier to read in the day light than the color screens.
Also, phillips rollable display Amazing!
IIRC E-Ink only uses energy when changing the page.
-Derick
Can it display PDF's? Lack of PDF support is the only thing that stopped me from buying one of the current Ebook readers.
Tokyo, Japan , Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Cambridge, MA, USA, March 24, 2004 - Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHI), Sony Corporation(NYSE: SNE) and E Ink Corporation announced today the world's first consumer application of an electronic paper display module in Sony's new e-Book reader, LIBRIe, scheduled to go on sale in Japan in late April. This "first ever" Philips' display utilizes E Ink's revolutionary electronic ink technology which offers a truly paper-like reading experience with contrast that is the same as newsprint.
The Electronic Paper Display is reflective and can be easily read in bright sunlight or dimly lit environments while being able to be seen at virtually any angle - just like paper. Its black and white ink-on-paper look, combined with a resolution in excess of most portable devices at approximately 170 pixels per inch (PPI), gives an appearance similar to that of the most widely read material on the planet - newspaper. Because the display uses power only when an image is changed, a user can read more than 10,000 pages before the four AAA Alkaline batteries need to be replaced. The unique technology also results in a compact and lightweight form factor allowing it to be ideal for highly portable applications.
Sony's e-Book reader LIBRIe, the first device to utilize Philips' display solution for enhanced reading, is similar in size and design to a paperback book. LIBRIe allows users to download published content, such as books or comic strips from the Internet, and enjoy it anywhere at any time. LIBRIe can store up to 500 downloaded books.
"In today's mobile world, we know that the quality of the experience and ease-of-use are important in driving consumer adoption of mobile devices. Up until now, consumers have been less willing to adopt e-reading applications because of poor display quality on cumbersome devices," said Mr. Yoshitaka Ukita, General Manager, e-Book Business Dept, Network Application & Content Service Sector, Sony Corporation. "This display solution provides a level of text clarity comparable to paper. Combined with our thin, lightweight device design, this novel e-Book reader offers users an enjoyable experience and the freedom to access material at their convenience."
"While the way people experience entertainment has changed dramatically with the rapid growth of portable entertainment devices like music and movie players, the way people read books, magazines and newspapers has not," said Jim Veninger, general manager, Emerging Display Technology, Philips Electronics. "The precision of this new high-resolution electronic ink display technology will revolutionize the way consumers read and access textual information."
The commercialization of this revolutionary display technology is a result of a strategic collaboration started in 2001 among E Ink Corporation, Toppan Printing and Philips together with Sony. Over the past 3 years, the four companies have made significant developments in manufacturing the world's first high-resolution electronic ink-based display module designed specifically for reading-intensive applications.
E Ink Corporation supplies electronic ink to their manufacturing partner Toppan Printing, who in turn processes the ink into a thin film called frontplane laminate. Philips integrates E Ink's frontplane laminate with an active matrix backplane and adds the driving electronics component. Philips works with Sony to co-develop and customize display solutions for innovative mobile devices.
"E Ink is thrilled that our first commercial launch is in product by Sony", said Russell Wilcox, president of E Ink Corporation. "Since the inception of our Company our goal has been to change the way people receive and view information. The strength of our partnerships with Philips and Toppan Printing has helped to make this dream a reality."
The longstanding partnership has resulted in more than 100 patents between all of the companies in a wide range of innovations including chemistry, electronics and
Since the last deploymenty of e-ink (the billboards), I eagerly awaited smaller implementations. It seemed like the billboards were just a proof of concept, since each pixel was quite large-- not suitable for computer diplays. However this looks like it will be really big (backwards pun not intended).
I hope I'm not being hasty in saying so long to luminescent displays. It certainly will be strange reading from a moving, reflective display, but I think it'll be much easier on the eyes, and well excepted. Kudos to Sony, and I hope other OEMs adopt quickly.
