Sony Launches First Commercial Electronic Paper Display Reader

prostoalex writes "The e-paper is coming to reality in the form of a 6" screen with higher than usual 170 dpi and $381 price tag. It runs a customized version of Linux, and being Sony-branded, supports MemoryStick. The British journalists claim that three AAA batteries keep it up for 10,000 pages, but it's not too clear whether they've actually verified it, or just read the press-release. The manufacturers are hoping to sell 5,000 of these a month as their best-case scenario."

Comments

Uh..

[Voltiare]

Hey, I have a bunch of those. I call them "books".

Re:Uh..

[Zilquis]

Too true. Why should i be bothered to buy one of these, 200 to be able to read a book, why bother when i can buy individual books for 5/6 each.

Re:Uh..

[NivenHuH]

Yea.. but do your "books" run Linux? =)

Re:Uh..

[maxwell demon]

Only the Linux books :-)

Re:Uh..

[Zilquis]

No Word(s)

Re:Uh..

[Rob Simpson]

To give an example of how this kind of thing might be handy... I'd guess that my PDA has the dead tree equivalent of my weight in medical references (plus a few novels) stored on its memory card.

Re:Uh..

[hangareighteen]

Yea, well when was the last time you moved all
your books?

Re:Uh..

[Anonymous Coward]

Moving books is fun. They smell nice. It is nice to look at all the old covers. It is nice to remember when you first read them, and why, and whether they were good or bad or useful. This usually happens as you unpack them. You will never get any of that with a set of books stored on a Sony device.

Re:Uh..

[Anonymous Coward]

Even a Palm V had enough memory for mutiple novels.

Re:Uh..

[fafaforza]

I'm surprised you didn't exclaim that you'd only buy it when it supports OGG.

Being able to load up 3 or 4 of today's newspapers, along with a couple of books, and having the choice of reading whatever you are in the mood for in that particular moment without carrying a small library with you is, to me, a very intriguing proposition.

Well, enough of my opining. Back to the regularly scheduled Slashdot "pfft, so what" attitude.

Re:Uh..

[grammar nazi]

My book *does* run linux. It's a homebrew Linux/LaTeX/XDVI terminal. I'm still working out weight & battery issues... as the CRT is too large to carry with me on the train. Many great books are available in LaTeX.

Re:Uh..

[Ansonmont]

Moving one box of books is fun. I have been lugging my 30+ boxes of books through 7 moves in the past 6 years. And that doesn't include the boxes from my children's books.

That said, there is a reason that I can't get rid of them, and I doubt that a e-book will have the same emotional pull.

Re:Uh..

[Anonymous Coward]

I would find this useful. I have a ton of ebooks and other documents I'd like to read, but I consider it a complete waste to print them out. I've been reading them on a CRT, and also on my laptop. It'd be much nicer to have something like this.

Re:Uh..

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be great for college, since college books cost about the same.

Re:Uh..

[timts]

6" stupid stuff with a price higher than a very decent pocketpc, with $500 you can get toshiba VGA resolution pocketpc, SONY is just STUPID STUPID STUPID, that's why they are losing money. keep the work, sony, PSX is no longer manufactured since people dont buy them, now just start this reader and see how long it takes to stop this one!

Re:Uh..

[Anonymous Coward]

How many tons of carbon dioxide were released into the atmosphere to manufacture the chips inside your PDA?

Re:Uh..

[Eil]

Yea.. but do your "books" run Linux? =)

Only NetBSD at the moment...

Re:Uh..

[Cryptnotic]

How many tons of carbon dioxide were released into the atmosphere to manufacture the chips inside your PDA?

The gain is probably not as much as the net effect of removing and processing the trees necessary for the paper versions. Not to mention fuel used in transportation of heavy paper books.

Re:Uh..

[tommyboyprime]

I read a LOT of books on my pocket pc.

One question

[notamac]

Anyone have any idea on what the refresh rate on these things is? I've always imagined the whole e-paper thing must be fairly slow at scrolling/turning the page - but I hope I'm wrong!

Re:One question

[Bugmaster]

It doesn't really need to be fast -- in a real book, you don't flip the pages all that often. Plus, this device uses power when changing the state of the pixels; my guess is that actual animation would drain its batteries fairly quickly.

Re:One question

[Sarojin]

I'm pretty sure the only "refreshing" it does is when there's an actual change - it doesn't even consume power when it's idling on a page.

Re:One question

[femto]

But one of the advantages of a book is being able to 'flick' through it at high speed, which would require a high refresh rate. I guess having a search function may alleviate this drawback, but it still wouldn't be as intuitive or as fast (if hopping backwards and forwards). Perhaps 'hopping backwards and forwards' might be solved by having 'memory' buttons or tabs on the screen to memorise positions in the book?

Re:One question

[ashkar]

As several others have already mentioned, the device only consumes power when changing the display (page) and leaves the display in a static state at all other times. In a video demonstration I saw of this or a very similar technology, the time to switch the display to a new page would probably be a little slower than desired, say 1-2 seconds, but easily fast enough to be quite usable.

Re:One question

[Hacksaw]

in a real book, you don't flip the pages all that often

Unless, of course, you are searching back a bunch of pages quickly, like people do all the time while reading novels with tricky plots.

The ability to flip quickly through a book is a powerful search mechanism. I remember the shape of important pages, how the text was arranged. I'd bet that people do this in other ways as well, such as remembering the first line of a page, or words along the outside edge.

Re:One question

[loveaxelrod]

it doesn't even consume power when it's idling on a page It consumes power all the time, whether refreshing the page or not.

Re:One question

[whoopass]

Why scroll? The device is optimized for reading which means you should page. I've been waiting for something like this so that I can finally get around to reading a book from the Project Gutenberg site.

Now if only I could tag strings in the text with annotations (e.g. todo/important/cross-reference), this device might convince me to take the bus to work instead of driving.

Re:One question

[Anonymous Coward]

The ability to flip quickly through a book is a powerful search mechanism.

Wouldn't google for your ebook be even more powerful?

I'm always annoyed when I have to scan back in the text for something pertinant, myself, when on a computer I could just ctrl+f it.

Re:One question

[Slowleggs]

Unless all I know is wrong : An ebook would not need constant refreshing; it'd only to refresh when you flip pages.

(thus a fast refreshrate is far from as important)

Re:One question

[Anonymous Coward]

If this is based on the technology from Philips then it does not have a refresh rate. It just consumes energy when you turn the page.

So it should say that the batteries last for 10.000 page turns, not 10.000 pages.

Re:One question

[MemRaven]

The article does mention that you're able to set up to 40 bookmarks on a particular book (allowing you to jump to predefined locations in the book pretty easily) as well as being able to make annotations and the like for the book, which would probably make things much more easily accessed. For example, when I do the same things, it's usually to go to the same few places over and over to have some reference on the few pages that tend to get overly complex. With this, I could just set a bookmark rather than having to dogear the page or what have you.

Re:One question

[Ami Ganguli]

I think it depends somewhat on what kind of book you're reading. Novels are read slowly and sequentially. Reference material is flipped through quickly and often - hence the importance of a search facility.

Think about how you look through a dictionary: flip through pages quickly, focusing on the index word at the top of the page. The pages flipping by are just a blur until you get close and then flip page by page.

But honestly, I would rather read reference material on-line anyway. But a small e-book novel that I could take with me to the beach - that would be cool.

Re:One question

[FyRE666]

in a real book, you don't flip the pages all that often

Unless, of course, you are searching back a bunch of pages quickly, like people do all the time while reading novels with tricky plots.

I believe that some scientists have developed "text searching" technologies that allow computing devices to "search" through the words in a file. Hopefully this device could make use of this new advance, and "search" the pages a bit faster than you could flick around the pages of a book... ;-)

Re:One question

[p00ya]

It doesn't really need to be fast -- in a real book, you don't flip the pages all that often.

At the risk of being told to RTFA: refresh rate matters a lot when you're looking at a static image with a white background. Think constant flickering. It's not as bad on LCDs (but the negative effects aren't non-existent). If you've tried reading an ebook on a CRT running at less than 100hz you'll know what I'm talking about.

Re:One question

[Catbeller]

eInk does not have a refresh rate. The states of the pixels are static. Set the bit on the screen to black, it stays black. No power necessary to maintain it.

Re:One question

[pqdave]

RTFA: For a static page on this system, refresh rate is effectively unlimited. Turning a page might take time, but once an image is on the page it is static, similar to ink and paper.

Re:One question

[Junks Jerzey]

Anyone have any idea on what the refresh rate on these things is? I've always imagined the whole e-paper thing must be fairly slow at scrolling/turning the page - but I hope I'm wrong!

And you imagine this *why* exactly?

Re:One question

[Anonymous Coward]

On LCD's, refresh rate is irrelevant. The pixels are either always on or always off, so they don't even need to refresh (unless the pixels change, but that won't happen when you are reading a static image). So refresh rate is irrelevant for this.

As for CRT's, I have read ebooks on a CRT running at 85 Hz, I had no problems. Granted, it was a good-quality 22" with very large font size for the text, and running at 1600x1200. But it didn't bother me at any point.

Re:One question

[penguinboy]

Think about how you look through a dictionary: flip through pages quickly, focusing on the index word at the top of the page. The pages flipping by are just a blur until you get close and then flip page by page.

But with an electronic book, that may be less necessary - one would, ideally, be able to simply perform full text searches on the book. Ah, to no longer be hindered by crappy indexes...

Re:One question

[Dun Malg]

it doesn't even consume power when it's idling on a page

It consumes power all the time, whether refreshing the page or not.

Are you talking about the display or the device as a whole? The display, which is what we're discussing, doesn't draw any power at rest. From the press release:

"Because the display uses power only when an image is changed, "

Re:One question

[Anonymous Coward]

Kewel. What will they think of next!!! But tell us Buck Rogers, when do you expect *we* will see this amazzzzing new technology? 1940? 1945? 1950???

Re:One question

[razjml]

The problem with this is that usually your "flipping through" search is based on the context of the words, not the exact words themselves. You might remember that a conversation took place, but not what the conversation itself was about. And it seems much less intuitive to type some numbers into a dialog box to limit the search than to just flip to a general area and skim around. Reference books benefit from searches, but for novels they're pretty much useless.

Re:One question

[Anonymous Coward]

When they've developed a process that can "search" through the visual aspects of the material (page formats, layouts, pictures, or other visual clues that help indicate the location or material that us humans are searching for) then you may have answered the question, as it is - it still stands...no thanks to you, jerk.

Re:One question

[snowsalt]

I don't think the google algorithms would work for a single page - it works based on links to something, rather than text.

Re:One question

[Slowleggs]

"Think about how you look through a dictionary: flip through pages quickly, focusing on the index word at the top of the page. The pages flipping by are just a blur until you get close and then flip page by page."

Don't you think any dictionary on ebook would work similar to Wikipedia/dictionary.com rather than a paper-dictionary? (That is: type in the word you want to see; you don't have to manually flip pages in order to access it)

Re:One question

[Bugmaster]

Well, it technically still does have a refresh rate: the rate at which you can "flip pages". I assume that it's slower than the speed at which you can update a regular LCD, but really, I have no idea...

Re:One question

[amackley]

My understanding is that refresh rate is irrelevant. E-paper is not a digital screen. It is digital paper. You have black/white, bits turned on/off. The reason it is so efficient is that it consumes no power to display, only to turn the page. That is why the power is rated in number of pages, not in hours. One note. I've been watching this technology. This is not insignificant. The power of e-paper is phenomenal as the capabilities to display pages the size of newspapers and can be changed on based on user preferences. I'm sure color will not be far down the road.

i hate sony

[roofy]

i have one problem with this: memory stick; e-paper has to be flexible in the sense that it cant only support memory stick, thats like releasing paper that can only be written on with a special brand of pens, for the e-paper thing to take off we need multi format e-stationary

Re:i hate sony

[eclectro]

for the e-paper thing to take off we need multi format e-stationar

Well it won't happen here. Sony has been pushing their proprietary "memory stick" which uses heavy drm called "magicgate" in all of their products hoping that the sheer number of devices they can put it in will give it a valid/default market base.

Re:i hate sony

[b4rtm4n]

Yep there seems to be a memorystick slot in nearly every Sony appliance.

Hell, I've seen a 30" Sony tv for sale with a memorystick slot. What possible use is that??

Re:i hate sony

[DAldredge]

Turns you tv into a slide show. Grandparents love it.

Re:i hate sony

[jigyasubalak]

I hate sony for this: The current-generation Libriè has no online capability, so books must be downloaded to a PC (Windows only for now, although the device runs on Sony Linux), then transferred to the reader via its USB 2.0 port or by using a Memory Stick.

Can they get more hypocritical? Can they go any further at insulting the Linux community? I personally think any respectable Linux follower should boycot this product.

Re:i hate sony

[Anonymous Coward]

Memory sticks are as proprietary as SD cards, etc.. and so on. You need a license for the other formats, they are not free. Their DRM is barely used, and its a not a showstopper for 99% of the products out there that use it.

Re:i hate sony

[DrXym]

More proprietary you mean since barely any non-Sony devices use memory stick. While SD or CF might be 'proprietary' in the sense that someone collects revenue from them, from a consumer perspective they are open - every manufacturer except Sony uses those formats and there are dozens of brands of cards to choose from. So they are cheap and ubiquitous.

It is a wonder why anyone buys Sony at all these days. I know on principle that I'm not going to lock myself into their products or media when I can't use the cards interchangeably with other devices I might own.

Re:i hate sony

[eclectro]

You need a license for the other formats, they are not free

What about one of those USB flash pen/thumb drives that are showing up everywhere? Universal in nature and not proprietary.

Their DRM is barely used

But yet it lies in wait.

Re:i hate sony

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet, barely any devices that use such pen drives. Just PCs and Macs

Re:i hate sony

[zero_offset]

Worst of all, the Sony Memory Stick is a "dumb" format. Unlike Compact Flash, all of the read/write electronics are in the device itself. This probably makes the Memory Sticks cheaper to produce, although you'll notice they don't sell for less, funny how that works. Compact Flash, on the other hand, has most of the read/write electronics in the CF media itself. This means the device is potentially simplified a bit (probably not much chance of affecting the price significantly, but less to break over time), but more importantly it means you can gain important read/write speed improvements just by purchasing newer media.

When I bought my camera, the best LexarMedia CF cards had a write speed of about 8X. Today they're about three times as fast, and that translates almost directly into faster "ready for the next photo" speeds.

Granted, this aspect probably wouldn't matter much in this specific e-book application (unless maybe you can search book content? seems likely, the article mentions a keyboard), but it's a great illustration of how the Sony format sucks in comparison.

Aside from the obvious fact that Sony itself sucks.

Re:i hate sony

[Anonymous Coward]

give it time

Re:i hate sony

[jcr]

I don't think you're being quite fair to Sony. They tried to get other manufacturers to adopt Memory Stick, and just like with Beta and MD, they didn't abandon the moderate number of customers they did get.

When you buy a new media format from Sony, you really can count on them supporting it for a decade or better.

-jcr

Re:i hate sony

[jcr]

This probably makes the Memory Sticks cheaper to produce, although you'll notice they don't sell for less, funny how that works.

That has much more to do with economies of scale than anything else. If Memory Stick had caught on like CF did, it would be just as cheap.

-jcr

Re:i hate sony

[DrXym]

I don't think that was quite the same situation at all. Sony aren't 'supporting' Memory Stick, they're foisting it. All their new products use the format, irrespective of that means in terms of interoperability with other products.

If they want to do that, that's their business but I certainly won't be locking myself into the technology any time soon. I'm not averse to Sony as a brand (I have a widescreen Sony TV & PS2), but I certainly wouldn't use it where I expect the media format to be interoperable with other devices I might have.

Re:i hate sony

[jcr]

Sony aren't 'supporting' Memory Stick, they're foisting it.

Get serious. Sony has no way at all to coerce you to buy a memory stick product, any more than they could twist your arm to buy a BetaCam. This isn't Microsoft we're talking about.

Sony tried to sell Memory Stick, and it didn't catch on. What do you want them to do about it? Abandon it after a year, leaving all the early adopters in the lurch, or do what they are doing?

I have no problem with Sony's policy on supporting or promoting media formats they introduce, whether or not I ever buy it.

-jcr

Re:i hate sony

[livhan28]

yeah thats true, it is good that sony isnt "leaving all the early adopters in the lurch" and still supporting their failed memory stick...but their still FOISTING it! because their still not incorperating anyone elses memory formats along with their memory stick into any of their designs. thus their still passing memory stick off as a success and the one and only option.

Re:i hate sony

[DrXym]

Get serious. Sony has no way at all to coerce you to buy a memory stick product, any more than they could twist your arm to buy a BetaCam. This isn't Microsoft we're talking about.

Which is why I said it was their business, but I won't be buying those products. I expect a lot of others wouldn't either. Given Sony's financial woes, it seems a little odd that they equip devices with a memory format that actively put people off wanting to buy them.

Sony tried to sell Memory Stick, and it didn't catch on. What do you want them to do about it? Abandon it after a year, leaving all the early adopters in the lurch, or do what they are doing?

Abandon it of course. Announce an end of life and move on. It doesn't mean readers or cards suddenly become unobtainable. It doesn't mean the camera you bought last year is obsolete. I bet even today you can buy brand new beta max tapes if were motivated enough to look for them.

Re:i hate sony

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a wonder why anyone buys Sony at all these days. I know on principle that I'm not going to lock myself into their products or media when I can't use the cards interchangeably with other devices I might own.

I agree. Sony needs to really wake up on this issue and start using industry standard CF cards. I will never buy a Sony product that uses memorystick.

Re:i hate sony

[B'Trey]

Suppose that they make all of their new products with one of the more widely used memory technologies? Exactly how is this leaving the early adopters in the lurch? So long as they continue to make Memory Sticks available for purchase, the early adopters have nothing to complain about.

Re:i hate sony

[Anonymous Coward]

Sony has been pushing their proprietary "memory stick" which uses heavy drm called "magicgate" in all of their products hoping that the sheer number of devices they can put it in will give it a valid/default market base.

"That's not right. That's not even wrong!"

- Sony has 28% market share (worldwide) for memory cards, they don't need to "push" anymore very hard.

- Memory Stick has been manufactured and sold by parties other than Sony (e.g. Lexar Media, Dane, SanDisk) for years now.

- Memory Stick PRO is what has "MagicGate". "Memory Stick" has no DRM.

Re:i hate sony

[Anonymous Coward]

More proprietary you mean since barely any non-Sony devices use memory stick.

Yeah, except for stuff made by NTT, Samsung, Acer, Konica, Lexmark, Mitsubishi, Brother, HP, Kenwood, Toshiba, etc.

Besides, Memory Stick is the youngest of the top 3 competing memory card formats, so what's your problem?

I know on principle that I'm not going to lock myself into their products or media when I can't use the cards interchangeably with other devices I might own.

Sony products are not necessarily limited to Memory Stick. You don't have a good case either way.

Re:i hate sony

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't particularly care about interoperability. If I buy a device, I'm going to be using the media I buy for it exclusively for that device.

xD cards aren't used in many devices, yet I bought a camera that uses it.

If I bought this book reader, why would I be using it in both my camera and the book reader? That's too much juggling.

Re:i hate sony

[Anonymous Coward]

chances are you can just mount it as a drive like you can with their cameras. They may only support Windows, but it may work with Linux with a small amount of effort.

Re:i hate sony

[swv3752]

At least Memory Stick is better than those Fuji X cards. MS is relatively inexpensive, one can buy MS from other manufacturers such as Lexar or SanDisk. Virtually ever multicard reader supports SD/MMC, SM, CF, and MS.

Unless one already has a large investment in one technology, it really doesnt matter too much. I have one of 64mb MS, 256mb CF, 256mb SD, 32mb SM. I also have a 4mb MS that came with my Sony Camera. Each memory card gets used by a single device. They all work fine in my memory card reader. So there is little reason to not choose a device that uses any one of those formats. Heck, even the photo developement places accept all four. And likely the photo developer machine is actually a Sony.

Most of the memory cards have thier disadvantages. SM seems flimsy. CF are big. SD has pretty lousy Quality control (or at least SanDisk does). MS are a little bit more expensive than the others. The Fuji cards are the worst of the lot, being expensive, proprietary, and too small.

And as far as the magic gate goes, if you don't use one of the MS walkmans, it doesn't really matter.

Re:i hate sony

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, you need to learn the difference between "their" and "they're!"

Re:i hate sony

[computechnica]

My dad just bought a Grand Wega HDTV that came with a small Sony 2-MgPxl camera. Both the tv and the camera use memory stick so you can do a slide show on the TV. Some of his memory cards are made by companies other than Sony. They also bought a HP scanner/printer/fax that has a built in memory card reader so my mom can print out pics without a PC. They also use a AOL TV box for e-mail and web surfing. AOL TV box runs Qnx. They also bought a small stand-alone CD burner that also has memory card slots. The PC seems to be less necessary for the computer-declined average consumer.

Their house is a Micro$oft free zone.

Re:i hate sony

[Anonymous Coward]

CF are big.

Big? Fuck, man, remember floppy disks? Remember CDs? THOSE you may call big. If you can fit it in your mouth, it's not big.

If anything, all those other formats are too small.

Each memory card gets used by a single device.

That's great for you. When my CF-based camera runs out of space, I can take the card out of my CF-based MP3 player and take more pictures without running off to find a computer or buy a new card. (I do wish I'd gotten a camera that used standard batteries, but meh.)

Re:i hate sony

[Anonymous Coward]

What about one of those USB flash pen/thumb drives that are showing up everywhere?

That would be kinda cool, you could use one connector for flash media and downloading from a computer. If you do it right, you might even be able to let people plug a universal reader in there and use whatever cards the happen to have.

But it may not be feasable depending on the thickness of the device, USB sockets something like 1/4 inch of clearance.

Re:i hate sony

[huchida]

The Betamax... The minidisc... The Digital-8 Camera... The memory stick.

I'd say Sony has a history of introducing dead-end products.

Re:i hate sony

[jtownatpunk.net]

FWIW, memory stick prices are coming down and there are three major vendors selling them. Sony, Sandisk, and Lexar. I just ordered a Sandisk 512 meg Duo Pro card for my DSC-T1. $130. Compare that to the cost of a high speed 512 meg CF card (30x or higher).

And that's the tiny new MS, not the big one that's been around for a while. I'm hoping to see a Memory Stick Duo to CF adapter soon that will let me use my new card in my CF devices (other cameras, PDA, etc.). The MSD is small enough...

Re:i hate sony

[jcr]

The 3 1/2" floppy, VHS tapes... (Yes, Sony invented VHS, too.)

Sony introduces a lot of products. Some of them fly, some of them don't. I give them credit for giving each of them enough of a chance to let the market sort it out.

-jcr

Re:i hate sony

[Anonymous Coward]

No, JVC invented VHS. According to a web search, Sony invented U-Matic, upon which VHS was partially based.

Re:i hate sony

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, it doesn't fucking matter anymore; I got a $10 multi-card reader with $10 mail in rebate... reads everything SD/CF/XD/MemoryStick/IBM Microdrive...its USB2 and thats the end of that...

Japanese QWERTY

[qewl]

http://www.eink.com/news/images/SONY_Reader_1000EP .jpg I didn't know the Japanese typed with a qwerty keyboard? They're pretty resourceful if you ask me.

Re:Japanese QWERTY

[bircho]

Japanese keyboards are like qwerty, but each letter/number has a kana (like a syllable) associated. There's a key next to space bar that change keyboard mode (hiragana/katakana/roman).

Re:Japanese QWERTY

[packeteer]

Japanese has an alphabet. I dont see why people think asian languadges are so difficult. They are often structured much better and are far easier to learn. Personally i found japanese to be far easier to learn than spanish. Oh and for anyone who thinks that its hard to memorize a word that uses symbols nto letters think of it this way. Every work in english has a certain way to spell it. When you see a word on paper you take the letters and turn it into a meaningful word in your head. Its the same with asain languadges. Instead of letters they use slashes and in some languages circles. You to remember how to spell each word you read in order to read it just like asains must remember what each symbol means to read.

Re:Japanese QWERTY

[Nogami_Saeko]

Well, beats having a huge keyboard with a seperate key for every character :)

Although the other way to do it would be to have a keyboard with kanji radicals and enter them to build the character you want to create.

You can set most operating systems to do the kana/kanji conversion for you. You enter the characters using phonetic romanized spelling and the OS converts to the japanese equivilent, first to kana characters, then to a kanji character, or selection of kanji characters for the user to select from.

A bit offtopic, but here's a (very) early Japanese typewriter. I don't imagine people running it could manage many words-per-minute.

http://www.officemuseum.com/Japanese_typewriter_ de tail.JPG

N.

Re:Japanese QWERTY

[bircho]

I dont see why people think asian languadges are so difficult.

Try find a kanji in a dictionary...
Try read a japanese text with a dictionary...
Try speak a word you read frist time (kanji usually has 2 way of reading)...

Korean has a easier way of writing, but sometimes they use kanjis too.

PS: IANAT (I am not a troll), but i do have a lot of work studying japanese...

Re:Japanese QWERTY

[Neo-Rio-101]

Yep, the jp106 keyboard layout is QWERTY, but has a few extra buttons to handle jumping between character sets. The space bar is much smaller as a result.... and the backslash is replaced with the yen symbol. And yes, in Japanese Windows as there is no backslash, you can imagine what the filename paths look like. I just wish the keyboard would work properly with DOSbox and Bochs... for some reason the DOS emulators get confused when dealing with Japanese keyboards. I can't get the colon to come out.

Re:Japanese QWERTY

[Anonymous Coward]

You [need] to remember how to spell each word you read in order to read it just like asains must remember what each symbol means to read.

That's not true. In English, you can speak a word you've never seen before by sounding it out (and I'm not sure if the irony was intentional, but your post had quite a few spelling errors).

Japanese does have an alphabet (IIRC, there are about 25 symbols - and each symbol can be written using 2 English letters, from a set of about 10). But they also have thousands of symbols that represent words, which need to be memorized. If you hadn't seen one before, you'd have no idea how to pronounce it, so you couldn't just ask someone what it means over the phone like you could in English.

And I think there are some Asian languages that don't have alphabets at all.

Personally i found japanese to be far easier to learn than spanish.

The language seems to have a fairly logical structure, so conversational Japanese shouldn't be too difficult to learn. But could you read a Japanese newspaper? To be considered literate, you'd need to have 1945 symbols memorized.

Re:Japanese QWERTY

[CGP314]

Oh and for anyone who thinks that its hard to memorize a word that uses symbols nto letters think of it this way. Every work in english has a certain way to spell it. When you see a word on paper you take the letters and turn it into a meaningful word in your head. Its the same with asain languadges. Instead of letters they use slashes and in some languages circles. You to remember how to spell each word you read in order to read it just like asains must remember what each symbol means to read.

True, but when I don't know how to spell a word in english, I can guess at the spelling because I know the sounds the letters make. I don't think that is possible in Japanese.


-Colin

Re:Japanese QWERTY

[kfg]

Japanese is a highly phonetic ( and also highly inflected) language. They have had their own phoentic alpabet for centuries. There is particular resourcfulness in typing this alphabet.

The problem comes in two forms. The first of which is an early resistence by the intelligensia to actually use the Japanese alphabet (which was the invention of mere women). Chinese was the language of culture, and most Japanese works written before and around the time of the invention of the Japanese phonetic alphabet were not written in Japanese using the Chinese Kanji, they were actually written in classical Chinese (sometimes with a certain amount of skill, but often rather crudely). Much as the learned of Europe wrote in Latin, even though Latin was not their native tongue.

With this dissimilarity, many of these people had a language that was either descended from or a close relative of Latin. Chinese and Japanese have no common base. They are very, very dissimilar.

And just as these European scholars, when they did write in their native tongue they couldn't help themselves from sprinkling it liberally with Chinese.

And so, despite their being a native alphabet, the Chinese Kanji became imbedded in the native style of writing.

No we come to the second issue. Why don't they just, in modern times, simply drop the use of Kanji and write in Japanese? Because Japanese is a highly polyglot language, just like English. It has adopted into itself many foreign words, English, Spanish, Dutch, Portugese (the "Japanese" word for the kimono's (actually a western word in a sense, although composed of a Japanese phrase)undergarment, "Juban," is the Portugese word for "undershirt," gibao,( And the pattern of the garment itself is transformed from its traditional Japanese form into the European form)), and, of course. . . Chinese.

But, as I've already pointed, out Chinese and Japanese have no relation, in particular Chinese is not phonetic, and thus there is no way to spell these Chinese words in the Japanese phonetic alphabet. So they need to use Kanji.

Had the Japanese encountered the Spanish before the Chinese things would have turned out rather differently, as the Latin alphabet is not only a very good fit with the Japanese language, it fits Japanese a bit better than it does the Germanically derived English.

KFG

Re:Japanese QWERTY

[WoodenRobot]

It's perfectly possible to do this with both hirigana and katakana, which are the Japanese phoenetic 'alphabets'. With these there's no weird stuff to get wrong like spelling something 'f' when it should be 'ph' or other oddities in the english language. So you basically just write it down as it sounds. No problem what so ever!

Re:Japanese QWERTY

[S3D]

I never tried to learn Japanise, but I've tried to leran Chinese. Looking for character in the dictionary is a science in itself. There are special sytems for look up in the dictionary - "Four corner" and "Root", which are qute difficalt to learn. On top of it there are communist-modified characters and classic character. And prononsation with tones. In fact chines could understand more easy student speaking without tones, then student reproducing tones not perfectly...

Re:Japanese QWERTY

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Japanese has 3 alphabets: katakana, hiragana and kanji (Chinese characters).

There are 47 characters in katakana and in hiragana. There are about 2000 commonly used kanji. In kanji, there are usually multiple readings (on/kun yomi), which somewhat complicates things. However, if you understand the meaning behind kanji, you're doing pretty good, probably same if you can recognize Latin rootwords in language X.

Kanji generally require correct stroke order to write. Japanese people have a tough time writing things by hand since they have often forgotten how to write many kanji. If they need to write something down, they will often do something on the computer, select the kanji the computer recommends (after checking the choices) then writing it.

Additionally, some kanji are really complicated to write. "taka" is pretty tough and when I went to buy stuff when I was in Tokyo, nearly everyone needed to look it up in their books to figure out the kanji so they could write it down on the invoice.

Chinese has about 20,000 from what I've heard. That's a lot.

On the plus side, you can write hiragana and katakana the exact same way you hear it. In English, you need context to know the difference when writing "aunt" and "ant". "whole"/"hole" anyone? In fact, if someone hears a name and doesn't know the kanji, it is written down in hiragana or katakana.

Anyway, personally I did better in Japanese than Spanish as the parent apparantly did, but that is due to my motivation. At least in Spanish you can guess that "interesante (sp?)" is "interesting". "omoshiroi" doesn't seem quite as easy to me.

Re:Japanese QWERTY

[WindBourne]

Which is partially the reason why Mao favored china standardizing on Esperanto.

Re:Japanese QWERTY

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty good and accurate write up, however there are a few missing points. There's a good reason that the Japanese continued to use the Kanji (Chinese Characters) even when they started accepting the useage of Kana (phonetic alphabet). Although the Japanese Kana is strictly phonetic, there is no way to specify the intonation of the Kana, thus this must be recognized by context. The Japanese language does have subtle differences in pronunciation, but the written language has no way to reflect this. As an example, take the English word "Bear". It sounds the same as "Bare" but means something entirely different. However, you don't need context to notice the difference in the written language, whereas in Japanese Kana you would, because it would be written in exactly the same way. What's a bit interesting is that in the English spoken language, you WOULD need the context to realize whether the speaker means "bear" or "bare". In Japanese, the word "Kuma", depending on the pronunciation, can mean either "bear" or "dark circles under your eyes", but the pronunciation is different, and can be recognized immediately.

Back to the original issue though, the Japanese language also has many words where the context is required to understand the meaning. For example "Kumo" (spider/cloud), "Kami" (hair/paper), "Hana" (nose/flower), and so on, all have identical pronunciations.

Under such circumstances, using full Kana will result in a very difficult to understand sentence that is long, flat, and hard to read. Using Chinese Kanji for specific vocabulary makes it very easy to read. The Kanji provides the context, and often the pronunciation.

One misperception is that the invention of Kana by women allowed them to write strictly in Kana alone. This is neither true nor accurate. As the parent had mentioned, the full Chinese Kanji writings of the time were written in a crude interpretation of the Chinese language, and was more often than not pretty poor as Chinese. It had it's own structure that was vaguely Japanese in grammatic structure, but you couldn't read it directly into Japanese. Hard to explain, but it was sort of a written language that was a language to itself. There was no way you could read it straight, it required interpretation.

This meant that writting in Kanji required more than the knowledge of the written language, but a background in an entirely different spoken language (Chinese) too. Just imagine if English was merely a spoken language, and the written language was Russian. (French and Spanish are way too similar to English than Japanese and Chinese are.)

By creating Kana, which was phonetic, it was possible to write sentences that could be read as Japanese by filling the gaps that the Chinese-esque writing simply "assumed". (I suppose you could say that prior to Kana, the written language was similar to Arabic where you need to assume the vowels by reading the context, as there are no vowels in the written language. Or so I'm told.) Of course, this was a very "Femminin" thing to do, and naturally was NOT a "Macho" (=Manly and Intelligent) thing to do in those days.

Either way, the use of Kana was gradually accepted, and the written Japanese language evolved a little at a time. It's still evolving today (as is the case with most any active language) so even works from 100 years ago are hard to read or understand. The Japanese written language is still very different from the spoken language, but it's much more Japanese these days. There is also a trend in decreasing the ammount of Kanji and increasing Kana, although I believe this is more attributed to lower educational standards these days, with people that can't read a lot of the more complex Kanji. For better or for worse, that's the case.

As a side note, Kana itself was derived from Kanji, and was a "simplified" form. I'm not sure how the Korean language evolved, but they too use a mixture of Chinese characters and their own phonetic characters. (Although it's rarely seen... the only areas I've seen Kanji in Korea were in a few signs, and occasionally in newspaper headlines.)

Re:Japanese QWERTY

[Anonymous Coward]

...however, most people can't type using the Kana-key layout. It's superior in that you can REALLY type fast (one keystroke for a phonetic sound), but 99% of the population that types using a keyboard uses Romaji input method.

Let me explain a bit. Say you were to type "Kuma" (bear). You would, literally, type K-U-M-A, which would display the two Kana characters "KU" and "MA". Press the space key, and voila! You have a list of Kanji characters to select from. The invention of the front end processor (which converts the kana to kanji) made it possible, and these things are wickedly smart. Back 20 years about you converted to kanji, and often had to go through a long list of possible matches. Today, the FEP actually reads the context and very often gives you the correct match on the first try. It's pretty cool when you think about it.

Given the fact that you can type using the QWERTY layout, and use the space key to convert to Kanji, there's really no need for a Japanese-specific keyboard. Most Japanese typers wouldn't have a hard time at all using a standard American keyboard, as long as the OS is in Japanese (meaning there's an FEP). The only thing they would have trouble with is a few specific differences in the keyboard layout, specifically things like doubt-quotes, quotes, colons, semi-colons, and all the shift+numerals. Of course, you can change settings in Windows/Linux/*BSD to give an American keyboard a Japanese layout, and then things would be pretty cool. It's weird though, I warn you, to be getting a different character than printed on the keyboard. I use a Japanese OS on an American model ThinkPad, and everyone else seems to have a problem until they realize I've remapped the keys. ;-)

Re:Japanese QWERTY

[Anonymous Coward]

(IIRC, there are about 25 symbols - and each symbol can be written using 2 English letters, from a set of about 10).

50. There are 50 Hiragana characters and 50 Katakana characters. Each Hiragana character has an equivalent Katakana character though, so there are only 50 phonetic pronunciations.

The language seems to have a fairly logical structure, so conversational Japanese shouldn't be too difficult to learn.

I wouldn's say that so soon! The Japanese language as a LOT of kinks and unusual exceptions to the rules, and a lot of intricate rules, possibly even worse than the English language which is quite liberally powdered with exceptions of all sorts. I've heard that Chinese is actually much easier to learn.

Of course, Japanese is probably pretty easy to get started with. Consider it a peach. Soft at the entry point, with a rock hard pit in the center. In contrast, Spanish is like a pinneaple. Hard to get at in the beginning, but once you're past the skin, it's soft and sweet. :-)

Re:Japanese QWERTY

[Anonymous Coward]

Had the Japanese encountered the Spanish before the Chinese things would have turned out rather differently, as the Latin alphabet is not only a very good fit with the Japanese language, it fits Japanese a bit better than it does the Germanically derived English.

You bring up a very interesting idea. However, the Chinese have always had an influence on Japan since the ancient times, so this is unlikely. A more likely scenario is, what if the Japanese encountered the latin alphabet before they invented their own Kana alphabet? You'd probably have a language with a mixture of the Latin alphabet and Chinese Kanji. Cool!

Re:Japanese QWERTY

[solferino]

This gets rated 5??!! This posting is so full of nonsense and inaccuracy that it's not even worth replying to. Short message : disregard everything said here, it's all wrong. There is plenty of real information on the net about Japanese orthography - if you're really interested (and it is a fascinating writing system). Omniglot.com might be a good place to start.

Re:Japanese QWERTY

[0utRun]

Which part of Japanese was easier to learn? That its grammar is almost the exact opposite of English, or that it uses 2 native alphabets plus 1945 daily use Chinese characters?

"Instead of letters they use slashes" ...up to 31 "slashes" in some cases, which multiple radicals (about 74 of those exist) to boot..still sound easier than Spanish?