The near-future technology - researchers expect to have the product available as soon as 2003 - will use e-paper (electronic paper) as the major component
Wow, I can't wait for 2003 to get here so I can try this out...
oh wait...
Never never never smoke crack before geometry class!
I am a hardware engineer for E Ink by the way
And the sysadmin just blocked all P2P ports, so I'll get him back this way.
"See how you like a good ole slashdotting, bastard!!"
I've been waiting for a device that I could use just to read information off of. My big complaint is that it will most likely be sold for $200-$400 instead of $50-$150. For $200-$400, I'd rather get a PDA. But if they could get these things under $150, then they'd sell like crazy. Actually, this tech could help PDA's increase battery life.
I wouldn't want to read a book on a PDA... it'd be a pain in the ass to read more than a few snippets of text from such a small screen.
-Derick
I would be the first to say that I would rather hold a book than one of these.. but with the ability to search entire books you've read, I don't care how weird, or uncomfortable it may be, I would buy one of these to just load up old books I have already read and have them available for search. Amazon.com's search inside a book implimentation is rather weak, and doesn't cover all their books, maybe in the future when you buy any book it can come with a password to download its contents to your E-Ink reader. I know some things like this are available now, but not for all books, certainly not Foucault.
The article is more about the display hardware - which could be neat. Its success depends on the operating system, and how books are sold and stored.
All the DRM-enabled e-book devices (Rocket) and formats (Palm reader) introduced so far have failed. No one wants to buy an e-book that is tied to a specific bit of hardware, or one who's access disappears if you lose your Passport account (MS Reader). Some devices won't even *permit* unencrypted data.
I hope that the designers realise that. Actually, the designers probably do, but the marketing guys or the managers will insist on it.
"...this novel e-Book reader offers users an enjoyable experience and the freedom to access material at their convenience."
My convienence does not include intrusive DRM, thank you.
Not that I will get my hopes up...
Man, now you've got tons of people who can't pronounce CLI, you want to have them mangling the pronunciation of the LIBRI too?
As a side note - why in the world are e-books so damn expensive? I'm sorry, but if I can get a paperback for 10 bucks, I'm not going to shell out $25 for an e-book. Kazaa, here I come!
Either the publishers won't give it much support, or it'll be so burdened by DRI software that consumers simply won't care about it. If they have to pay each time they read a book...
...don't you spend a good portion of your day looking at your 72DPI monitor? This would be about 2 1/2 times sharper than the text you are reading now. I think your eyes will do just fine.
^nA! Creatures in my Head
The /. effect was making it hard for me to see the big picture, so get it here.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Let's do the maths.
:)
:)
Assuming what you call "trillions" means 1 trillion.
That's 1 000 000 000 000 pages.
One microsecond/page means 1 000 000 000 000 / 1 000 000 total seconds for the whole thing.
That's 1 000 000 seconds or 277.8 hours or 11 days and a half.
If your 486 laptop can stay on batteries for 11 days and half then I would like to know what kind of battery you use
Ok, that was a nerdie post, you can mod me down now
Iraq: war to save the U
Enk . . . you are a marketing genius.
Here ya go...
PRESS RELEASE
FIRST-GENERATION ELECTRONIC PAPER DISPLAY FROM PHILIPS, SONY AND E INK TO BE USED IN NEW ELECTRONIC READING DEVICE
[Picture]
Sony LIBRIe e-Book Reader utilizing Philips Electronic Paper Display featuring E Ink's electronic ink technology
Tokyo, Japan , Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Cambridge, MA, USA, March 24, 2004 - Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHI), Sony Corporation(NYSE: SNE) and E Ink Corporation announced today the world's first consumer application of an electronic paper display module in Sony's new e-Book reader, LIBRIe, scheduled to go on sale in Japan in late April. This "first ever" Philips' display utilizes E Ink's revolutionary electronic ink technology which offers a truly paper-like reading experience with contrast that is the same as newsprint.