Come live here (in Japan) and see how many foreigners can actually read a newspaper, navigate the public transportation system or fill out an insurance form without any assitance. Among people living here 5 years or more, you'll find the number really low.

Sorry to flip out a little, but people who shrug off Japanese as an easy language have obvious not much exposure to it outside of anime.

Re:Japanese QWERTY

[Anonymous Coward]

They, (actually, we :) had encountered the Indian writing system about the same time as Kanas were invented. But it did not contribute to the Japanese writing system. Indian writing systems, being syllabic, indeed well suited to transcribing Japnese. Also, the majority of the intellectuals in those days being Buddhist monks, some of whom were familiar with the Indian wrting system, adopting a writing system derived from an Indian system might have happened if they were willing.

However, it did not happen. The Japanese already had a system of transcribing their syllables in Chinese characters, called Man-you gana. Hiragana and katakana were different ways of simplifying that Man-you gana.

A benefit of this development, or more precisely the fact that the Japanese used the Chinese characters to transcribe their language was that it allows us to figure out the pronunciation of Japanese in those days.

On the other hand, the knowledge of Indian writing system did contribute to the Japanese culture in the form of the table of 50 sounds. That was inspired by how syllables are arranged in Indic grammer, especially Sanskrit. Columns of consonants and rows of vowels, arranged to reflect the positions of vocal organs when a syllable is pronounced. This table, too, tells us how the syllables were pronounced in those days. So, for example the sounds that are pronounced as "ha" "hi" "fu" "he" "ho" today must have been pronounced as "pa" "pi" "pu" "pe" "po" because the the column for them is placed between "n" and "m". Pretty neat.

Re:Japanese QWERTY

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not true. In English, you can speak a word you've never seen before by sounding it out.

You can? That's pretty clever of you.

Consider a made-up word "splough". Quick - does it rhyme with "trough", "through", "though", "enough", or "bough"?

If you hadn't seen [a Japanese character] before, you'd have no idea how to pronounce it, so you couldn't just ask someone what it means over the phone like you could in English.

Yes you could, you'd ask them by describing the character to them. All the radicals (compenents of a character) have names, so you'd just tell then which radicals are where.

And I think there are some Asian languages that don't have alphabets at all.

The utterances of experts. Name one, then.

Re:Japanese QWERTY

[lwillems]

... for anyone who thinks that its hard to memorize a word that uses symbols nto letters ...

Actually letters ARE symbols. And we use these symbols to write down words and sounds.
It's not that letters as we know them (the alphabet) are the one and only correct way write down a word or sound.

Re:Japanese QWERTY

[Anonymous Coward]

Ching chong wong fong gong?

Re:Japanese QWERTY

[MegaSpam]

The utterances of experts. Name one, then.

Hiragana and katakana aren't really alphabets. They're alphasyllabaries.

Re:Japanese QWERTY

[sindarin2001]

Why I'm responding to AC Flamebait, I'll never know...but that joke falls flat on it's face because most japanese words end in a vowel.

Re:Japanese QWERTY

[Anonymous Coward]

The utterances of experts. Name one, then.

Chinese. 'Nuff said. (It's also probably the only Asian language that doesn't use some sort of phonetic alphabet.)

Re:Japanese QWERTY

[Anonymous Coward]

No fucking way.

I speak both Spanish and Japanese pretty well. Spanish is ridiculously easy for a native English speaker to learn. Every other word is a cognate, and the grammatical structure is very, very similar to English.

Japanese isn't so much difficult as it is very, very different from any Indo-European language. In addition to the horrible nightmare that is Kanji, the whole structure of the language is different. When going from English to Spanish (or vice-versa), pretty much every word or phrase in one language corresponds to one with an identical meaning in the other. Take, for instance, the sentence, "I have an ugly dog." In Spanish, it would be "Yo tengo un perro feo." There's a direct correspondence between each word in the two sentences ("I have" -> "Yo tengo"; "a" -> "un"; "ugly" -> "feo"; "dog" -> "perro"), and they're in roughly the same order. The subject and object are the same. The equivalent Japanese sentence would be something like "Migurushii inu ga imasu." ("There is an ugly dog." The subject is implied. I shit you not.) It's not easy for a westerner to wrap his mind around.

Kanji are terrible. There's no way around it. By sixth grade, children are expected to be able to read and write 1000 characters--half of what you need to be a functioning adult. It's ridiculous. If a western child can't read and write by age 11, he gets enrolled in the Special Olympics.

I'm not saying that Spanish is inherently easier. A child growing up in Japan probably learns (spoken) Japanese with as much ease as a child growing up in Spain or Latin America would learn Spanish. But for adult learners of the language, Spanish is a much less stressful endeavor. Besides, you can practice it pretty much everywhere in the U.S. that there are minimum wage workers around. :)

Re:Japanese QWERTY

[GlobalEcho]

I'm not terribly knowledgeable about linguistics, but I do know that Korean is written in a bona fide alphabet that separates vowel and consonant symbols (contrast to the two syllabaries {katakana and hiragana} used by Japanese). It's invention is attributed to a king many hundreds of years ago.

Academic Korean writing (I've been told) still uses lots of Chinese characters. I get the impression it's a style/showoff thing.

Like English, with germanic-derived and latin-derived vocabularies combined ["hate" versus "detest"], Korean has "native" Korean words and chinese derived words.

You are considered an eloquent speaker if you use a lot of "chinese character words" -- words derived from the Chinese that in previous decades might have been written with the Chinese characters, but these days are probably spelled out like almost everything else. This is somewhat analogous to English, where the sentences comprised of latin-derived words are usully considered more erudite.

Re:Japanese QWERTY

[Hiro Antagonist]

Kanji are terrible. There's no way around it. By sixth grade, children are expected to be able to read and write 1000 characters--half of what you need to be a functioning adult. It's ridiculous. If a western child can't read and write by age 11, he gets enrolled in the Special Olympics.

If a 'western' child is expected to know everything they need to know as an adult at age eleven, why are English classes mandated up to age 18, with an additional two years in college? Kanji aren't easy to be sure, but I'd wager they're just as difficult as the wealth of non-phonetic vocabulary required for Western students. Words like 'rendezvous', 'necessary', and 'ersatz' are all difficult to learn for kids, yet they make do.

The equivalent Japanese sentence would be something like "Migurushii inu ga imasu." ("There is an ugly dog." The subject is implied. I shit you not.) It's not easy for a westerner to wrap his mind around.

Yes and no; if a Westerner tries to attack Japanese like it's a Western language, than yeah, they'll have a hell of a time; on the other hand, if you're capable (and willing) of twisting your worldview around, then it's a hell of a lot easier. The Japanese language is much less concerned with concepts of ownership and time when compared to the European languages, and instead focuses more on relationships.

This is why things like 'Migurushii inu ga imasu.' make sense -- it's the fact that the dog is ugly that is important, not that it's your dog. If you wanted to emphasize the ownership, you could ('Watashi wa/no migurushii inu ga imasu.'), but you don't have to, whereas in Western languages, ownership is very important and almost never gets left out.

Re:Japanese QWERTY

[zanderredux]

What? Japanese "higly" phonetic and "highly" inflected?

The characters in the Japanese language (in the hiragana and katakana alphabets) are syllabic, not phonetic (as most western languages are). Japanese language phonemes are constrained to the pre-existent syllables and this is why it is so hard for native Japanese-speaking people to produce a liquid "r" sound (as in "lola": it will sound as "rora")

As for inflexion, the structure of japanese sentences is mostly comprised of a word+particle. This particle usually denotes the grammatical meaning of the preceding word, but in no ways it changes the way the word is written -- except for verbs. But Japanese inflexion doesnt go as far as finnish inflexion, for example, which can alter all words in a sentence. And most romance languages inflect verbs as well, so this is not unique to Japanese.

Re:Japanese QWERTY

[Anonymous Coward]

Japanese has an alphabet.

Incorrect. Japanese has two syllabaries and a set of ideograms.

You to remember how to spell each word you read in order to read it just like asains must remember what each symbol means to read.

No, it isn't the same. If you haven't watched Farscape, you probably haven't heard the word "frell"; as soon as you do hear it, you know how to write it. If you haven't heard it yet, you still know how it's pronounced. That sort of thing never happens with ideograms.

Re:Japanese QWERTY

[devnull17]

Kanji aren't easy to be sure, but I'd wager they're just as difficult as the wealth of non-phonetic vocabulary required for Western students. Words like 'rendezvous', 'necessary', and 'ersatz' are all difficult to learn for kids, yet they make do.

You know you're reaching when words like "rendezvous" and "ersatz" are your examples of words that people need to function in society. :) (And by "function," I'm talking about the level of ability required to do basic things like go food shopping and read directions.) The size of the "alphabet" used in Kanji compounds (1945, counting by character; a few hundred if you'd rather count them by radicals and variants thereof) is also larger than the equivalent in English (26; 30 in Spanish, although I believe that three of the additional four [ch, ll, rr] are no longer part of the alphabet in some countries; ñ remains) by several orders of magnitude. Also, please note that the purpose of my original post was to compare Japanese to Spanish, not English. With a few exceptions (most of which are colloquial and of foreign origin, such as the Mexican pronunciations of 'Mexico' and 'Oaxaca'), Spanish is a purely phonetic written language.

This is why things like 'Migurushii inu ga imasu.' make sense -- it's the fact that the dog is ugly that is important, not that it's your dog.

You're underselling the flexibility of English. I'd say that in that example sentence, the emphasis is on ownership. (The subject is "I".) One could easily say "My dog is ugly" or "The dog is ugly" and not stress the ownership so much (or at all). (Incidentally, I'd say that the concept of ownership in English is less artificial than you seem to indicate--it's not that we overemphasize the issue as much as the Japanese try to avoid it. Of course, as an American, I'm clearly biased.)

Regardless of language, it seems like people can express the same range of ideas fairly consistently. (Observe that a lot of the things that you supposedly can't say in Japanese are very easily achieveable, albeit very rude, in colloquial speech and slang.) The difference is the level of subtlety and implicitness that Japanese encourages. Again, I'm not saying it's inherently more difficult from an objective point of view; simply that it's very counterintuitive to those of us raised on (at least partially) Latin-based languages.

Do you think I used enough parentheses?

Re:Japanese QWERTY

[Angus Prune]

Why isn't something like this used for predictive text or spell checkers?
Spell checkers (ok, i'll admit I've only really used the microsoft office one) don't even seem to gave basic grammar to help with the spell check (subject noun object - in that order to help pick the word).

The impression I got from your post is exactly the sort fo thing (or even mroe advanced) that is done to produce the kanji.

Re:Japanese QWERTY

[stagl]

well, i'm glad i'm not the only one who though of that picture. :/

Re:Japanese QWERTY

[chipace]

It's really easy to read japanese, just pre-process the text... (for paper books this is sol):

http://www.popjisyo.com

I wonder..

[XaXXon]

where's the source for their modified linux?

Seems like every time an announcement like this is made a week later we find out they aren't making the source available..

Re:I wonder..

[RazorX90]

Open Source and Sony? I thought when those two things come together you get a matter-antimatter reaction.

Re:I wonder..

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, unless you've purchased one, who cares?

Re:I wonder..

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to buy one in order to have rights to the source under the terms of the GPL. Otherwise, everybody could just go around demanding everybody else's personal unreleased kernel hacks and total chaos and geek knife fights would ensue.

Re:I wonder..

[peterprior]

Nope.. Don't forget their Playstation 2 Linux Kit / Distribution...

Re:I wonder..

[Anonymous Coward]

That depends on how it's distributed.

Re:I wonder..

[zero_offset]

Can we just leave Sony out of it and pay for geek knife fights directly?

Re:I wonder..

[Eraser_]

I must be new here, but how about doing your own research before making statements which assumes fault? I must say that I have never been burned by Sony electronics, it seems everyone else found their linux offerings just fine. A quick "your shit breaks we don't care" disclaimer, and you get a page of categorized downloads. Isn't this what we hate about the RIAA? (Of which Sony Music is a member...but not sony electronics) You are buying CD's you dirty thief! Have some awful copy protection!

Do I like RPM? Not particularly, do I care? Not in the least. The software is there and for the world to use. Maybe if this were, say, Linksys could we preface this release with "wheres the source", but they seem to have cleaned up their act.

and still...

[PhuckH34D]

I can't imagine that that reads better than a real book/paper.
Smaller volume though then de full LOTR trillogy for example

Old Reliable

[Obyron]

For me nothing will ever beat the feeling of actually having the paper in my hands. Sorry folks, it may be mean to the trees, but nothing has the same feel as an actual paper book.

Re:Old Reliable

[JanneM]

I think you misunderstand the intended use of devices like this.

I have a PDA for reading, but for me it not as an alternative to books - it's an alternative to _no_ books. It's something I can carry around that can contain several hundred texts (including reference works, fiction and so on) when I am travelling, when I am not at home, or (as now) when I live in a different country for a time. Bringing along hundreds of physical books is just not an option.

The feature set of this device is (for me) properly compared with the PDA I currently use, rather than with a physical book. Sadly, while the screen seems very good, the use of DRM will likely cripple the device so badly it might as well not exist for me.

I have zero interest in buying content for it - I just want to be able to easily upload any textual content in a standard format (be it html, pdf or whatever) and display and search it on the device. I suspect that this is not possible with this device.

Re:Old Reliable

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you are misunderstanding devices like this. It's made to replace books. PDAs are not. This is. Get it now?

Re:Old Reliable

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

For me nothing will ever beat the feeling of actually having the paper in my hands.

That's perfectly fine. But the generation has already been born that will not share your preference. It's a matter of what's available when you grow up. My teachers' teachers wrote everything by long hand, including final versions of thngs. My teachers used the typewriter for final versions but composed in longhand. I write everything in a word processor first time through but still prefer hardcopy for reading. My students will soon be comfortable composing and reading electronically.

My question is, what's next?

Re:Old Reliable

[klaasb]

That is probably just you.
In a few generation all the children have to carry to school is one sheet op electronic paper.
There backs won't be damaged by loads of books and notebooks.

And ofcourse they will laugh at there old fasioned grandpa. Electronic paper is to paper, what paper is to clay tablets.

Re:Old Reliable

[zero_offset]

I suspect that this is not possible with this device.

You need only look as far as the "Sony" name badge to confirm that...

Re:Old Reliable

[WindBourne]

Personally, I find that paper back books are worthless. I have been telling my GF to buy up any hard bound books esp. the leather bounds. They tend to be done up right. My guess is that in about 10-15 years from now, paper backs will not exists and the leather bounds will cost the equivilent of 200-500 in todays USD$.

The reason for this is simple economics. A paper back involves tress (good, but costly), huge printing presses (mechannical things that must be bought), huge amounts of ppl that work (typical union) that is involved in nothing more than mmaking and transportation of these. Suddenly, the whole industry disappears. I would also guess that most publishing houses will disappear. Instead, it will be a large number of critics that will read/examine the media.

E-paper will be hearlded as one of the bigger temporary changes that will wipe out and industry. It is close to working on a flexable surface which will enable displays to be rolled up (think parchment), or others will be the exact dimension of paper-backs, and I suspect that we will see coffee table size tablets laying around the house (in about 10 years or so).

Re:Old Reliable

[fucksl4shd0t]

That's perfectly fine. But the generation has already been born that will not share your preference. It's a matter of what's available when you grow up. My teachers' teachers wrote everything by long hand, including final versions of thngs. My teachers used the typewriter for final versions but composed in longhand. I write everything in a word processor first time through but still prefer hardcopy for reading. My students will soon be comfortable composing and reading electronically.

Gee, I wonder where I fit in. I'm 30ish (well, I'll be thirty this year), and I prefer typing to writing on paper, but I actually prefer the Grafitti on my Clie to typing. Sure, it's not as fast, but it's much more portable than a keyboard. I can't even remember the last time I read something on a paper book. I fill up all available memory on my Clie with books, and as I finish each one I delete it. When it's empty of books, I fill it again. I've been reading more and at a steadier rate for the last 6 months than I *ever* have in my life, and I"ve got much less time to do so than I ever have in my life.

And I just know that when we can write into a computer, we can search what we've written, and when the computer shows us what we wrote, it can be read by anyone in any font they prefer. Beats the hell out of rating someone's penmanship everytime you try to read their longhand.

My question is, what's next?

Um, penis tattoos?

Re:Old Reliable

[CriX]

I disagree as far as the applicable content.

I'm sure you'll be able to upload text files, but don't count on "standard format" like html or pdf... think .txt dude!

It would be quite cruel to ask your calculator to open a 10 megabyte PDF. I don't imagine this epaper will have any more horsepower.

Re:Old Reliable

[Avallach95]

I think what you're experiencing there is the cultural anomoly that goes with being a geek. :-)

More seriously, I find that my own interest in technology and related matters results in my having a much greater technology comfort level than the majority of people my age. (Yes, it's sort of a A=A argument...) The result then is that I'm much more at home among a younger crowd, particularly when matters of communication and technology are concerned.

Geeks are a poor indicator of their generation's technology comfort. They are, however, a pretty decent indicator of the next generation's comfort.

Re:Old Reliable

[Anonymous Coward]

My guess is that in about 10-15 years from now, paper backs will not exists and the leather bounds will cost the equivilent of 200-500 in todays USD$.

The reason for this is simple economics. A paper back involves tress (good, but costly), huge printing presses (mechannical things that must be bought), huge amounts of ppl that work (typical union) that is involved in nothing more than mmaking and transportation of these. Suddenly, the whole industry disappears.

Yeah, yeah, and the "paperless office" will finally become a reality too. Remember that? The idea was that everyone would use computers and email for everything.

Funny how I still spend most of my time filling out paper forms and filing paper invoices...

Re:Old Reliable

[bl1st3r]

The biggest problem with this awesome idea is the fact that the price tag will always be significant. It's almost as bad as school now where all the students are practically required to use a computer to type up all of their reports and things. It's getting to the point now where you can't pass school without a computer.

Fine for most people, but what about my sister who is living at home with my parents who aren't exactly rich and continually have problems with running Windows that leaves them without a working computer for weeks at a time.

And what happens if you lose all the data on your PDA/Computer/whatever? Data is very easy to erase and a high magnetic charge can easily wipe away gigs of data. If I spill coffee on paper, yea, it's ruined, but at least the data is still there.

Just some concerns.

-blister

Re:Old Reliable

[Anonymous Coward]

There backs

Maybe you should have spent more time breaking your back in english class bucko.

I kiddd I kiddd.

Re:Old Reliable

[Lumpy]

I love your idea, and concept. and I have tried desperately to impliment it.

Problem #1 - important Up-to-date books are NOT available as ebooks. textbooks WILL NEVER be e-books as the publishers and writers are greedy pricks. I would love to have many manuals, technical books and other very important info on my zaurus or Palm device at my disposal at any time, but I found that finding the content is 100% impossible due to the rampant greed and disdain for e-books in the publishing world.

Until the publishers get it, or the government forces them.. it's a pipe dream that should have been a reality years ago.

Even the overly DRM'd readers had a dismal amount of books available outside of the "entertainment" selection. A physical book has NO DRM in it, and consumers demand the same in their e-books.

DRM will only guarentee one thing... the demise of the used book store.. something that writers and publishers have hated with a passion for centuries.

Re:Old Reliable

[Anonymous Coward]

As paper is to clay tablets...yes those clay tablets are still readable and around thousands of years after they were written, while alot of paper has vanished. "books" in electronic only form will vanish even faster than paper.

Re:Old Reliable

[CreatureComfort]

RTF CnX. This device will only load books in a proprietary Sony format. The files are only available from a Sony run eBook company. To make matters far worse, this one-and-only source for content only lets you "check out" books for 2 months. At the end of that time, you can no longer read the documents you paid for.

I.e. an expensive POS till somebody hacks it and gets rid of Sony's DRM BS. Even then, You're still stuck with MemoryStick for transfer though :-(.

Re:Old Reliable

[KaiserZoze_860]

I agree that its usefulness is somewhat hindered. I wouldn't want to try to read an entire 400 page novel on it. Although a useful enhancement might be that when you purchase a paperback or hardcover book, there could be a chip, memory stick, or a couple pages of barcode so that you could easily put that book into your reader. I often find myself with time to kill away from my books and it would be great to just pull out a reader and continue where I left off.

I think Sony has commuters in mind for this. Reading a large newspaper on a subway would be much easier with this thing although I'd like to see a larger screen version.
I'd like to change the design from a PDA style handheld to more like a scroll. The screen would be slightly flexible (think tape measure) and the controls would be in the handle. That way I can change the screen size based on where I am and how much room I have.

Re:Old Reliable

[JanneM]

I can get most reasonably current papers in PDF format online through my university. That accounts for a lot of my professional reading. Also, a surprising amount of reading material is available on the net in various nooks and crannies - and it is perfectly legal to get a copy if you own the original (which you really want to anyway - as I said, this is not a replacement for physical books). The "Safari" system of O'Reilly is one example, as is Baen Books promotion of great series by free downloads of older parts.

Also, in the context of University, for really important reference works, it turns out to be surprisingly easy to convince your colleagues to each take a stint with a scanner and OCR software so everybody can get an imperfect, error-ridden, but searchable and mobile copy to have on your computer.

Re:Old Reliable

[JanneM]

Actually, I've had absolutely no problem with reading long novels on my Yopy. The screen may be small and only show two paragraphs total, but it is clear and crisp, and I very rapidly got into the habit of flipping "pages" often. A book like "Down and Out in the Magical Kingdom" (greatly recommended!) did not take substantially longer time for me to read than it would have on paper.

I can contrast that with the experience on my Palm. The screen could display about as much information, but it was muggy and lower contrast. Reading any serious amount of text was out of the question. The quality of the screen really is much more important than the number of characters you fit on it.

Re:Old Reliable

[svallarian]

Yeah, right!

You think the textbook racket is going to ever go to a digital edition?

Ha!

Steven V.

Re:Old Reliable

[WindBourne]

I agree, but what the paperless office has not come about becuase

1. the programs were not all there
2. No way easy way to get signatures (notice now that few stores use a paper CC signature)
3. People will fight differences in their habits

This does not need a major change for a book reader. This will happen like digitial camera, only much quicker. In addition, I am guessing that the sucessful reader will quite probably have a tight leather cover and a night light (as opposed to a backlight) for that bedtime reading.

Re:Old Reliable

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, clay tablets last for millenia. Paper lasts for centuries. Epaper lasts for a few years.

This stuff will help bring about the end of history.

Re:Old Reliable

[kabocox]

Damn, kids won't be able to move cause they will be so fat without the excerise that carrying around 40-50 lbs of books daily for school does for them. It may be nice that thousands of books can fit into a digital format and be moved, but think would you want 6 required credits of PE for your own good?

Re:Old Reliable

[petgiraffe]

The biggest problem with this awesome idea is the fact that the price tag will always be significant.

Uhm, have you seen the price of books? An engineering student can buy a pile of computers/PDAs for the price of a semester's worth of books.

Re:Old Reliable

[zome]

and they won't have cartoons thay draw in their books when they grow up. too bad. there are a lot of memories in my paper-based notebooks :-)

Re:Old Reliable

[droleary]

As paper is to clay tablets...yes those clay tablets are still readable and around thousands of years after they were written, while alot of paper has vanished. "books" in electronic only form will vanish even faster than paper.

Time has a funny way of putting things in perspective, for those that want perspective, anyway. The first thing I thought when reading the parent post was how it added to the old "When I was your age" line; to the walking and snow and such, we will be able to add lamentations of carrying stacks of heavy books.

But back to my point about time: history forgets more than it remembers. You boast about how great clay tablets are, but where are the storehouses of knowledge they recorded? There might be only a handful that have usefully survived thousands of years. Some paper may have vanished, but the amount that has survived completely dwarfs the amount of clay recorded content. Likewise, the amount of electronic information published world wide dwarfs the amount of paper published information.

Yes, there is a high possibility that important electronic works will get lost, but you need to balance that with the fact that some of those works would not have, in the past, been saved on paper or even clay tablets. If only 0.1% of knowledge could be recorded on clay, perfect preservation still would have only given us that 0.1%, whereas if recording electronically only gave us 10%, we could preserve just a tenth of it we'd still be doing ten times better than before. The very words you're wrote would have had zero chance lasting over time if it were not for publication in an electronic form.

Re:Old Reliable

[NanoGator]

" while alot of paper has vanished. "books" in electronic only form will vanish even faster than paper."

In the digital world? Oh I don't think so.

Re:Old Reliable

[NanoGator]

"This stuff will help bring about the end of history."

Yeah because people will print stuff to epaper without burning a CD along the line.

Re:Old Reliable

[tommyboyprime]

Hey, I'm 57 and no longer buy paper books because I have no place to store them.

sorry, clickable

[qewl]

Japanese qwerty

The paper *is* reflective

[yatest5]

and can be seen in sunny environments? Erm, is that right?

Re:The paper *is* reflective

[WindBourne]

Yep.

The next step

[Capt'n Hector]

Why is this only being marked for e-books? Why not slap a wifi card and set it up to scan the 'net for rss feeds? Laptop monitor? I don't know about the rest of you, but I primarily use my monitor for reading text. Wouldn't it be nice to have a secondary display in which you can do word processing, read and compose email, browse slashdot, run command lines... I don't know about you guys, but I think that would be pretty sweet.

So the question is, would this be possible? Can the screen refresh its contents fast enough for normal computer use? Can it be used interchangably as a regular monitor? If so, this thing sounds great.

Re:The next step

[Maqueo]

How about setting up two monitors for the same PC? I have it at home and can't live without it anymore. I can code in one screen, and have a PDF/browser/DVD open in the other. It rocks :)

Re:The next step

[Sarojin]

because it's not very efficient for fast refreshes, just for static content, like pages in a book.

Re:The next step

[sffubs]

Yes!

This is exactly the kind of thing that needs to be in a PDA - a high resolution, low-power reflective display.

How long before I can buy a palm with one of these?

Re:The next step

[Eraser_]

Two monitors is a godsend which can only be trumped by three! But I must say, even my girlfriend can't live without two monitors now. She doesn't get how she got anything done on the computer before. Video card makers know it, most any new video card will come with both a DVI and a VGA port on them, and a DVI->VGA adapter. nvidia's are very nice, with support for spanning (2048x768) or "dual view" where it tricks your system to thinking there are two seperate video cards (More useful in my opinion).

Re:The next step

[Maqueo]

I actually DO have three monitors on my desk. Two for my main system, and another one for my second box, so I *could* add a forth to it I guess... but that would be overkill... anyways, I don't own a TV so that kinda makes up for it ;)

Re:The next step

[Eraser_]

so I *could* add a forth to it I guess...

I would pay good money to see you add a low-level programming language to your monitors... :)

Can it read free content ?

[mbyte]

Does anyone know if you can upload some "free" texts (HowTo's, gutenberg, etc) to this device ? The article only mentions BBeB, which has rather tight restrictions ... (i'm not permitted to read my books after 2 months ?! )

Re:Can it read free content ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am wondering the same thing.

My friends and I exchange a great deal of fanfic and (amazingly) original short stories, this would make it easier to read on the go.

Though, I still want a tablet PC, and this would take away some of the reasons to get one. Oohhh, the choices!

Re:Can it read free content ?

[iangoldby]

The article also said that "Publishers can choose to eschew BBeB and present pages - for example, those in unsupported scripts such as Cyrillic - as graphical images". Since graphical images are supported, I'd be surprised if plain text was not.

Re:Can it read free content ?

[PetrusMagnusII]

I went to Sonys site for the answer, and as per usual for Sony, they arn't very clear on the details. But, what it says is that in order to get the books on your dily-bop whatever it's called, you have to download them from certain sites wich have a membership fee per month that will alow you to download 3-5 books a month for 6-10USD a month. It doesn't say what the format is, so i guess you'll have to find someone that has one and ask them :)

I think it's pretty cool and i might wanna get one, but i just don't read that much.. hehe :) so i probaly wont get it. I ussually just sleep on the train.. But japaense people will love it. everyone reads on the train.. and you can read a lot when you have 2 to 4 hours round trip every day. Right now a pretty comon thing is book club stuff.. kinda like a blockbuster, but for books.. and it's usually inside the train station :)
if this could replace that, that'd be kinda cool.. but i think it will take a long while before it's completely accepted.

Re:Can it read free content ?

[Anne Thwacks]

3-5 books a month for 6-10USD a month for that price, I'd rather join the book club and download real books by snail-mail which I can pass on to my grand-children when I've done with them. This sounds like its about as viable as a 1999 dotcom.

Someone has lost the plot here. Is it them, or is it me?

Re:Can it read free content ?

[nkh]

And I'm surprised they don't have built-in Unicode support! They could make more money with books from all over the world.

Re:Can it read free content ?

[zero_offset]

Someone has lost the plot here. Is it them, or is it me?

Unfortunately, we have lost the plot.
Your sig precisely defines the Sony business model.

Re:Can it read free content ?

[Prof. Reginald]

"It runs a customized version of Linux, and being Sony-branded, supports MemoryStick."

Since it runs Linux, I'm sure someone will come up with something.

Re:Can it read free content ?

[WindBourne]

If not, just wait. This is the first of many that are coming. You can bet on it that ones that allow gutenberg downloads will do very well.

Re:Can it read free content ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently you don't have much use for libraries.

Re:Can it read free content ?

[cduffy]

Maybe -- but reading Memory Stick media without Sony's software is somewhere on the scale of "monumental"; they've got some serious protection in place there. So sure, you might be able to replace whatever internal flash the thing uses and boot your own OS -- but if you can't get to the hardware, what good does it do?

See the PS/2 for an example of what I'm talking 'bout; sony has a fully GPLed release of their custom kernel source, but still nobody but them can touch the hardware.

Re:Can it read free content ?

[Eric S. Smith]

book club ... books ... which I can pass on to my grand-children

Book-club books tend to be produced as cheaply as possible, and their durability and general quality suffers as a result. People who run used-book stores either avoid them entirely or won't pay much for them.

By which I mean to say that you may not be getting something that will last as long as you think it will.

Re:Can it read free content ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Warning: Subversive consumer detected.
Flaw: Understands the value of ownership over licensing. Knowledge reserved to corporate executives only.
Remediation: Report to Consumer Happiness Reeducation immediately.

I wish that wasn't partly serious...

Re:Can it read free content ?

[jp10558]

This isn't the first e-book reader. There have been/continue to be many. They all fail - I think for one main reason. They DRM their content, and only let you use DRM content bought from them.

Legal or not, most of the market who might spend $300-$400 on an e-book reader want- no demand - the ability to load their own content:

Websites
Creative Commons e-books
Gutenberg e-books
Heck, even the choice to buy the books from Amazon!

This is a nice device, but for me - I see no real use(unless the individual rental of books is absurdly low - $0.50 each) - I would want to own the books I've bought, and would want a backlight. The keyboard is not helpful, it's not useful because it is lacking many keys, and it's not graffiti like for that sort of entry. E-books probably don't really need any sort of data entry besides a way to set a bookmark.

I've said it before, and will say it again, my favorite e-book reader is the REB1100. Now if someone would start making one of those - but lose the DRM crap... it would be awesome. It would be nice to get the price down around $100 too - but I'm not really sure of the base cost to make one of the things, so maybe that is impossible.

Dupe...

[bircho]

Nothing new here:Link

Re:Dupe...

[JamieF]

I have an idea for some amazing new technology. It's called "search". The /. editors would use this killer app to see if a given story had already been posted on their own web site. If a submitted "new" story contained a link that was also contained in a past story, that would be noted and links to the old stories would be provided so that the editor could see if the story was a duplicate.

Another wild new idea: moderating stories and having that affect the editors' karma. Oh wait, that isn't a new idea, it's just an idea that the editors have shot down. So we can choose not to read stories from individual editors, but we can't choose not to read stupid stories, or duplicate stories, or stories that the community has decided are stupid. We just have to assume that editors are consistently awful or consistently perfect.

Getting there

[Teclis]

Now they need to make the power supply and electronics smaller, and the display bigger (at least 8.5x11). Add the ability to be able to roll it up or fold it and put it in your pocket and I might think about getting one.

Minority report is approaching.....

Re:Getting there

[WindBourne]

Wish granted. these are all coming.

Re:Getting there

[evilviper]

and the display bigger (at least 8.5x11).

What? Why in the hell would they do that?

As it is, it's bigger than most books I read, and considering the big margins in books to accomodate for the binding and whatnot, this is probably effectively much larger.

Besides, even if making it biger had some advantage, I wouldn't want it. 8.5x11 would make it so big it would be definately non-portable. As it is, I could carry it around pretty easy, and it's still big enough to read from comfortably.

I think they need to work on the formats it can read (HTML, PDF), and the media it accepts (CompactFlash), but other than that, it's close to perfect.

Re:Getting there

[puppet10]

Think 8.5"x11" that rolls up into a thin tube with the controls on it and containing the batteries. So carrying it wouldnt be that difficult although 8.5" is a bit long and having the controls at the bottom isn't the best place though you could do the controls on the side and 11" isn't much longer than 8.5". Still a 8.5" or 11" length 0.5" diameter tube isn't terrible to carry around.

Re:Getting there

[Ugmo]

Minority report is approaching.....

The parent post's comment reminds me of something I've noticed in the last few years.

This is completely off topic... but anyway. It seems to me that in fiction (books, movies) there periodically come these gadgets and ways of doing things. Years later these ideas come to reality. Sometimes they happen because people are inspired by movies. Sometimes the writers see what is happening around them and write about it but writers focus people's attention and they notice it.

Examples:

Rocket Ships and Laser beams in Flash Gordon, before these existed.

Atomic Power in the 50's.
Robots.

Cyberspace in William Gibson. Max Headroom.

Commmunicators in Star Trek.

The thing is, I don't see a lot of inspirational ideas coming out in paperback SF or from Hollywood lately. Minority Report is an exception. Maybe Johnny Cab robotic taxi cabs from Total Recall. I would like to see more. A little inspiration may create enthusiasm, heighten investment and increase jobs.

We need vision people.

Re:Getting there

[evilviper]

Think 8.5"x11" that rolls up into a thin tube

Yes, but I live in the real world, and screens that roll-up aren't going to be feasable, or reasonably priced, for at least a decade.

A rigid 8.5x11 device is certainly out of the question.

Re:Getting there

[puppet10]

But of course the original post you railed on mentioned all those characterisitcs but you still felt the need to make a snide remark. I never said that such a device was ready for market, only how a larger screen would be feasible to carry with additional technology mentioned by the original post.

refresh rate is not an issue

[randomized]

Unlike displays we are using to watch movies and play games, e-paper does not need insane refresh rates and even if it's 5 frames per second, allows for better quality reading due to very high contrast ratios.

Remember that this is black and white (at best greyscale) technology primarly designed for reading text. It will definitely be faster to change page than for you to flip the page of the book when reading.

I can't wait to get my hands on those. E-books are finally readable :)

Re:refresh rate is not an issue

[OblongPlatypus]

5 frames per second would make it last for a little more than half an hour on those 3 AAA batteries.

Re:refresh rate is not an issue

[OblongPlatypus]

Of course, reading the parent again, I realize a 5 fps refresh rate doesn't necessarily mean it'll show 5 new pages per second. So it'll be perfectly usable as an e-book reader.

My point is that you won't be running any games or window managers (or anything else that requires animation) with this technology.

Re:refresh rate is not an issue

[Anonymous Coward]

My point is that you won't be running any games or window managers (or anything else that requires animation) with this technology.

I think I speak for the group when I say "DER!"

Re:refresh rate is not an issue

[S3D]

Unlike displays we are using to watch movies and play games

However It could be quite good for low graphics, turn based puzzle/strategy games. Think of Minesweeper, soliter, chess, etc. Could be another opportunity for small/indie developers (think of low cost 2$ games), and it can also leverage Linux gaming...If it has WiFi or bluetooth it could be a viable multiplayer platform too.

Re:refresh rate is not an issue

[Awptimus Prime]

There is no such thing as a refresh rate on a progressive display. There is pixel refresh latency -- but that is quite a bit different, technically speaking, and does not matter when looking at a static image. Anything above 15ms pixel refresh is annoying if you are playing a FPS. 25ms or less is good for an RPG. Anything higher, and smooth scrolling text will begin to ghost.

Progressive displays simply turn on or off a pixel and set a color to it. Non-progressive displays, like your CRT, constantly refreshes the information in a sweep across the entire screen. Thus it has a refresh rate.

It goes to show how many people got their display education from the Windows display control panel. I cracked up when I saw I still had to set a refresh rate with my LCD panel hooked up via DVI in XP.

Re:refresh rate is not an issue

[WindBourne]

How about a "refresh" rate of 0? There is nothing of that with this product. The idea is to use energy to change screen, but once changed, it remains without any extra energy.

Re:refresh rate is not an issue

[egomaniac]

Progressive displays simply turn on or off a pixel and set a color to it. Non-progressive displays, like your CRT, constantly refreshes the information in a sweep across the entire screen. Thus it has a refresh rate.

That is not what progressive means. Progressive is the opposite of interlaced -- an interlaced display alternates updating the even and odd scan lines, while a progressive display updates all of the scan lines in one pass. Whether it requires constant refreshing (CRTs) or not (LCDs and Plasmas) is immaterial.

Re:refresh rate is not an issue

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.sony.jp/products/Consumer/LIBRIE/produc ts/products_01.html is the link which describes display technologie in pictures

Re:refresh rate is not an issue

[sjanes71]

Would be excellent for turn-based wargamming (think hex-grids and chiclets) or NetHack-- however, I haven't seen any indication of the displays being "interactive" yet or having any kind of wireless access. I think they're mainly focusing on the "eBook" problem, not a portable high resolution display that also works like ePaper.

Re:refresh rate is not an issue

[Anonymous Coward]

Choose your own adventure!