The Electronic Paper Display is reflective and can be easily read in bright sunlight or dimly lit environments while being able to be seen at virtually any angle - just like paper. Its black and white ink-on-paper look, combined with a resolution in excess of most portable devices at approximately 170 pixels per inch (PPI), gives an appearance similar to that of the most widely read material on the planet - newspaper. Because the display uses power only when an image is changed, a user can read more than 10,000 pages before the four AAA Alkaline batteries need to be replaced. The unique technology also results in a compact and lightweight form factor allowing it to be ideal for highly portable applications.
Sony's e-Book reader LIBRIe, the first device to utilize Philips' display solution for enhanced reading, is similar in size and design to a paperback book. LIBRIe allows users to download published content, such as books or comic strips from the Internet, and enjoy it anywhere at any time. LIBRIe can store up to 500 downloaded books.
"In today's mobile world, we know that the quality of the experience and ease-of-use are important in driving consumer adoption of mobile devices. Up until now, consumers have been less willing to adopt e-reading applications because of poor display quality on cumbersome devices," said Mr. Yoshitaka Ukita, General Manager, e-Book Business Dept, Network Application & Content Service Sector, Sony Corporation. "This display solution provides a level of text clarity comparable to paper. Combined with our thin, lightweight device design, this novel e-Book reader offers users an enjoyable experience and the freedom to access material at their convenience."
"While the way people experience entertainment has changed dramatically with the rapid growth of portable entertainment devices like music and movie players, the way people read books, magazines and newspapers has not," said Jim Veninger, general manager, Emerging Display Technology, Philips Electronics. "The precision of this new high-resolution electronic ink display technology will revolutionize the way consumers read and access textual information."
The commercialization of this revolutionary display technology is a result of a strategic collaboration started in 2001 among E Ink Corporation, Toppan Printing and Philips together with Sony. Over the past 3 years, the four companies have made significant developments in manufacturing the world's first high-resolution electronic ink-based display module designed specifically for reading-intensive applications.
E Ink Corporation supplies electronic ink to their manufacturing partner Toppan Printing, who in turn processes the ink into a thin film called frontplane laminate. Philips integrates E Ink's frontplane laminate with an active matrix backplane and adds the driving electronics component. Philips works with Sony to co-develop and customize display solutions for innovative mobile devices.
"E Ink is thrilled that our first commercial launch is in product by Sony", said Russell Wilcox, president of E Ink Corporation. "Since the inception of our Company our goal has been to change the way people rec
it's gotta be reasonably inexpensive...
it's gotta NOT have a closed proprietory file format
it should be able to (or be upgradable to) display the standard formats out there - basic text files, html based files with gif/jpg/png, acrobat pdf files that support search...
have or allow viewers for regular MS file formats (ppt, word, excel, visio, etc)
E-ink should be nice and easy to read and nothing like looking at a crt or lcd screen. Would be nice to have higher dpi however it is being called "first generation"... if the company does this right and it at least gets a good following we should see some improvements in features and resolution.
I will not ever use this technology.
It's a BAD idea. My books are my books and the information that's printed in them will always be there no matter what, as long as I take proper care of them.
No matter what happens in the world, say some political wind blows and they decide that certain things are politicaly incorrect, with a few clicks of a mouse e-books planet wide will be "revised" to reflect the new "acceptable and correct" line of thought.
History will be rewritten to suit those that have the power and need to rewrite history.
I have many sets of encylopedias from the 20's through the 80's and I can see with my own eyes how history is being rewritten. LOTS of "facts" are revised on a regular basis. If you think it's not, you're living in a dream world...
A book that needs batteries.
Where's my broker?
But for those who like to take their entire collection of books with them (sort of a book iPOD) this might a neat device. Are you implying that I could somehow easily "rip" my books to a format this could read? If not I'd have to re-purchase all of my books in digital format. No thanks. Dead trees are cheaper and work just fine.