Re:refresh rate is not an issue

[Anonymous Coward]

Another point (since the other poster noted how you've made little sense): the refresh rate in the XP settings are for the video card, not the monitor. If you're playing a game with a decent card and a flatscreen monitor, setting it to anything above 60 mhz is a waste because the card can (and will) try to reach that refresh rate regardless. The card could care less what the monitor is set at.

Re:refresh rate is not an issue

[Anonymous Coward]

It goes to show how many people got their display education from the Windows display control panel. I cracked up when I saw I still had to set a refresh rate with my LCD panel hooked up via DVI in XP.

That's because video cards have always gotten updates by polling display memory. Theoretically, you could design a video card that would update the display as soon as the pixels were written to it, but you'd have to start from scratch with the drivers. You wouldn't really gain much anyway, especially considering that most of the time you want to be able to display on a CRT with the same product.

170 dpi?

[Amiga Lover]

What's the point of 170dpi? My Palm has perhaps 40dpi at the most and it has perfectly readable text.

I think this is a case of a company marketing a product for a niche that doesn't need anywhere near the complexity or cost of the product they're pushing.

Re:170 dpi?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you try to read a whole novel on a Palm
device? Sure it is do-able albeit far from
being comfortable in the long run. Higher DPI
screens are necessary when you really want
a display as soft on the eyes as real papers,
for prolonged reading session.

Anyway, your comment reminds me of a guy (don't
remember his name tough...) that said once that
nobody will ever need more than 640k of RAM...
I wonder what this guy has become now... Well,
who knows...

Re:170 dpi?

[DAldredge]

It is much easer on most peoples eyes, which explains the popularity of paper. I would rather read something printed on paper than on my 21 inch Viewsonic P815 or my laptops LCD.

Re:170 dpi?

[Anonymous Coward]

i like the idea of the high resolution display.
with 170dpi you will get
a) more text on the screen :)
b) detailed typography (text in bold, italic, different fonts)
c) a appearance that is closer to a real book and therefore better readable text (i guess)

Re:170 dpi?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder what this guy has become now... Well, who knows...

The richest man in the world? ... no? oh, wait... The second richest man in the world? ... nervermind....

BTW, i have read a book on a palm III. Kids, never try to do that...

Re:170 dpi?

[Anonymous Coward]

You have got to be kidding. You can never have enough resolution.

Re:170 dpi?

[Rob Simpson]

I've read dozens, on a Palm IIIxe (160x160), a Handera 330 (240x320), and a Sony SJ33 (320x320). Yet the latter is the least comfortable to read on because of its smaller screen area.

Re:170 dpi?

[whoopass]

The lower the DPI, the more strain you have on your eyes/brain when reading. Essentially, your brain has to do pattern matching on the things you're seeing. When the text is jagged (aliased) your both the way your eye traverses it and the way your brain processes it are less efficient. So you spend more energy reading/your eyes get tired faster and you read slower.

The interesting thing here is whether you can change the font to one your eyes have adapted to better. Often I will choose an edition of a book not based on the binding/paper/publisher, but on the font they chose to use. Some fonts, some spacings, some character sizes, ruin my reading speed.

Re:170 dpi?

[WegianWarrior]

What's the point of 170dpi? My Palm has perhaps 40dpi at the most and it has perfectly readable text.

As already mentioned, higher resolution is easier on the eyes.. and recall that this is a japanse product which means it has to be able to display japanse letters (kanji and katakana I believe they are called) which needs a higher resolution then the latin alphabet to remain readable.

Re:170 dpi?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your palm can do different shaded pixels and therefore can antialias. With only B&W you need a higher resolution to compensate.

Also, print outs look better at 600 dpi than 300, so I'm guessing 170 isn't going to be enough for some folks.

Re:170 dpi?

[herrison]

Resolution has an impact even before detailed character-based pattern matching occurs. Better type definition improves the brain's ability to gestalt process the word/sentence shape (which is why lower-case type is more legible than upper-case, there is better shape definition); thus the eye movements (saccades) are more effective, permitting 2/3 eye movements per line rather than constant reiteration as the brain prepares the data for a finer degree of pattern matching.

Re:170 dpi?

[Frambooz]

What's the point of 170dpi?

In fact, some magazines and other printed media contain text rasterized at way, way higher resolution, in the ranges of 1200-2400 dpi even. Graphics are usually rasterized at 150 - 300 dpi, 600 - 1200 for high quality (high dollar) prints. On the other hand, most colour-printed media use colour separations to obtain (seemingly) higher resolution.

Re:170 dpi?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh god.

So there are people that still don't understand that.

The resolution at which it is rasterized is different from the resolution of the printing.
The latter is usually no more than 300dpi, but yet it is rasterized at 2400dpi.

Why?

With offset, you need to create some intermediate positive, which is used to burn the negative used for printing.
This positive is just like, say, a Kodachrome, but a laser is used to imprint it.
And it the precision of the laser displacements that correspond to 2400dpi.

In other words, you use many fine points (2400) to draw some pattern which is defined with less points (300).

Since the offset printing process has several steps, you have to start with a very high resolution.
Yet the 2400 dpi are used to draw something defined at 300 dpi.

Moreover, ink wouldn't usually provide more than 300 dpi resolution. Some 'luxe' printing are done at 600 dpi, though.

Re:170 dpi?

[Anonymous Coward]

The parent is correct.

If you want an analogy:
the 'pixels' on your LCD screen are small rectangles, but they are not perfect. They have been built with a 'resolution' of their own.
Even if you have only 72*3 such rectangles per inch, each rectangle is very sharp. If it was built with laser bursts, you could give it a resolution in burst (or dot) per inch, and it would probably be something like much higher than 2400dpi. But not perfect, so not infinite.

Re:170 dpi?

[nikster]

higher resolution will be more pleasant to look at and easier to read.

if you absolutely must have a quantitative parameter: you will tire sooner reading lower resolution.

Re:170 dpi?

[imsabbel]

whoa. Your palm seems to be laptop-sized.
because mine has 320x320 pixel, meaning with 40dpi it would have a 8x8" screen. Quite large.

In fact all newer palms have over 100dpi, thats why the text is perfectly readable. And a bit more resolution doesnt hurt.

Re:170 dpi?

[tomdarch]

Did you look at the photo on the press release? One word for you: KANJI. Japanese (and similar written languages) have much, much more complex character sets (and much more complex/smaller accent marks) than the Western European character sets. There are kanji that combine three or four root characters and are differentiated from each other by two, three or four little tic marks inside the character! Also, I've tried to put fairly complex maps on a palm-type device for outdoor recreation uses, and they just don't work well. Higher resolution will help a lot!

yeah..

[djcreamy]

You people think this is neat? Just wait until the toilet paper in public restrooms stream commercials. Try taking care of business then. Paper and monitors, please don't mix the two.

Price Factor

[RazorX90]

As cool as this is, how inexpensive can it get, and long is it gonna take to get there.

But actually, when you think about it, it's only the price of about 4 toner cartages (that's for a small office laser printer, don't know what other ink prices run...feel free to elaborate on this).

PDF Support?

[DAldredge]

Does this unit have support for PDF's? Lack of PDF support is what kept me from buying the last generation of dedicated ebook readers.

Re:PDF Support?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you get pdf then I want postscript. They use the same technology base so it cannot be too difficult. Just imagion playing Life on your way to work.

Cost?

[DAldredge]

What do the tools necessary to be a 'publisher' cost and what restrictions do that place of what you can use them for? It will do little good if the 'publishing' tools cost $5000 - $10000 USD per year.

A Book iPod?

[malia8888]

From the press release : Sony's e-Book reader LIBRIé, the first device to utilize Philips' display solution for enhanced reading, is similar in size and design to a paperback book. LIBRIé allows users to download published content, such as books or comic strips from the Internet, and enjoy it anywhere at any time. LIBRIé can store up to 500 downloaded books

I can't help thinking that this technology is "borrowing a page" from the MP3 players like the iPod.

A writer's dream, almost

[heironymouscoward]

Very close to my ideal writer's tool: a portable writing pad consisting of a high-resolution B&W screen like this, a fold-up wireless keyboard, a long battery life, and just one application: a word processor. It should run entirely from flash memory . And a $400 price tag would be sweet too.

Re:A writer's dream, almost

[fille]

I had the same idea a couple of weeks ago. I have a Palm Zire and I really like it. If the screen was bigger (10 inch or so) I could use it to write my phd, do some calculations in a spreadsheet, etc. I don't need a color screen or a fast cpu. However, such devices seem to be quite expensive or don't exist. The closest I found was the Clio Vadem PC-1000 but it has a color screen and is rather big.. :(
This Sony thing would be great but I suppose you can't install your own programs on it..

Re:A writer's dream, almost

[Bazzargh]

"The closest I found was the Clio Vadem PC-1000 but it has a color screen and is rather big.. :("

You want a 10" screen but think the PC-1000 is big! I have to say that I've been looking for that kind of thing too. I guess marketing depts worldwide that B/W won't sell, even with higher res and better battery life than the colour alternatives.

The Vadem, its twin the "TriPad" and the Psion Series 7 were the closest I could find to what I wanted.

Taking the cue from the grandparent to look for word processors I also found some other options - mainly aimed at the educational market.

Of the links above, the two cheaper quickpads seem the most viable - it works as a wireless or USB keyboard at your pc, then just walk away with some text files (and apparently spreadsheets too?). At 11" its a bit large but it makes sense if you see it as a keyboard replacement. Interesting note on how it works in a review I found:

"When a user returns to the office, the QuickPAD allows the files in the Text Editor to be uploaded into any favorite word-processing program. This trick is accomplished by having the keyboard "replay" all the keystrokes of the text editor's file."

Interesting. So if you combine a Happy Hacking keyboad, a keylogger and a display, you'd have the same thing?

i'll wait just a little bit longer...

[utexaspunk]

this technology has a little way to go yet before it really kicks ass. for one, they don't have color yet, and secondly, the contrast ratio isn't that great- it looks more like black on grey than black on white. in another couple years, i bet they'll have this with higher resolution, higher contrast, and full color, and probably fast enough to do any computer activity on it. What will also be really cool would/will be full bleed- no more frames around your screen- image from edge to edge. This technology is what will hopefully finally make the paperless office a reality. Portable, high resolution reflective displays. Right now, we probably use more paper than ever, because technology allows us to communicate as much as we want, but we hate reading it on the screen...

Re:i'll wait just a little bit longer...

[klaasb]

Hey, and it will have to play mp3's ofcourse.

I'm waiting for Apple to jump this bandwagon. They will at least make it look cool ;-)

Re:i'll wait just a little bit longer...

[evilviper]

for one, they don't have color yet,

How many books have you read that were typed in color? All of mine are black text on white paper.

The occasional picture would look a bit better in color, but B&W looks good enough. It's ready for primetime in that department.

the contrast ratio isn't that great- it looks more like black on grey than black on white

This is not a computer screen that you'll be playing UT2K3 on. It's solely for text display, and the contrast is better than it needs to be already.

i bet they'll have this with higher resolution,

It's 800x600 in a ~8" screen, with a much higher DPI than a computer monitor. How much higher res do you want? Besides, this is not for playing games on, it's for reading text.

and probably fast enough to do any computer activity on it.

If they're smart, they'll stick to being just fast enough to render PDFs and HTML docs. Nobody wants a device that goes through 3 AAA batteries in 5 minutes. BTW, this is a freaking eBook, not a PDA. It doesn't need to be able to run Office. Come on now.

Re:i'll wait just a little bit longer...

[hankwang]

in another couple years, i bet they'll have this with higher resolution, higher contrast, and full color

Don't wait too long for the full-color version. In order to do color reproduction without a backlight, you need overlapping colored pixels, and that is an order of magnitude harder than just putting colored pixels next to each other, as on a TFT or CRT screen. If you want to create white and put red, green, and blue reflecting pixels next to each other, the result will be reflecting roughly 1/3 of the light in the best case, which is grey. It's comparable to a colored mobile-phone display with the backlight switched off.

Re:i'll wait just a little bit longer...

[egomaniac]

In order to do color reproduction without a backlight, you need overlapping colored pixels, and that is an order of magnitude harder than just putting colored pixels next to each other, as on a TFT or CRT screen. If you want to create white and put red, green, and blue reflecting pixels next to each other, the result will be reflecting roughly 1/3 of the light in the best case, which is grey. It's comparable to a colored mobile-phone display with the backlight switched off.

Wrong on several counts.

1) The colors do not need to overlap. Why would they? As you noted, monitors use side-by-side colors rather than overlapping colors, and e-paper would be no different in this regard.

2) As this is a reflective display rather than an emissive display, the primary colors would be cyan, magenta, and yellow (possibly with black), not RGB.

3) I have no idea where you get the "1/3 of the light" figure from. This technology is quite different than LCDs -- LCDs have fundamental limitations on their ability to transmit light due to the use of polarizing filters. e-paper does not use polarizing filters, just plain ol' reflection, and this means that (theoretically) there is nothing stopping e-paper from having brightness comparable to good paper. It's just a matter of refining the technology.

The real reason you haven't seen a color version yet, and aren't likely to anytime soon, is that e-paper is currently a strictly on/off display. It does not do grayscales at all. Suppose you figured out how to triple the resolution of this device and switch from B&W to CMY. You now have a display capable of showing exactly eight colors: cyan, magenta, yellow, red, green, blue, black, and white. That's it. You need intermediate steps (say, 50% cyan and 25% yellow) to display any other colors.

Either somebody needs to figure out how to make e-paper do grayscales, or the resolution needs to be way higher so that many subpixels of each color can be devoted to each pixel.

Re:i'll wait just a little bit longer...

[hankwang]

I'll will elaborate.

The colors do not need to overlap. Why would they? As you noted, monitors use side-by-side colors rather than overlapping colors, and e-paper would be no different in this regard.

I can imagine technologies for colored pixels that result in either a scale from black to a saturated color (be it RGB or CMY), or from white to a saturated color (RGB or CMY). Let us take white-to-CMY as an example.

Colors are mixed ADDITIVELY. Why? Your eye is receiving light from all three pixels! But each pixel only represents 1/3 of the reflecting surface, so the

• cyan pixels can represent RGB values between (0.0,0.33,0.33) (ON) and (.33,.33,.33) (OFF),
• the magenta between (0.33,0,0.33) and (.33,.33,.33),
• and the yellow between (0,0.33,0.33) and (.33,.33,.33).

(These RGB values are without gamma correction).

Examples:

• All pixels switched off (white): white color (100% reflection of all wavelengths).
• All pixels switched on: total RGB (.67,.67,.67). Light grey.
• Only cyan switched on: 2/3 of the pixels, i.e. the magenta and yellow ones, are still white. 1/3 of the pixels is cyan. The result will be an unsaturated cyan, corresponding to RGB (0.67,1,1) (ignoring gamma correction), instead of pure cyan (0,1,1).
• Cyan and magenta switched on. You may think that that results in blue (0,0,1), but it will actually be the ADDITIVE sum of cyan(0,0.33,0.33) + magenta(0.33,0,0.33) + white(0.33,0.33,0.33) = (0.67,0.67,1), an pale light blue.

So this display will be able to represent colors varying between white and light grey, and some pale colors lying inbetween.

Similar problems will occur with RGB pixels, or with a black background instead of a white.

In order to mix cyan and magenta into pure blue, you have to cover the whole surface with magenta, and then with cyan on top of that, so that the magenta layer will filter out all green light, and the cyan layer will filter out all the red light. That will be very hard, though not fundamentally impossible, to implement as e-paper.

Re:i'll wait just a little bit longer...

[sharekk]

The real reason you haven't seen a color version yet, and aren't likely to anytime soon, is that e-paper is currently a strictly on/off display. It does not do grayscales at all.

Actually I think you're wrong here. I've seen several sites saying that there is at least 4 shades of gray along with the black and white (they're translations of the sony japanese site though - I can't prove they're reliable) and the e-ink site has a pretty clear drawing of how to do gray (http://www.eink.com/technology/) Granted, it'd take more do color well but it'll happen if this version takes off.

Re:i'll wait just a little bit longer...

[Archibald Buttle]

Two points...

Firstly as the parent poster correctly writes to produce a colour epaper display you don't actually need overlapping colours, and the right approach would indeed be CMYK. However to compensate for a lack of pixel overlap you need a higher resolution.

Whilst colour printing does involve overprinting it does not need it, since the eye gets fooled by things printed close to each other, which is the same principle as CRTs and LCDs. In printing a colour can either be "on" or "off" - there's no way to get a printing press to print a shade of black, or cyan, or any other colour. You compensate for this either by halftoning or using spot colours. Spot colours allow for only a single additional colour to be used. Halftoning is a technique of producing a patern of dots very close to each other to fool the eye into seeing a shade.

From what I understand this Sony display is capable of displaying four shades of gray. The reality of this is that it's not really showing gray, but rather not fully turning around a black pixel, so only a proportion of the black side of the pixel is shown. This works because each pixel on an epaper display is basically a ball which is white one side and black on the other. What they're doing sounds pretty smart to me, and provides some compensation for the relatively low resolution of their dislay. Yes, the resolution at 170ppi is higher than CRTs and LCDs, but it's way lower than the 300dpi our laser printers were putting out 15 years ago.

For a decent colour epaper display you'd need clusters of four pixels in cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. You would need a significantly higher resolution to get a good display out of this, even with the greyscale technology Sony seems to have.

Re:i'll wait just a little bit longer...

[SETY]

This is not a computer screen that you'll be playing UT2K3 on. It's solely for text display, and the contrast is better than it needs to be already.

E-ink (contrast 11:1) states they are beating the wall street journal (7:1) for contrast ratio. This is good, but most people don't read newspaper quality documents all day because your eyes get sore. Laser printers have a contrast ratio of 500:1 or so. That is what they should be aiming for. To say they are all done now is very premature.

t's 800x600 in a ~8" screen, with a much higher DPI than a computer monitor. How much higher res do you want? Besides, this is not for playing games on, it's for reading text.

Umm yeah, fast moving game vs. reading text for long periods of time. The higher the contrast and DPI the less eye strain. Plane and simple.

sources:

www.eink.com/pdf/eink_key_benefits_02.pdf
http: //www.google.ca/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF- 8&q=laser+printer+contrast+ratio+black+text&btnG=S earch&meta=

Re:i'll wait just a little bit longer...

[lorax]

The real reason you haven't seen a color version yet, and aren't likely to anytime soon, is that e-paper is currently a strictly on/off display. It does not do grayscales at all.

According to the Guardian article: The display is based on tiny 40-micron diameter microcapsules, which contain dozens of oppositely charged black and white particles suspended in an oil solution. Electromagnetic fields dictate whether black, white or a combination of both are drawn to the surface of each capsule to render the desired shades

So it does do grayscale. Maybe in a few years they will figure out how to do color.

It sounds like an interesting product, hopefully there will be a way to download independently developed content and they won't lock you in to just using their library of 'approved' vendors.