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
The trick would be, to have an open text format so that ANYONE can create an ebook that can be read on it. That way you can say, import all of the texts from Project Gutenberg. You'll never run out of reading material.
This is not a sig.
None of the press releases are saying it, but:
All three of the Impress Watch articles say it will cost around 40,000 yen - approximately $400 USD. And this is just for the reader, subscribing to the e-book service costs $5-10/month. They do, however, have the option of just purchasing single books for 350 yen, about $3.25.
PC Watch article
K-Tai Watch article
Internet Watch article
There are also MANY more pictures of the device available at the above URLs. There's even some showing a manga on the screen of the thing, for those of you interested in that sort of thing.
I do have a few pictures posted in my article as well, but it's really nothing you couldn't have found yourself.
My Franklin "ebookman" has two great features that make it better than regular books:
- I can hold it in one hand
- I can read it in a dark room
which means that when the little one refused to sleep at two in the morning, I can carry her around my (dark) house and read a book. Can't do THAT with any kind of regular book -- they don't have lights, and they can't be read in one hand.
OTOH
Want a sig like mine? Join ACM's SigSig today!
it would be great if they can bundle good collection of books free with this device, specially the free ones like from project gutenberg. true, people can download their own books too, but it won't cost them a dime if they ship pre-installed or privide removable media with copied books. that would allow them to test the device in the store or during the trial without wasting too much time and money (buying e-books).
my biggest problem with e-book was that there was no way to try the device without getting locked into it or spend too much time installing software on PC etc before I can find out how comfortable it was.
I think the iPod is the right analogy. I think the combination of usability and capacity makes it a breakthrough- too many people are averse to reading from luminous, pixelated displays. But carrying around a *readable* library in your pocket is invaluable- think of grabbing your corner table at the local coffee joint, hacking away on your laptop and having a separate, readable screen that can show you any O'Reilly book ever. It would be especially great for students- not to mention the possibilities of making course texts available at a reduced price, how many times have you had to load a pile of cumbersome books into your knapsack for a study session across campus at the library?
I have a lot of interesting books sitting on my shelf at home- it'd be great to have the ability to pile even just 2 or 3 of them into my pocket and take them anywhere.
Now how much does it cost and can I roll it up to discipline my dog!
The way these thing work is pretty cool. You basically have to thin sheets like a sandwitch, and in the middle are tiny little balls that make up the pixels. Each ball contains smaller magnetic material that can cause the ball to display either black or white (depending on which orientation the magnetif field is). Multiply that single ball times a several thousand and you have a very simple low power display device. Most of the other solutions for eInk are the same, and i believe this version was made by MIT.
- tristan
Still takes a lot of Oil, Water, and Electricity to recycle that paper.
Sigs? We don't need no stinking sigs!
That is, the enormous weight of all their books is too much for their tiny frames. With more and more other crap being shoved in there, kids can barely take it. There was once a time that kids could leave their textbooks either at home or school. The kid could take one book home for the homework that night.
Now, every class assigns twenty minutes of homework every day, even for elementary school kids, and most of the teaching is done directly out of textbooks. That means having all the books in both places. Insanity.
This sort of thing could change all that. Instead of four thick textbooks, the kid would have a single nice little device... textbook manufacturers won't want to make their books available electronically, but at least the assignments can be sent home this way. All those photocopied sheets and such.
Many copyright barriers, but luckily, one of the few things that can break through even the most entrenched laws is a serious threat to the health of children.
DRI? DRI's a good thing... now we can have 3D games on our ebooks!! Yay!
My other car is first.
Burn them to CD-ROM if you want.
And if you think paper doesn't get revised, go to a bookstore and buy a new edition of a book you read long ago. You'd be surprised how often things get revised. It's not just that the cover art gets revised to show the actors from the current movie version instead of the original cover art, or the blurbs on the back get revised for more current advertising value, or the books get subtitled (e.g. "Farenheit 451 - The Temperature at which Books Burn".) They don't get revised as fast as Whitehouse.gov speech transcripts, but they do get revised.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Still takes a lot of Oil, Water, and Electricity to recycle that paper.