Re:i'll wait just a little bit longer...

[hankwang]

Firstly as the parent poster correctly writes to produce a colour epaper display you don't actually need overlapping colours,

It seems that I'm the only one here who believes that you need to overlap colors. Can you explain me how C, M, Y, K pixels next to each other, each covering 1/4 of the surface, can give a black impression instead of a grey, when regarded from a distance?

Re:i'll wait just a little bit longer...

[Bo'Bob'O]

No, it would indeed be RGB unless it somehow used transparent pixels.

CMY or CMYK is used when you can subtract colors, but when you are talking about pixels that are next to each other and reflect the light, they do not subtract from each other. The reflected light adds together. If you used CMY reflectively, you'd never get Red Blue or Green because CMY each reflect two of those colors, so you could never isolate just one. So if you had C and M reflecting, you'd be reflecting Green and Blue from one, and Blue and Red from the other. Meaning you'd have a very dirty shade of blue, but never blue.

What he is saying about gray is, that because you have the surface divided up into thirds, each reflecting only a third of the spectrum. Think about it this way. If you could chose between a 3'x1' uncolored mirror, or mirror or three 1'x'1 mirrors all tinted with R G and B each, which would you chose if you wanted the most light? Obviously uncolored one, because each of the colored ones don't stop absorbing their part spectrum magically just because they are placed next to each other. Each one is still absorbing (roughly) 1/3 of the available light, just in different parts of the spectrum apiece.

Now, this isn't to say that some highly reflective surface might be plenty adequate for readability in normal light, so 1/3 the light could be probably be fine.

Re:i'll wait just a little bit longer...

[protoshoggoth]

It's 800x600 in a ~8" screen, with a much higher DPI than a computer monitor. How much higher res do you want?

1200 dpi, the same as decent-quality printed material. I mean, that is what this is all about, right, replacing printed material?

Re:i'll wait just a little bit longer...

[DrVomact]

I've always said that paper will be replaced just as soon as they invent something just as good. Judging from this Sony product, we're not there yet.

I think what we need is an electronic display medium that not only looks like paper, but feels like it. In other words, I want an e-display book I can riffle through. I want to page the display by...turning a page. I want the print to be as clear and crisp as in a good-quality book (resizeable type would be nice as my eyes get worse). And I want it to weigh next to nothing.

What I've got in mind is something that looks like a small hard-bound book, say 5" x 6", has about 50 real physical pages that display digital ink, and all the electronics (including the battery) in the binding and covers. It doesn't have to have color or even grayscale (though naturally those would be nice eventually)--most of the books I read these days don't have pictures. As I load the novel I want to read (using a menu in the unobtrusive touch-me GUI inside the front cover), the e-display book shows me the first 50 pages. The book senses when I've read to page 45, and replaces the first 40 e-display pages with pages 51 through 90 of the text.

DRM shouldn't be a problem, I'd happily pay for digital text to download. And hey, no more piles of books getting dusty by my bedside! My wife would be so happy.

Re:i'll wait just a little bit longer...

[utexaspunk]

a nice lot of theory there, but you're wrong anyway. look closely (like with a good magnifying glass) at a color photo in a newspaper or in a book. anything printed offset uses halftones. the colors DON'T overlap.

Re:i'll wait just a little bit longer...

[evilviper]

most people don't read newspaper quality documents all day because your eyes get sore.

I don't believe that increasing contrast ratio will lessen fatigue. Contrast ratio has something to do with how difficult something is to read, but I believe it is a minor issue, and other factors play a much more important role.

The higher the contrast and DPI the less eye strain. Plane and simple.

You want a high DPI, but it's a matter of diminishing returns. If DPI was increased further, I doubt you would notice, and with such a high DPI already, I can't believe the difference would even possibly lessen eye strain.

If you were to print a book in white text on black paper, even with the highest DPI and Contrast ratio in the world, you will quickly begin to feel eye strain when you try to read it.

Re:i'll wait just a little bit longer...

[hankwang]

anything printed offset uses halftones. the colors DON'T overlap.

Tell me what happens if you have a 70% covering level in cyan and 50% in magenta at the same time without any cyan overlapping the magenta. Does your paper surface magically expand by 20% ?

Think "Free"

[mumblestheclown]

as if working for Sony.

go ahead, push the troll button. It doesn't make it any less true.

Okay, so...

[Thedalek]

I thought the whole point of having ePaper in the first place was to have an inexpensive alternative to LCD which could be used in places LCD couldn't (like on product labels). At nearly $400, I don't see the ePaper providing a noticable savings over a comparable B&W LCD display, which could easily be used in a similar device. "So, 10 out of 10 for style, but minus several million for good thinking, okay?"

Re:Okay, so...

[moxruby]

At nearly $400, I don't see the ePaper providing a noticeable savings over a comparable B&W LCD display

Yeah, but how much did an LCD screen cost when it first hit the market?

Re:Okay, so...

[hrm]

There are fundamental differences with LCD. Most importantly, this display is non-volatile; as long as the content doesn't change, it uses hardly any power which is great for reading.

An LCD needs power to maintain state (not to mention to power a backlight, although you don't always need one).

Re:Okay, so...

[whoopass]

The point is the organic crystals used in the e-paper display maintain their color without a current for a significant amount of time. Compared to an LCD, the e-paper takes factors of magnitude less energy to run. Less energy means longer life time for the device.

Yes, eventually instead of those glossy photos in store windows you'll see e-paper which customizes the image based on the gender/age/instant retinal scan, to sell you products faster. But first you'll start seeing this - hybrid devices in applications where an LCD is wasteful.

Re:Okay, so...

[evilviper]

(like on product labels).

Obviously, you are thinking of another time of "ePaper".

And it does not help that you didn't bother to read the article at all.

I don't see the ePaper providing a noticable savings over a comparable B&W LCD display, which could easily be used in a similar device.

I agree with you there... But I have never been able to find a device like this with a B&W LCD display. Until there is such a device, the issue is a non-starter.

Re:Okay, so...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you were looking for something like this: B/W Cheapo Ebook reader largish screen ? However it has lower resolution and is closed source. But features an SDK.

Re:Okay, so...

[NanoGator]

"At nearly $400, I don't see the ePaper providing a noticable savings over a comparable B&W LCD display, which could easily be used in a similar device."

Yeah I really hate how prices never go down in the technology world.

Re:Okay, so...

[evilviper]

I much prefer standard AA batteries, not rechargables. (Advantage: Sony)

I would very much like a CompactFlash slot. SD is better than nothing, but everything I have uses CF. (Both Come Short)

I want it to be able to read standard document formats. At least PDF, HTML, and TXT files. (Both Come Short)

I don't need an MP3 player function.

I don't want a touch-screen. (Advantage: Sony)

I don't want a backlight... LCDs with a backlight tend to rely on the backlight, where LCDs without a backlight are designed to perform better without using the backlight as a crutch. (Advantage: Sony)

Finally, the very reason to get an LCD device rather than Sony's ePaper is the price. With a price-tag of $300+, there's no reason to get the LCD. (Big Advantage: Sony)

I love the idea but I won't buy it

[bromba]

Not because I miss the touch of a real dead tree book. Not because it doesn't bend. Not because it's expensive.

I won't buy it simply because it's ridiculous that the content expires in two months. What's the point of being able to load up to 500 books on that device if they expire 60 days later????

Re:I love the idea but I won't buy it

[bircho]

i do agree with your point, but...

Some won't expire.
Some you don't care if it expire.
But some people just don't care at all.

Re:I love the idea but I won't buy it

[eclectro]

I won't buy it simply because it's ridiculous that the content expires in two months. What's the point of being able to load up to 500 books on that device if they expire 60 days later????

Especially when the product dies due to lack of market interest.

Any content you did "own" will be unusable, and if you could crack the drm to transfer to another format, you would breaking the law. So you are left with nothing.

In other words, another useless ebook.

Re:I love the idea but I won't buy it

[tommykat]

I still haven't finished "Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn"...
I started reading it 4 months ago.
Why doesn't anyone think of the slow readers like me?

Re:I love the idea but I won't buy it

[hplasm]

Do you have an oblem?

I think I have a used one somewhere, if you need it...

Re:I love the idea but I won't buy it

[Anonymous Coward]

Remind me to never ask you to whitewash my fence ;)

Re:I love the idea but I won't buy it

[MarvinMouse]

Thank God, I live in a country where the DMCA does not apply. ;-)

Re:I love the idea but I won't buy it

[Lours]

I won't buy it simply because it's ridiculous that the content expires in two months. What's the point of being able to load up to 500 books on that device if they expire 60 days later????

You have a strong point here. Surely is this device wonderful, both for geeks and non-geeks, but the marketting and mentality beyond its commercial exploitation is just sickening.

This quotes from the Guardian article make this really clear :
"To keep a tight rein on the flow of ebooks, 15 major publishers and newspapers, including Kodansha, Asahi Shimbun and Yomiuri Shimbun, have teamed up with Sony to form a company called Publishing Link and to provide content through a website known as Timebook Town.
[...]
The variety of content appears to cover most bases - there are niche clubs dedicated to language learners and female readers and Timebook-only titles from major authors - but the sting in the tail is that each title is really only borrowed. Thanks to Open MG protection, the content is unreadable after two months, so it's best to think of the Libriè experience as a library of sorts."

So, this device has one obvious goal : transform things that you are currently used to buy into things that you will be forced to *rent*.

Remember that novel written by that guy from the FSF in which you never acquired a permanent right on things you wanted to read (books), watch (movies) or hear (music) ? It's just becoming the scary truth...

It seems that the bigger those megacorporations are, the lesser they are confident in their ability to be rewarded from their innovative behaviour by customers buying stuff from them.
Why would they keep trying enslaving us if they were so confident about it ?

The stronger you are and the stronger you want to become, the more you have to lose and the more you r fear it seems... Those behemoths are managed by children without a sense of moral. This is great, just great !

Magna Doodle

[Anonymous Coward]

The technology behind these things sounds very similar to the Fisher-Price MagnaDoodle, which is a kickaround portable whiteboard that I cannot live without. It uses iron filings suspended in a white opaque oil, and it has a dot pitch of about 1/6" inch. The electronic version of these sound really great - especially the nonvolatility of the display. There is little doubt that these things are ultimately going to trounce LCDs.

This particular implementation, however, does not sound appealling due to the advertising whores that want some screenspace and the DRM that cripples its functionality. If they can sell these things for under $400 at such low volumes, then much better device that use essentially the same display technology cannot be too far off.

Re:Magna Doodle

[eclectro]

which is a kickaround portable whiteboard that I cannot live without

I find an etch-a-sketch really useful myself.

Re:Magna Doodle

[zero_offset]

The refresh to display a new page is a bit low...

From the Guardian article

[chrismear]

In his enthusiasm, Ukita lets slip that flexible electronic paper which can handle Harry Potter-esque moving images and colour is in the research and development labs and may be just two to three years away.

Having not read any Harry Potter, I may well be missing something obvious, but what is so 'Harry-Potter--esque' about 'moving images and colour'? Why not just say "can handle moving images and colour"? I'm pretty certain we had them before Harry Potter came along.

Or is it just a desperate attempt to interest people in the article?

Re:From the Guardian article

[imsabbel]

err, in harry potter there are books and newspapers that feature moving images, although due to magic, not epaper...

Re:From the Guardian article

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps "Minority Report-esque" would have been better.

Re:From the Guardian article

[meringuoid]

Having not read any Harry Potter, I may well be missing something obvious, but what is so 'Harry-Potter--esque' about 'moving images and colour'?

He may be referring to the magical books, newspapers and magazines to be found in Hogwarts; these feature moving images in addition to conventional print. If it's just a reference to SFX-heavy movie versions, though, then I agree that the Potter reference is gratuitous...

Re:From the Guardian article

[chrismear]

Thanks, that makes sense now. That'll teach me not to keep up with my pop culture references!

Re:From the Guardian article

[Anonymous Coward]

Because Harry Potter is the only thing most adults have read recently that is more complex than a TV schedule. I predict by 2025, "Thomas the Tank Engine" will top the NYT Bestsellers List.

Re:From the Guardian article

[Zak3056]

Having not read any Harry Potter, I may well be missing something obvious, but what is so 'Harry-Potter--esque' about 'moving images and colour'? Why not just say "can handle moving images and colour"? I'm pretty certain we had them before Harry Potter came along.

Photograps and paintings in the Harry Potter universe are not static--they're self-animated with objects and people moving around, able to talk and litteralyl with a mind of their own. I have to imagine that is what the author is referring to, though I agree it's a stupid point--while you may be able to put video into your electronic "picture frame" it will still be the same video clip everytime...

Re:From the Guardian article

[Figaro]

In HP, images in books and newspapers move. How many books do you own where the pictures move?

I'd say this is a pretty good way to describe this for many people.

Re:From the Guardian article

[chrismear]

How many books do you own where the pictures move?

I just meant that the idea of "moving pictures with colour" is not exactly an unfamiliar one (in the general sense of TV and film), so I wondered why the writer thought it needed qualifying with "Harry-Potter--esque". I didn't realise there was some specific thing in Harry Potter about animated books.

At last!

[kdachev]

Great, I've been waiting for a long time to have a convenient way for reading my books - lets be honest, small and low-res PocketPC screens sucks, and their battery life is far from enough for 400+ p books.

Hope this has an easy way to upload plain text, html without having to run some sort of DRM soft before this... or... we'll have to wait until it's cracked :) or maybe... producen in China :)))

Re:DOOOOOOP

[Anonymous Coward]

that was another ereader I believe, not a sony

Evil marketing.....creeps

[UrGeek]

"The e-paper is coming to reality in the form of a 6" screen" Whoa - wait - hold the phone. Paper does not have a screen and it does not require batteries. E-paper looks like a sheet of paper (but stronger) and is imbedded with tiny spheres that are rotate from the white side to the dark side by a device that looks like a printer but requires no ink. A couple of companies are working on this and they need to sue Sony's arrogant butt!

Re:Evil marketing.....creeps

[MemRaven]

If you read the article, you'll see that they've been working with e-ink to bring this to market, the same people who have been the most vocal about working with the e-paper format. So I'm assuming that if there's an IP conflict between e-ink and any other e-paper companies, then e-ink has probably dealt with it.

In addition, they are thinking that they'll have flexible (i.e. paper-like) e-ink displays in these things in a few years, but that they're not really ready for prime time yet in the format they wanted with the resolution/contrast that they wanted.

In short, read the Guardian article. It covers who they've been working with to develop the technology.

Not perfect...

[WegianWarrior]

..yet. Give it a generation or two to iron out the problems that bound to pop up, and practicly everyone will buy them. The first videorecorders, personal computers, walkmen, mp3-players and whatnot wasn't perfect either, but these days 'everyone' has one.

For me, I would like to see this for at least half the prize and with the ability to display colour photographs (but then, a lot of the books I read has colour pictures in them), as well as support for wirtually any fileformat that displays text under the sun - as well as beeing able to display photographs from my digicam. Oh, and add a CF-card slot to it too, please ;)

Seriously thought - drop the price in half and I'll prolly buy one, memorystick, monocrome text and all.

Re:Not perfect...

[brxndxn]

Did I read you wrong or did you just tell us to wait a generation or two for the pop-up version?

I swear.. if I start reading a book and I get a popup, I'm gonna have to break something.

Re:Not perfect...

[tehcyder]

(but then, a lot of the books I read has colour pictures in them)

And a lot of the "books" I "read" have video and sound too...you know what I mean.

Re:Not perfect...

[Rob Simpson]

Screw the price - less than $400 is hardly unreasonable, considering the number of overpriced yet poorly designed PDAs on the market. I'm mostly interested in whether it will be completely crippled by DRM, or whether that will be restricted to the built-in viewer, and whether I would be able to install third-party (eg, iSilo) and open-source apps.

(CF support would be nice too, but c'mon, this is Sony...)

Potential problem...

[cheesy9999]

Sounds cool...as long as it doesn't crack in half when I fall asleep on top of it...

Re:Dupe...Not.

[barc0001]

It's not a dupe. The first story said they were going to launch it, with some few details. Now they have launched it with more details and some first impressions.

Thanks for the link

[null etc.]

Don't you love posters who throw all sorts of useless links into their submissions?

Don't you also love slashdot's auto- href captions?

Re:Thanks for the link

[Anonymous Coward]

You spelled posters wrong.

(It's funny. Laugh.)

Here is source

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is source http://www.sony.net/Products/Linux/Download/EBR-10 00EP.html

Re:Here is source

[jsse]

Mod this AC up, the link http://www.sony.net/Products/Linux/Download/EBR-10 00EP.html is real link to source code.

Re:Here is source

[sepluv]

Do they give copies with their products too though?

The webpage that the parent links to looks says "you expressly assume all risk and liability associated with downloading [my emphasis]". This seems to be adding an additional clause to the GNU GPL as I would interpret that as not just disclaiming their own liability.

Also it says at the bottom of the page that one must enable cookies.

Re:Here is source

[Anonymous Coward]

Do they give copies with their products too though?

I assume, although I don't actually possess any Sony Linux devices, that they've probably gone for the "written offer" option. Said written offer is probably in the small print somewhere, but I'd be amazed if it wasn't there at all.

The webpage that the parent links to looks says "you expressly assume all risk and liability associated with downloading". This seems to be adding an additional clause to the GNU GPL as I would interpret that as not just disclaiming their own liability.

I don't follow your argument. How is "you assume liability" any different from "we disclaim liability"?

Re:Here is source

[sepluv]

It is a minor point, but using "expressly" implies that *you* must contractly agree to take any liability as opposed to them saying that *they* will not accept any liability to the extent of applicable laws. I may be wrong, IANAL, and I agree there is not much difference.

Re:Here is source

[LetterJ]

The thing is that that clause isn't in the distribution license, it's in the license to be allowed to download. I can create a "download" license for a GPL product that requires you to pay $1,000,000 in order to download it. Once you have it, you can distribute it according to the terms of the GPL. The reason you don't see that arrangement is that any one of your customers is allowed to give it away and $1,000,000 doesn't compete with free very easily.

In this case, rather than paying, you have to assume liability. If you decide to distribute it, that clause doesn't apply. Rather, you are free to create your own requirements before allowing download. As long as you don't add any restrictions on what they do with the software or how they distribute it *after* they have downloaded it, you haven't altered the terms of the GPL at all. Basically, by adding this clause, they are saying that if you got it from somewhere else (from a secondary distribution mirror) they weren't responsible, but if you want it from them, you have to agree to assume the risk and liability.

Where you do see a lot of people "adding" terms to the GPL is amateur software authors who try to explain the GPL on their pages and say things like the GPL version is for "non-commercial use only", etc.

Re:Here is source

[marcansoft]

Wow-- their A/V remote uses linux.. or did I read wrong?

Re:Here is source

[Panaflex]

Wow, there's actual drivers there!!!!

There's a fb driver for the screen, a sound driver for the Dragonball MX1, and an USB driver for the MX1 too!

I wonder if these drivers could be used for other projects?

Pan

Re:Here is source

[ibbey]

Do they give copies with their products too though?

They're not required to give copies with the products. The GPL expressly states that you can "Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code". In other words, they don't even need to offer the source code for download. Sony is -exceeding- the required terms, not failing them.

The webpage that the parent links to looks says "you expressly assume all risk and liability associated with downloading [my emphasis]". This seems to be adding an additional clause to the GNU GPL as I would interpret that as not just disclaiming their own liability.

The GPL states "BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND..." Therefore, Sony is not adding a term to the GPL, simply restating an existing term in a click through.

Also it says at the bottom of the page that one must enable cookies.

Big fucking deal. Stop whining & go read the GPL before you post again.

Re:Here is source

[sepluv]

I cannot even be botherred replying but briefly. I have read the GNU GPL and I understand what it says. I was discussing this from a practical/moral PoV not a legal one. I have no doubt that they are compliant.

Magna Doodle-DRM Depression.

[Anonymous Coward]

"This particular implementation, however, does not sound appealling due to the advertising whores that want some screenspace and the DRM that cripples its functionality."

And yet the people who it's really aimed at (not you, you DRM hating geek you), will complain more about the advertising, than the DRM. Remember not everyone values the same things as you, and the ability to read their P2P (or Usenet) E-Books isn't high on their lists.

Almost There

[Hecatonchires]

Looks like they've been thinking - the costs for purchasing/renting content seem fairly reasonable. However, no mention is made of own content. If I can't convert my own stuff to their format with no restrictions, they wont be getting my dollars.

The best thing about my reb is the rocketwriter.

Inspector Gadget

[DigiShaman]

W00t! Now I can have a digital power book just like Penny in the cartoon.

Sony executives ...

[Savage-Rabbit]

Sony has been pushing their proprietary "memory stick" which uses heavy drm called "magicgate" in all of their products hoping that the sheer number of devices they can put it in will give it a valid/default market base.

... must have found the source of all evil and drunk from one of the fountains in the lobby of the building with the catchy logo over the entrance.

It is a small wonder the owner of this url has not had his pants sued off yet. Perhaps somebody on /. is brave enough to set up 'inleague.withsatan.com' to point to the Sony website?

hi-tech?

[octal666]

well, AAA batteries, 10,000 pages reades, 500 books in memory, why in Hell have they packed such a wonderful geek-toy with this poor memory and energy technology? For 350 euros more or less they should have put at least memory for enough books you cannot read in a lifetime and battery for reading them all.

Re:hi-tech?

[Anonymous Coward]

the size of a paperback book, too big, isn't it?

Re:hi-tech?

[BenjyD]

But this way they can sell you a "new, improved" version with Li-ion batteries and more memory in a year or so. It worked for Nintendo.

Re:hi-tech?

[lucas teh geek]

yeah, cause that frontlit screen was neither new, or improved

Finally

[sw155kn1f3]

I think finally e-Books can get off the ground!
Clicky-click, I want my "Mastering Perl Regilar Expressions" while sitting at the sofa. Here it goes.
No more giant bookshelves, no more eye-strain while reading from CRT or LCD screen.
It's silent revolution, guys.

Re:Finally

[trewornan]

Ah but . . . if you want your copy on the e-paper then you would have two copies (one on the repository and one on the e-paper) - obviously you'd need some kind of DRM to ensure that the original was deleted as it was downloaded. The best system would be for the Copyright Police to control the e-paper and the repository, then you request the transfer from them - they can check you are authorised to view the text and make the actual transfer. Fortunately the Copyright Police will be monitoring all transmissions anyway (to ensure that proper DRM is being observed) and watching through CCTV to make sure you don't show the book to anyone else.

nothing to see here folks, move along

[Anonymous Coward]

we had this story here a month ago....

Only 5000?

[Phoenixhunter]

Surely some company/educational instititution will snap these up like pancakes....

Surely I'm being stupid....

[lxt]

...but the battery life would depend on how long you spent reading each page. You can't just say "it will last 10 000 pages" - someone might spend 10 seconds to read a page, or two minutes...

Re:Surely I'm being stupid....

[ziggamon]

Since it only consumes power when pages are CHANGED, that is exactly what you can... Then, the amount of time depends on how fast you read, but the number of pages is constant.

Re:Surely I'm being stupid....

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes you are...

It only (mostly) uses current when flipping pages. So what they meant was 10.000 page-flips.

Re:Surely I'm being stupid....

[MrAngryForNoReason]

...but the battery life would depend on how long you spent reading each page. You can't just say "it will last 10 000 pages" - someone might spend 10 seconds to read a page, or two minutes...

If you had RTFA you would know that it only takes power to refresh the screen not to maintain a static image. So the battery life is 10,000 pages whether you flick through one a second, or spend an hour on each page.

Re:Surely I'm being stupid....

[Anonymous Coward]

Without wishing to ruffle feathers, yes you are :-)

The screen only consumes power during an update, so no power is drained while you're reading. It's really, really neat.

Re:Surely I'm being stupid....

[Anonymous Coward]

not quite: the display is stateful - you drive the little particles into place, and then they stay. so, it only matters how many times you change what's on the screen, not at all how long you stay there.

Re:Surely I'm being stupid....

[Anonymous Coward]

If you had RTFA you would know that it only takes power to refresh the screen not to maintain a static image. So the battery life is 10,000 pages whether you flick through one a second, or spend an hour on each page.

And if you had RTFA you would know that there's more to the device than just a screen, so while it uses less power while maintaining a static image, it's still draining the batteries.

Re:Surely I'm being stupid....

[wurp]

And if _you_ spent a second thinking about it, you would see that the device probably powers down when it's not doing anything (like when you're reading a page). Palm (among other companies) has mastered automatic low power and no power modes when no/not much computing is needed. I'm sure this device is no different.

Re:err

[zero_offset]

"Ur" probably able to store a bookmark on the flash memory card. Just think, "u" no longer have "2" worry about losing "ur" bookmark.

DRM

[danila]

Sony can take their DRM and stick it up their arse. And to think of it, how perverse is it to call a DRM system "Open MG"? From where I stand, there is nothing open about it...

I am sticking to pirated ebooks, thank you very much (and occasionally some publishers like Baen who "get it"). And I will continue to do so, unless it occures to major publishers that the inherent qualities of electronic books are easy distribution and easy modifiability.

Re:DRM

[Chrontius]

Why mod him a troll? He's got a valid point. This would be so very much cooler if you could import your own content (slashdot dumps, Wired News, Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, Baen novels...) and even more so if it had an analogue to M$ Journal

Customized Version of Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

We should have the sources, right?
If we can compile them and upgrade the device, there should not be any problem: we will probably be able to display whatever we want.

Any other clue about that?

Oh the humanity!

[evilviper]

Why? Why?

They have gone to extrodinary lengths to develop a new display technology that is "easily read in bright sunlight or dimly lit environments while being able to be seen at virtually any angle".

Well guess what else would do the same? A good old B&W LCD display like your watch has had for decades. It uses practically no power, is old and cheap technology, etc. Well, the one advantage is the slightly increased viewing angle, but only a small improvement.

I've been ranting on and on here on /. for a long time that all they need to do is make a non-backlit display, and you could actually stand to read on it. Not one person has ever agreed with me, and several hundred have disagreed. Well here you go. At least Sony agrees, even if they don't know it, and even if they are taking the long hard path to a non-backlit display.

Now to end the ranting, and provide some insight...

Price: it's about 3X too expensive to even consider (and I've just covered how it could be much cheaper).

I'm sure this won't support HTML, PDFs, or any other common file format, which immediately kills it for me. Also, images are a must.

Storage. I standardize all my devices on CompactFlash, no exceptions.

Size. No dimentions are listed, but I bet it's large. I want something about 7"x9". Small enough to be carryable, large enough to read easily.

Batteries: AAA batteries suck. AA batteries are FAR better. Much more power, only slightly bigger.

So, can anybody improve upon this device? Fixing the first 3 is required, but for the rest, I'll bend. Maybe a PalmOS portable with a huge screen?

Also, if I could find a non-backlit LCD screen (even if only 16-shade B&W) with a VGA connector, I'd buy it in a second. I'd keep one back-lit color-screen for multimedia, and use this for everything else. Really now, do you need color (or a headache from the backlighting) when reading /.?

Re:Oh the humanity!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well guess what else would do the same? A good old B&W LCD display like your watch has had for decades. It uses practically no power, is old and cheap technology, etc.

Umm... have you actually looked at how your watch display works? (Yours, not mine - I have an analog watch, which has the advantage that it doesn't make me look like an 80s dork.) It has totally crap resolution. You can barely write arbitrary English text on it, let alone Japanese which is what Sony are interested in.

Different technology, totally unsuitable. Sorry, but you don't have a clue what you're talking about.

Re:Oh the humanity! (OOPS, found dimentions!)

[evilviper]

I found the dimentions... My mistake. This thing is quite close to 7x9. Although much of it is wasted for those buttons on the bottom, it's big enough, and small enough.

Another worthless "invention"

[rudy_wayne]

>>"Electronic paper is to paper, what paper is to clay tablets."

Wrong.

Electronic paper is to paper, what a bicycle is to a fish.

Sony corporate hardware & content conflicts

[Bushcat]

Sony's problem is that it has quite a lot of in-fighting. The hardware divisions can design interesting stuff: the Clie has pushed Palm OS further than Palm would ever have taken Palm PDAs by themselves, for example. Sony pushes the envelope with MD and so on. But, Sony also manufactures both audio and video content, manages pop groups and so on. That side of operations doesn't want any content to be "free" any time whatsoever. I think one can see the market effect of this internal conflict in Sony's paucity of true digital offerings: Sony created and defined the Walkman market, yet it's got what, 2 solid-state music players on the market worldwide? Basically, whatever Sony does, it is forced to use DRM to keep its own divisions happy. So I imagine its Librie offerings will be similarly DRM'd to the point where the products are not sensible purchases for most people.

Philips invented the paper, they work closely with Matsushita, so I'd wait for a Panasonic competitor to hit the market. Matsushita seem to have come up with a lot of neat stuff over the past year, hopefully it's a renaissance that will continue.

Re:Sony corporate hardware & content conflicts

[soramimicake]

My impression from the Japanese press releases is that you can only read DRM'd content on this device. This seriously lowers its attractiveness as a product. I can't, for example, put that long HOWTO onto it for reading at leisure.

Re:Sony corporate hardware & content conflicts

[Triskele]

This is a really good example of why corporations should be limited to doing one thing and one thing well. Much of the problem with the 'free market' (whatever that is) and 'globalisation' (sic) comes down to too many different segments of the market owned under one roof and run to their vested interests and to the detriment of the public.

Sony in particular is one of the worst monopolies in the world (makes Microsoft look like good guys) and really should be broken up but Japan won't let its champion suffer (anymore than the US will let MS suffer) and nobody else has the power to make a difference.

Memory Stick is shiat

[Cackmobile]

I have a sony digital camera which is excellent but the memory sticks are shiat. They hold so few photos. My camera on 3.2 megapixel gets about 80 photos on a 128mb stick. My mates olympus gets 200 plus on the same settings and card size.

Re:Memory Stick is shiat

[lucas teh geek]

I have a sony digital camera which is excellent but the memory sticks are shiat. They hold so few photos. My camera on 3.2 megapixel gets about 80 photos on a 128mb stick. My mates olympus gets 200 plus on the same settings and card size.

read what you just wrote again, feeling stupid yet? let me ask you a question, which weighs more, a ton of bricks or a ton of feathers?

your mates olympus is getting more shots into 128mb because they are either lower res or more lossy.

Re:Memory Stick is shiat

[swv3752]

How does the pictures from your mate's olympus look?

Probably not quite as good, because either the resolution is less or they are put through much heavier compression. Or else they actually have a larger memory card. Number of pixels and compression settings dictate file size. To get about 200 pics on 128mb would mean at quick rule of thumb that the resolution would be about 1280x960. (would actually expect somewhat closer to 192 for that res, but...)

Re:Memory Stick is shiat

[Cackmobile]

i thought this too but had a look at his settings and they are the same. apparently if u get a memory stick pro they hold more. Same size but hold more photos. don't know how that works.

Re:Memory Stick is shiat

[lucas teh geek]

for interests sake, if you get your a CF card full of photos from you card and put them on your friends memory stick, is it full?

Re:Memory Stick is shiat

[Cackmobile]

dunno. might have to give it ago.

Battery life...

[q-the-impaler]

From the post:

The British journalists claim that three AAA batteries keep it up for 10,000 pages, but it's not too clear whether they've actually verified it, or just read the press-release.

From the article:

Nevertheless, the three AAA batteries used to power the Librie should stretch to an impressive 10,000 pages, enough for about 40 novels.

The use of 'should' implies that they have not tested it themselves, and that they are just quoting the press release. I think they would have spent more time boasting about their test if they had indeed tested it.

Re:Battery life...

[Anonymous Coward]

this is actually impossible to test - in a stateful display, whether you drive a pixel depends on what image state each pixel starts on and what image state you go to. so, unlike an lcd, if the pixel doesn't change, you don't apply power (more or less).

thus, going from page a to page b may drive 1/2 the pixels, but going from page b to page c may drive 3/4 of the pixels. thus, from page b to c requires a lot more power.

Tablet PC??

[Jason Zaman]

isnt that exactly what a tablet PC is?

Re:Oh the humanity! (OOPS, found dimentions!)

[Brane2]

Besides that mistake, you have made many others.

LCD can musster up to some 120 dpi and it has other problems, too.

Power useage, for example. Good LCD is almost bound to have backlight, but even without it, it cincumes way more than this thing.

This is due to the fact that it has to be periodically refreshed, and this takes power.

eInk bsed stuff needs power jus when changing display constent, not for refresh.

Besides, it uses polarisers, so it can never look wquite lake paper, which is essential for this application...

links

[MikeHunt69]

Whats the point of having a link in the article to the US exchange rate? I think the practice of having too many links on a page makes it completely unreadable.. (eg. wikipedia)

They are thinking of you...

[Anonymous Coward]

...it was like this, "And slow readers will have to buy the books multiple times!"

Another Spongebob Squarepants fan...

[Anonymous Coward]

...has been revealed!

Contradictory specs?

[Cinquero]

On the one side, the article is telling me about reading novels on that device. Someone who is reading for fun isn't necessarily very interested in reading novels on such devices or even spend 220 Pounds for it or pay for books if he can them them for free at the local library.

On the other side, there is no support for persons like me who just want to have a portable library including my own book and script scans... there's neither enough storage nor is the display's size sufficient. And, additionally, how the hell may I convert GIFs, JPGs and PDF scans to the BBeB format? How do I use it as a news reader if there's no WLAN support to browse the web or to check out scientific articles from PROLA and other online publication services? It is a PDA with enhanced contrast but without colors and wihtout the functionality.

Maybe the max 5.000 pieces per month figure accurately representes these problems... so why does /. even report on that if nearly noone is gonna buying or even using it? :-)))

Solar Cells, Not Batteries!

[VernonNemitz]

Any electronic device that uses such a trickle of current that batteries can last for months -- is an electronic device that should be powered by built-in solar cells. Indeed, this particular gadget appears to be frugal enough that if you have enough light to READ its text, then you probably have enough light to power it.

Re:Solar Cells, Not Batteries!

[Anonymous Coward]

Good thinking, this is the only good comment I read so far.

bookmarks

[interactive_civilian]

Most document readers on PDAs allow you to set bookmarks in the text for easy jumping back and forth. E.G. I use a program called TiBR for PalmOS on my Visor and have about 20 books stored on it right now. I just went through and set the bookmarks for each chapter, as well as memorable quotes and such and now I can zip through them quite quickly.

I can also jump anywhere in the book based on percent, so if I can remember where things are in the book based on the percentage (not unlike remembering approximate page numbers in a dead tree book) then I can jump to that area very quickly.

It is also nice how the book stays on the same page when you "close" it (quit the program) and them "open" it again (open the program). Say hello to the end of traditional bookmarks and/or dogeared pages. :D

I can't imagine why this bookreader would be any different...

Incidently, reading eBooks on a PDA is great for reading on a train (such as those you find in Japan). You can read one handed and use the scroll buttons to flip the "pages" (great when you are standing up and have to hold on to a handle)...

Small fonts

[pommiekiwifruit]

I think on screens you can display Latin at 4*6 pixels, Katakana at 8*8 pixels (with an extra character for accents) and some Kanji at 16*16 pixels, but that is really not very readable.

about your tagline

[Halfbaked Plan]

'tty' based messaging concepts are obsolete.

This is how I distribute the credits:

[haggar]

Two thumbs up to Philips who are the actual creators of this "paper-like" display.

Two thumbs way down to Sony for implementing it tied to DRM and content expiration. Thanks for nothing, Sony.

Re:This is how I distribute the credits:

[WebMasterJoe]

Two thumbs way down to Sony for implementing it tied to DRM and content expiration. Thanks for nothing, Sony.

It's stupid moves like this that put the ??? in step two. I'll be waiting for the next generation, the one that not only allows us to keep the documents we purchase, but also includes some sort of nice simple way to put our own documents on these things - something like a printer driver, ala Adobe Distiller.

This version seems to be geared towards giving us the ability to read what the big media people have to say. Great, it's about time we heard their story.

And what a shame, because the technology really does look cool.

Re:This is how I distribute the credits:

[haggar]

I'm totally with you on this one. Fortunately, Philips being the creator of the technology, I think we can expect many implementors that will compete with Sony. It will be just like with DVD pllayers today: I can go downtown into any electronics store (Helsinki) and buy a cheap-ass United DVD player, that has the added benefit of being easily hackeable with the remote control.

One up

[t_allardyce]

I see a big market for a roughly palm pilot sized gadget similar to this but it would be very cheap and loosing it wouldnt be a big deal, inside it would be a dumb terminal with a cheap low-powered wireless connection. The usefulness would come from its ability to connect to other things and use them as hosts (this needs quite abit of companies working together) for example it could connect to the phone in your pocket and thus become the interface to your phone (it would send back the position you pressed on the screen), and would obviously be able to access the net etc and view things stored on your phone - including books you'd downloaded, it could also interface with mp3 players, cameras etc etc. Public places like airports could have a stack of them at the entrance - you pick one up and the host computer can tell you where you are and where you need to go (it knows what wireless 'cell' you're in) and give you something to read while waiting, you dump it on a stack as you board the plane and its durable enough that the cleaners can dunk them in disinfectant before returning them to the entrance. It can naturally can tell if you try to steal it (although its cheap so no big deal) and if you really wanted to be big brother you could require people carry one and enter a code regularly to proove they still have it. This would be the ultimate disposable device.

But is it really better?

[quantaq]

Obviously, this will save quite a few trees if it catches on. While this is better for the environment in at least one way, I hesitate to assume this is a "green" device. What about all the typical dangerous metals/compounds/whatever that go into electronic devices? Does the good it can do really outweigh the bad? I'm not saying it *isn't* better--I really don't know. Does anyone here?