As it does to run a huge computer sever, and hundreds of clients that access that server. I don't know which way would be more environmentally friendly. It would interesting to see a study on that.
Not enough for The Wheel of Time fans...
P.S. I heard that the 2nd-last book is out in 2005. Yay!
But for those who like to take their entire collection of books with them (sort of a book iPOD) this might a neat device.
That is a big selling point for me. Not so much the ability to take my entire book collection wherever I go, but just being able to keep my enitre book collection in a small place. About 2 weeks ago I bought 2 big plastic tubs and filled them up with books so I could store them in my attic because they were taking up too much space.
The biggest question in my mind, is just how much support are publishers going to give this thing? Judging from ebook platforms of the recent past, probably not much.
Right... I was wondering the same thing. I was real interested in eBooks several years ago when I first started reading and hearing about them. But unless you wanted to read some pretty obscure stuff, it wasn't useful.
The only problem is, if it costs more than $200 it will probably be a tough sell.
Are you kidding? If it is as easy to read as newspaper, than imagine the change for students, especially college age. Instead of constantly carrying heavy textbooks everywhere, you just have one appliance that holds all your information.
Imagine the cost savings in buying textbooks if there is no more physical costs involved. If there is something like a 60% discount for e-books, you could pay for the thing in one semester. Of course that would require the books be available on whatever format that is required, but this has killer app written all over it.
Also, I dream of having all of my reference books, my whole O'Reilly shelf, in one easy-to-read, portable, cheap-when-compared-to-a-laptop device. If they could integrate some sort of note takening interface on this, even at 1/2 the battery life, I would definately buy one for $200.
Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
Why would they design it for alkaline batteries, instead of recharging it like a cell phone?
The biggest question in my mind, is just how much support are publishers going to give this thing? Judging from ebook platforms of the recent past, probably not much.
.txt books floating around the p2p scene. Even if it is difficult to "rip" a book, the collective ation of the internet says that only one person has to do the work for the efforts to be availible to all. If the book-reader is so much better than the dead-tree paradigm, then the readers will make it standard. It's just like mp3's -- add value over a CD (no more heavy cd case, hours of music w/o moving a muscle) and the technology took off. With the ebook, the right device could lead to mass downloading of searchable, lightweight books. No more having to lug two novels through the airport because you're almost done with one. The publishers can either jump on board or run around screaming and suing (the RIAA strategem).
There are lots of
I think the textbook manufacturers have the most to fear. College kids are very sensitive to their book bills. Saving $100 on a book for a non-major class seems too good to pass up. Combine this with easy internet access and a nice device to let you take your electronic book to class, the cafe, or to a sudy group, and you have just undercut prentice hall, wiley, and thre rest of the big players.
Use the Firehose to mod down Second Life stories!
At 30 Frames/sec, a battery life of 10,000 pages is less than 6 minutes.
Its a "low power" technology only when slowly flipping through static pages. But for more active screen work, scrolling, its not going to have very good battery life -- even at 2 frames per second, its only going to get a hour and a half. Even animating the pointer will drain energy if done at too high a frame rate.
I expect that for PDA applications, this display wil be better than the current crappy generation battery-sucking machines, but not as good as the old Palms and Psions.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
"Won't SOMEONE think of the children!!??"
I don't mind the device having DRM. Like you, I too have a problem if that's all it allows. IMO if it allows anyone to create their own "books" then it should do well. Being able to send a book directly to another one would be very useful and cool.
They need to take a lesson from the iPod: DRM and non DRM audio files allowed. Although I suspect Sony has already figured the profit on the exclusive sale of books for this device.
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
Well, at least there's the Library of Congress, who's whole point is to archive all books published in the US to keep for all time. Hopefully it won't meet the same fate as the Library of Alexanderia. So long as the library isn't destroyed, there's really no way that all of those millions of books could possibly be replaced with revized editions or mysteriously dissapear.
ZMcNulty or Holly Gates, or anyone who's actually gotten to play with one of these things for a minute:
I'm curious (and I'm sure a lot of people on slashdot are): how long does it take the book to refresh the screen when you turn the page?
This seems important for two reasons: if it's really slow, like to the point of being a visible lag time, it would be sort of annoying to read a book on it. I used to read ebooks on my PDA, and there were lots of annoying things about that (tft screens suck in bright light, the batteries die really quickly, the screen size is so small you have to flip the page every paragraph, etc). But the biggest annoyance was that it would sometimes take a whole second or two for the PDA to flip the page.
The other reason is that if the refresh rate of the EInk is fast enough, you could presumably run animations on them. Which would be a pretty cool application. Although 10k screens at 25fps yields only about 6.6 minutes of animation, so they'd have to work on the battery life.
Also, does anyone know what kind of processor and OS this thing is based on? Sony uses PalmOS for their PDAs; although PalmOS would be overkill for a simple device like this, I wonder if they bothered to build a whole new one.
\
Imagine the cost savings in buying textbooks if there is no more physical costs involved. If there is something like a 60% discount for e-books, you could pay for the thing in one semester. Of course that would require the books be available on whatever format that is required, but this has killer app written all over it.
:(
I am perhaps a Troll or someone of little faith, but i think they will sell them the same price as the dead tree ones and take the magin profit for them. As an excuse, you know, everybody will copy them like MP3 !!! bouhou
2. Place face down in scanner.
3. Scan
4. OCR
5. Repeat as needed.
With that said I hope they don't expend a lot of effort on DRM. BTW, I think I just violated the DMCA.
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
hear my tale of woe.
I bought a Nuvomedia Rocket eBook in the year 2000. This is essentially the same device (and is content-compatible with) the Gemstar REB1100. I have bought approximately $400 worth of content for it.
All of its technical and usability characteristics are quite good. I can read for pleasure on it for extended periods of time and get lost in an immersive reading experience.
Gemstar has folded their eBook operation and pulled the plug on their servers. The DRM-protected content is keyed to a hardware serial number. When the device finally fails (and its battery life is now down to about half what it was originally), I believe that to all intents and purposes I will lose all access to that paid content.
Meanwhile, I have 25-year-old paperbacks that continue to be perfectly accessible.
What is needed to make eBooks popular is not any technology breakthroughs, but something that will hit greedy publishers over the head with a clue-by-four. When strangers see me reading on this thing it is often a conversation-starter. The conversation usually ends when they ask me what eBooks cost. I say "About the same as a hardbound for books that are only out in hardbound, and about the same as a paperback for books that in paper," they stare at me in disbelieve and the conservation ends right there.
And that doesn't even speak to the issue that I can't lend these books to my wife or my son, and couldn't even if they owned compatible eBook readers.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
First off, this is obviously made for Japanese readers expect the "screen" to be on the right hand side for a US release if it happens.
That said, the main fault I see with this (aside from aforementioned political ramifications of the maleability of electronic content) is that I'm used to reading books in a "butterfly" style, that is across two pages of an open book.
If someone were to make one of these with two reading surfaces and a simple "next page" button on the lower right corner (and a previous page on the lower left) and bind it like a book, I would be all over it.
Please send all UCE to scally@devolution.com so I can f
If I buy this ($400), and decent OCR software (too danged much!), I can scan all my books in, oh, 8 zillion hours. That's assuming I can upload the scanned text to the reader. Then I won't have any need to spend big bucks on more bookshelves.
Alternatively, I can get a sheet-fed scanner (~$300), and slice up all my books, to scan through them more quickly. Then I can stay warm (451) all next winter burning the pages.
There just isn't a really good solution, but still, this is the product I've been looking for for years. Why did it take so long? If I can get stuff for a reasonable price, without having publishers performing a colonoscopy, I'll go for it.
so your complaining that the e-book can be changed so you prefer the hardcopy but you also claim that hardcopies are being changed.
I'm failing to see how your reasoning fits your conclusion as both mediums are equally subceptible to revisions.
The advantage of electronic books is that a simple program can be written to compare previous versions to new versions to see what exactly has been changed in seconds.
Try that with a hard copy of an encyclopedia.
You're also making the faulty assumption that all changes are bad. The reason history gets "revised" is because as more work is done more facts come to light. It's not always the case that the revision is a step in the wrong direction. It's more often the case that a revision corrects something that was wrongly assumed in the past.
It's also the case that competing versions of any topic exist at the same time. You can't very well compare versions with hardcopies nearly as easily as you can with electronic versions. Because it requires searching. Electronic searches are always faster and more comprehensive than manual searches. When you're manually looking for name or word it's easy to overlook a mention in large volumns. An electronic search will never miss regardless of the size.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
The PPI (Pixel Per Inch) resolution of this ebook dislay is really great, that will provide enough pixels to make nice shaped letters and make much it more pleasant to read from a display. Contrast and virtually zero battery consumption are added bonuses.
2 1/
More PPI is the way monitors and displays should go. But for most of 20 years monitors has stayed more or less fixed with a dot size of 0.25~0.28mm giving about 100 PPI.
In the meantime hordes of consumers and marketing departments has kept all talk about monitors based on display size in inches 15", 17", 19"...
Most notable difference was when IBM introduced the T220 display in 2001 which has amazing 204 PPI giving a total display of 3840*2400 pixles at 22" - and it looks great. Unfotunately the price level for the time being is also great, about 8000 EUR.
They have a new version of it called T221 here:
http://www.pc.ibm.com/us/intellistation/t2
Hopefully in the future more consumers and manufactures will realise that display quality (PPI) is getting more important than size.
Take catalogs for example. Sure, you could look up what you want online. I do that almost all the time, and I'd be one of the first to buy a Web-connected e-ink catalog. But when you just want to browse, I can't stand having to click-tap-scroll-push-wheel through the pages. I need to be able to put my thumb on the side of a book, flip through and feel the breeze in my face while watching the pages go by...
Seriously though, until they can think of a better input device to navigate an eBook, they'll never replace paper. I'll get an eBook. You'll get an eBook. We'll all accept whatever's out there, eventually (we'll probably even begin to like DRM!). But IMHO, paper is here to stay.
-- If you can read this, you are too close to my signature.
Since it's digital, you can use error-correction code when storing the data and also compare checksums of the copies.
You can be reasonably certain that you made a completely perfect copy if everything checks out.
...the enormous weight of all their books is too much...
Great. Obese American kids won't have to carry so much. Maybe we can set a world record for the fattest kid(but we probably already have it).
Hey, we also won't have to burden our "yank-tank" SUVs so much with all the weight of the extra books.
God bless you, Sony!
Obesity is becoming an epidemic in the USA. These 50lb backpacks are not a threat; they are the only exercise these fat kids get!
Besides, if you lighten the load, you've just made room for a bigger lunchbag, some midday snacks, and the latest Teen Cosmo issue.
Think about libraries, their limited inventory of books, possible royalty payments for authors, expensive real estate taken up by bookshelves for browsing, limited number of copies of each book, lost or damaged books, etc, etc - replace all that with a bunch of kiosks that could be located anywhere. Governments and academic institutions should be jumping on this bandwagon. I wouldn't be surprised to see some developing countries implement this first.
--- Yx3 = Delilah ---
For those who know where to look, you can find a fair amount of copywrited text content online. The thing is, what the hell do you do with it? You really don't want to read an entire novel sitting at your desk. And printing them out? Easier to just buy the book.
Until now. Assuming this device can display content unencumbered by DRM, its only a matter of time until these files become more prevalent.
I'm not sure what it all means, though. The publishing industry has been vigilant about making sure digital copies of their media stay out of the hands of pirates, and probably think they've been very successful. But the real reason text content hasn't been traded much on P2P networks is because of the lack of an acceptable playback device.
So, now what?
I might read English on this thing, but if you know Japanese, you can see from the pictures that the resolution is still crap compared to paper. I read almost all my news online, but almost never read sites in Japanese, unless they use flash, because the resolution is just too horrible. You can see from the photos that even a not-so-complex kanji like 'yami' starts to become jumbled together on this thing. Japanese paper printing technology is second to none on the planet. I'm still going to prefer printed Japanese for a long long time (at least 5 years ;).
The screen is too small for a textbook. You can't even fit a decent diagram on a screen that size. The technology is applicable, although one nice thing about textbooks is the ability to mark them up, and this device lacks that capability. Also they're only going to probably knock about ten bucks off the price of a textbook for edelivery and you're not going to be allowed to sell it - they won't sell them electronically unless they can DRM them. So it's probably not going to be useful for textbooks any time soon. If you want to bring about freedom from commercial textbooks, you're going to have to support the people writing Open-license textbooks. Open licensing is our only reasonable defense against the serious financial down sides of capitalism.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If it will hold my entire O'Reilly library and have a good viewing, bookmarking and search interface I'd be interested.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
The parent poster, Chuck Bucket, is a plagiarism troll. This post was taken from this site. Mods, please check the post text on Google before you mod it.
Sapere aude!
The energy efficiency of a light bulb is pretty poor but they could build in (or have a clip-on) white LED book light
My daughter has one - one of her Christmas presents last year. $15 at Costco. Runs for months on a couple of AAA batteries, and she uses it for several hours every night. Nice bright white light from a couple of tiny LEDs.
-Ryan, with the unoriginal sig
hours of music w/o moving a muscle
Wow. Most people can't go more than a couple of seconds of no muscle movement without being dead. What is your secret? You must teach me!
-Ryan, with the unoriginal sig
The bookstores will still kill you with costs no matter what form the book comes in :-/
The size of the screen could be mostly overcome by the e-book format not being physically limited in number of pages -- the extra content can just be shuffled into more pages in the book.
;) 2) logical trains of thought in most textbooks generally seem to me to be longer than a few paperback pages but often are only a couple of textbook pages (particularly in introductory texts), so the shorter pages would make it a bit harder to follow the train of thought in the smaller format because of the increased page turning necessary.
This wouldn't be done in a traditional textbook for two reasons 1) the biggest reason IMO who wants a paperback book sized textbook that while small in width and height is 2000 pages long 3-4" thick (unless its machinery's handbook, but thats a reference anyway
While the first is easilly overcome by effectively removing the limit on pages the second would require reformatting, or rewriting the content (ie a substantial amount of money) for a smaller page, but might not be a bad thing for teaching kids brought up on Video games, sound bites, and 30 second commercials.
But the basic point I was trying to make before I began rambling is that you could get around the major limitation of the smaller page by increasing the number of pages in the e-textbook - even having the diagrams on its own page (though again this could make it harder going from a traditional formatted book to flip back and forth between text and diagram, but a specially formatted book might make it even better than a traditional book -- oops rambling again).
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Will the experience of especially fiction be different when you don't know when it's going to end?
-I am an elective eunuch.
I want to publish my ebooks on this. Anyone any idea if it runs PalmOS or what?
I'd love one of these but I won't buy it if I can't display unencrypted .TXT, .DOC, .PDF, etc. files without having DRM shoved in my face.
.TXT version on the net. (P2P, usenet, http, etc.) I load the .TXT version on my PDA and throw the book on a shelf. I can load that .TXT version on either of my PDAs, my laptop or any of my computers. I can transport it on any form of media. Floppy, CD, DVD, CompactFlash, MemoryStick, USB hard drive, USB flash drive, etc. That's the kind of flexability I want in a reader.
These days I buy a book in paper "format" then search for a