Picture

[penultimatepost]

Picture

This is..

[Anonymous Coward]

one half of what a Tablet PC is good for. The other being the ability to jot down notes. For the price, I can do without the note taking.

Color is solved.

[Dan Crash]

They'll be using sub-pixel imaging.

Read all about it.

Re:Color is solved.

[hankwang]

The nature article you point to has an image indicating that the display is of the variant "each pixel tunable between white and saturated color". That is not full-color.

Re:Color is solved.

[Dan Crash]

That quote isn't anywhere in the article. In fact, the quote under the photo actually says: "Full-colour displays can be made with three sub-pixels of yellow, cyan and magenta."

Again, these are sub-pixels we're talking about. The actual pixelspace is so small your eye can only perceive it as a single color. At any rate, you can nitpick about it now, but I suspect you'll have a harder time in a year or so convincing your friends the color image they're seeing on the display model e-book in the store isn't really in color. :)

Re:Color is solved.

[hankwang]

That quote isn't anywhere in the article.

Sorry for being unclear. The quote refers to my previous (long) post, where I tried to explain that CMY subpixels won't work. The Nature link shows a picture of 4 pixels, colored white/cyan, white/magenta, white/yellow, and white/black. It is obvious (to me at least) that the result can never be darker than some grey if all pixels are switched on fully.

What could work, is 8 subpixels, colored red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, yellow, white, and black, with varying sizes, such that a pixel can be fully covered by for example yellow, or half by yellow and half by black. Then you have the full gamut [disclaimer: I wrote part of that wikipedia article] of colors that you have with CMYK printing or RGB screens. But that requires a new technology.

Not bad, but I'm waiting for an electronic...

[SensitiveMale]

version of pop-up books!

Platform is great but what about content?

[kelseyj]

I've stopped purchasing e-books until there are some portable standards for e-book format. Microsoft/Palm/RCA all have/had different e-book formats.

An entire library is great but I want to know I'll be able to read those books I bought when the next cool device comes out.

Insert clever sig here

BBeB Specification?

[yogibaer]

A few (maybe long answered, in that case, ashes on my head and tears in my eyes :-) questions: Where can I find BBeB specs? Can I use it without the DRM? Is there a developers kit or something? As it is (some kind of?) XML, other formats should translate nicely? Thanks a lot for any help.

Chinese e-book

[LCamel]

Mr. Chu Bong-Foo (also known as the father of Chinese computer) has developed an e-book system in LGPL. In ordered to be an replacement of paper textbooks, it is written in *Assembly* to lower the requirement of hardware. In 2002, it has been used by houndreds of students in Mainland China. I think the most amazing feature of it is that it doens't need power to retain the content on the screen, but only needs power to change the content.
One of the commercial version is sold in Taiwan for NT$5000 (US $150). Two AA batteries for viewing 15000 pages. The resolution(6.5'' 640*480) is a little lower than the Sony one. You can download converted TXT/PDF/HTML and read on it. (More pictures here)

Finally

[selmer]

Once these become affordable I can start reading all the books living at project Gutenberg in a sensible way!

Not a Dupe, but the first story pictures

[PetoskeyGuy]

This article mentioned This Press Release which said that the E-Reader would be available in April. The press release has pictures of the device.

Corporate Control Freaks still dont get it

[hoggoth]

All the corporate control freaks still think of consumers as sheep that need to be told what they want.

Do these two statements really belong to the same product? :

> "but the sting in the tail is that each title is really only borrowed. Thanks to Open MG protection, the content is unreadable after two months"

> "Whether the convenience of having an armful of books in a pocket-sized reader is worth forsaking building up a physical collection remains to be seen"

Yeah, I'm going to build up quite a library of books... which evaporates every 2 months.

BUZZ! WRONG. E-paper is a great new technology; But this product will be a miserable failure, and nobody at SONY will have any clue why. Perhaps they will take some lessons from the RIAA and blame poor sales on pirates and start litigating, raiding, suing, and raising prices.

For A Picture

[obidonn]

Here's a link to the japanese LIBRIE site (http://www.sony.jp/products/Consumer/LIBRIE/) if you're interested in getting a look at it.

The joy of eBooks

[FuzzyDaddy]

I am a recent convert to the joy of eBooks. I just bought the low end palm (Zire 21 for $99) to help organize my life. A few days ago I downloaded the Weasel Reader and got some Mark Twain short storied off of the Gutenberg Project.

What I've found is that it's no substitute for sitting down with a real book, but it's great when waiting around at the post office, eating lunch, or any time I have some time I'd like to read but may not have planned for and brought a book.

The article and Sony seemed to be concerned with content, with the focus on this product that you can get a cheaper eBook than a real book. That, to me, is not a compelling reason to buy the thing. The collection at the Gutenberg Project would make it compelling for me, and I'm surprised that the eBook world has not embraced that in their marketing. Perhaps it's because consumer technology traditionally enables the sale of "content" (records, DVD's, etc.), and pointing to free content might be a no-no to publishers of current works. But if they wanted to sell the hardware, it would be a pretty gutsy move to advertise "thousands of free classic titles".

Re:The joy of eBooks

[philipx]

One of the reasons behind the Librie is, as this Guardian article mentions,

"the value of the publishing market in Japan is huge - last year saw sales of $22.6bn. Compare this with the $5.6bn spent on music and you'll see why ebooks have the potential to excite."

Further proof this product was oriented specifically to cut into Japan's paper book business:

The average book in Japan weighs 309g; we designed the LibriË to weigh 300g, including case and batteries

No wonder they don't advertise a free service like Project Gutenberg. It's almost like Micro$oft advertising you can run OpenOffice on Windows XP :)

Best case senario

[Anonymous Coward]

5000. That should be their worst case senario. This product will replace a PDA as a carry on. I dont need reminders or games. All I need is a PDR(Reader). That is what I have been using my PDA for most of the time. The limitations are obvious and this should do it.

*Yawn* Still too small to read

[mwood]

6"? Humph. Let me know when I can get one of Arthur Clarke's "newspads".

I can see a use for this...

[mark-t]

And there's good news and bad... depending how you look at it.

Students spend upwards of 500 dollars per semester on books... with one of these babies, the student would make one large purchase at the outset of their studies and then "lease" the material from the university for every semester thereafter for a much lower cost, where it would automatically discontinue access to the material some time after final exams are over. A lot of students end up wanting to unload their used books anyways at the end of a semester, so this would have a lot of appeal for those sorts of people. For some courses, I do want to keep my books, but for the rest of them, I don't really care... I'd just as soon sell the darn things the day the course is ended and hopefully get _some_ of my money back. As long as students had a choice whether to buy the real thing or lease the electronic version of a particular book, this might not be a bad idea, at least from the perspective of the student who quite often isn't in the best of financial positions.

Re:I can see a use for this...

[anubi]

Unfortunately, we run into economics and monopolies.

Yes, students spend upwards of $500/semester on books. I do. And I have seen countless occasions where book publishers issue revision after revision, often making changes as minor as just re-ordering the problems at the end of the chapter, just to render the previous revison ( no longer available, reproduction of previous revision forbidden by copyright law ) obsolete, forcing teachers to adopt the new version, also rendering student's investment in the earlier version a sunk cost.

Think its gonna be cheaper to "lease"? We already do. Cost of reproduction is not that much. Geez, if printing is so expensive, how can you justify the literal tons of printed junk mail generated daily?

For my stuff, I generally keep my books anyway. Geez, they are the ones I fall back to when I am trying to remember some little quirk in Control Theory or some obscure little DSP goodie I remember my professor talking about. I even still have my books discussing control theory algorithms using Vacuum Tubes!!! Although the mechanizations change, the basic ideas are identical. I see over and over again where often things get way, way, way more complicated than they need to be. I can perform integration with a fullbore DSP. I can also do it with a capacitor. Or, I might use a combo approach to use the digital side to store constants which compensate for analog tolerances. But then, think of all the techniques I was taught that I would lose reference to if my books expired!

Nice Idea, but I won't buy it

[Anonymous Coward]

To second what someone said above, it's a nice idea, but I won't buy it, as long as the books you buy expire after 2 months.

If they let you keep the book, and changed the memory stick to compact flash, they'd have a great product.

Compare this to SigmaBook

[Erastus]

Panasonic's SigmaBook has twin 1024x768 screens and runs on two AA batteries. It also reads memory sticks I believe. http://neohio.craintech.com/cgi-bin/article.pl?art icleId=2872 As far as I can tell, you can actually order these right now from Japan for $350-$400: http://www.sigmabook.jp Oh, it will also let you roll your own texts with BMPs. I'd like to scan all of my textbooks using an ADF setup. Bulky textbooks are a major pain in my back.

I must be missing something...

[joeljkp]

I thought E-paper was supposed to be a piece of disposable paper on which you "printed" text by changing the color of the pixels embedded into it. So you could print the same piece of paper over and over again.

But those would be regular old 8.5x11" sheets at negligable cost.

So... why is this called e-paper rather than just a plain old e-book?

Lots more pictures...

[TheTranceFan]

of eInk stuff if you go to their image directory:

http://www.eink.com/news/images/

Sony dis something right....

[callipygian-showsyst]

...They put the source code for their modified Linux up on theit web site.

Good for them!

DIY

[Doc Ruby]

Good design. Check out the slashcode, revise it with your feature, and submit the patches to the slashcode project. Send Rob a notice, and he might roll it out as Slashdot++.

Re:DIY

[JamieF]

No, I think I'll let the people who are paid to maintain the software do this. I don't have enough free time to donate it right now, and even if I did, I have a number of enhancements on my to-do list for more important open-source projects that would come first. I'd also want some sort of assurance that if I went to the trouble of adding and QAing this feature, it would actually be used for /., because I really don't care about other users of Slashcode enough to spend the time it would take to do this just so that some teeny site I've never heard of could have this feature.

Re:DIY

[Doc Ruby]

It's hard to take complaints about features seriously when they're a cheap substitute for fixes. I've gotten the inverse comments from Malda regarding lack of community contributed fixes. We have here the central flaw in the OSS/community process which is addressed by "centrally planned" closed source development processes.

argh!

[kevin lyda]

i've wanted a laptop with electronic paper for ages now!

we're almost up to a lightweight laptop with a battery life of weeks, but no one wants to make one it seems. put together a decent low-power cpu, an electronic paper display and some type of flash and you're there. and all of that is smaller so you can devote some more room to batteries.

but no, they just focus on bigger hard drives and faster more power hungry cpu's.

sigh.

Compatability.

[Talinom]

But is it compatable with papyrus?

$381 is too much.

[Freeman-Jo]

that's like half a price of a notebook now aday.
Selling that thing when the economic isn't so good is like asking for trouble. personally, $200 is a maybe, and $150 or less, I would buy it if it will support every book later on.

Er. . . This looks like an old LCD display. . .

[Fantastic Lad]

I mean, it looks exactly like an old style LCD display. Black text on silver-grey background. --Oh, except this one has been modified to be readable in direct light, just like, um. . , an old LCD display.

Also, I thought the idea of digital paper was that it was supposed to be, well, flat. This thing is built like a calculator.

Is there something here I'm not getting. . ? It looks like re-packaged old technology to me. --Not that I haven't been looking for something like it; the screens on PDA's are just too small. But this isn't the holy grail, I think. And it's certainly not worth three hundred and something dollars.

Not for something which might as well be an old LCD display, (and which may very well be just that.)

-FL

I'll buy one!

[Anonymous Coward]

The technology that excites me the most are these new displays that look like paper. After growing up staring at a 15" monitor, with visible flashing, trying to squint through the glare from the sun shining in my window... my eyes are pissed. When TFT monitors were first becoming mainstream I spent $1,200 to have a 17" TFT display. That was the best rip off purchase I've ever made. My eyes cheered with glee!

The next step is moving away from this setup where I must tense up my body and stay in one position all day long. A flexible paper monitor will help with this. I can't wait... imagine unrolling a big piece of paper, pulling out a pen stylus, and working in any position you want. Hell, grab the paper, go outside and sit in the sun, it won't change a thing since the display works just as good in sunlight as it does in a cold dark room. Unlike laptops, which burn your lap, and are useless outside.

I'm so excited that finally the production process has begun. I've been reading these articles about the paper displays, and finally they are being distributed to the mainstream world. But there's one thing I don't understand... Not that long ago on slashdot I read about a couple companies that have created color paper displays, using CMYK cells in a grid... so I guess that wasn't ready for primetime yet?

Anyways, I'm not quite ready to buy one yet. But since their desperate attempt to control content will surely fail, the price for these babies will drop significantly. Once the DRM crap is cracked, and people figure out how to mod these, then I'll probably be able to pick one up for $150.

While some people still prefer real books... I never have. I do not read books. But I do recognize the fact that paper is superior to monitors. I have notebooks of paper full of designs for my digital projects. I set everything up on paper, and once it's all figured out I go on the PC and code it up. Once I can combine the power of both worlds I'll be happy. Then I can go outside with my notebook of paper, and live a healthier lifestyle.

The power of the digital world lies in our minds. The internet is only special because it is a system that allows a global collaboration of thought. When I am forced to sit in one spot, with my hands stuck in one position, my neck fixed, and eyes squinting... cooped up in a cave, breathing stagnant air, and listening to the annoying sounds of computer fans, my brain doesn't think as clearly as when I'm relaxing outside, with nothing but a pen and a pad of paper.

Call me when it's $25

[ClosedSource]

One big difference between a product like this and a real book is its attractiveness to thieves. If you leave a book behind and return an hour later to pick it up, chances are it'll still be there.

A device like this is more likely to be stolen even if the thief doesn't know what it is. So these devices end up being just another burden to worry about.

I don't think most people realize

[Anonymous Coward]

that this is not an LCD screen. It's electronic paper. The characters actually look like they're written on a piece of paper rather than behind a piece of plastic on an LCD. The display quality far exceeds that of any mobile device and (gasp!) even computer monitors.

Here are a few links to high-res pics:

http://www.mobileread.com/forums/attachment.php?at tachmentid=306

http://www.mobileread.com/forums/attachment.php?at tachmentid=324

http://www.mobileread.com/forums/attachment.php?at tachmentid=307

http://www.mobileread.com/forums/attachment.php?at tachmentid=308

http://www.mobileread.com/forums/attachment.php?at tachmentid=309

In midst of all this talk about books, I think everyone knows what Japanese people with really use this device for:

http://www.nikkeibp.com/neasia/image2/200877_04032 5nby1.jpg

Case in point. 'nuff saif.... :-p

Personally I hope someone hacks the device in such a way that you can create/upload your own e-books. I'm sure someone would have to make an open-source BBeb(BroadBand E-Book) that's compatible with the device.

Anyone up to the task?

Sony Memory Stick difficulties, really?

[Henk Poley]

You will probably know what you are talking about, but...

When I google for 'sony memory stick linux' I only see 'succes' stories along the lines of "I put my presentation on my sony memory stick".

What are the troubles you expect there to be?

Re:Sony Memory Stick difficulties, really?

[cduffy]

It's not the memory stick itself, it's what they layer on top (Magic Gate). Your vanilla MS slot -- no problem. A Magic Gate one -- big problem. I haven't dealt with these directly, but my circle of friends includes some of the folks involved in the PS/2 Linux port, so I've heard quite a bit of indirect ranting from folks I trust to know what they're talking about.

Since Sony's goal is to sell content they have an interest in protectiong -- which ya wanna bet they're using here?

Re:Sony Memory Stick difficulties, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a Clie' with a MS slot. If you use the Sony program (Windows based) with Sony software, you must use their "Magic Gate" MS.

If, on the other hand, you put a MP3 file on a stock MS via some method other than Sony's Windows software (I use linux with the "MS Import" app on the Clie' which makes the MS look like a USB drive), the Clie' is happy to play the MP3 file(s).

I would hope that the book would work the same way. One way they could bugger this scheme is to have a proprietary interface to the MS and not release the low level driver in source (a'la nvidia).

As "they" say, past performance does not guarantee future results.

Re:Sony Memory Stick difficulties, really?

[cduffy]

One way they could bugger this scheme is to have a proprietary interface to the MS and not release the low level driver in source (a'la nvidia).

My understanding is that the PS/2 Linux kit's hardware access works via virtualized hardware (such that the OS drivers, which they properly release source for, don't actually interact w/ the real hardware, but rather a deeper software interface which restricts the available actions). Conceivably something along those lines could be done here as well.

Here's the big test

[Angst Badger]

Okay, it looks cool, the price isn't too astronomical, and the underlying idea is great. That leaves only one question, and the answer to that question will be the same as, "Will I buy it?"

So, can I put my own content on it?

There are tens of thousands of free books in electronic form out there, and I'd like to read several hundred of them. I'm not particularly interested in renting DRM-protected books. If I want books that I have to give back, I'm perfectly content with the library.

Re:err

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG WHAT WAS THAT!?!?

that was sarcasm flying over ur head man!

Not impressive

[sglines]

That's only 40 Meg! 10,000 pages x 500 words per page x 8 characters per word (generous). My palm Pilot with a memory stick does a lot more and costs the same.

the end of boxes of books, the demon AAP

[ykiwi]

I can't wait.

First the CD reduced the size and weight of my LP colllection to a shelf.
Then I put the CD's into folders and reduced the collection to a few folders.
Then the DVD reduced the size of Videos, so I now have a large movie collection is also just a few folders.

But I still have about 20 boxes of books, and have given/sold/thrown away countless other books over the years.

I move cities a lot.

So when this gets to maturity I'll be able to get rid of all those books, DVD's and CD's, and have all my media stored digitally.

and I won't have to wait or pay for 1 week shipping to NZ (or whereever I live) to get my hands on Woodward's latest expose.

The next MPAA/RIAA will be the Association of American Publishers (AAP, www.publishers.org). Watch for legal dramas as the AAP resists the relentless digitisation of books, criminalizes "scanners" who rip books to digital media and tries to shut down book trading over P2P networks. Watch the AAP fail at all of these tasks...

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose

[mbstone]

First I bought a Seiko MessageWatch that received content via FM radio, and Seiko decided they couldn't make money off the business model and quit, leaving me (and countless others) with a worthless POS closed-standard watch. Then Microsoft announced they were starting an FM radio subcarrier data service for their new line of closed-standard FM data watches. I was soooo first in line.

Another time, my SO bought me a Gemstar EBook reader as a gift. I pretended to like it. Because nobody wanted to buy copy-protected EBooks, and the unit did not support the vast amount of free books out there (e.g. Gutenberg), Gemstar went out of business, leaving me and countless others with a worthless POS closed-standard EBook reader; ultimately, the 2 or 3 books I did buy expired with the lithium battery. Now, Sony wants to introduce a closed-standard ebook product that, presumably, will feature DRM content and will, also presumably, make it hard or impossible to read all those free etexts. Deja #&%#$ vu all over again.

In other news, once upon a time in the 1960s, the U.S. was involved in a foreign war.....

Re:Er. . . This looks like an old LCD display. . .

[The Wicked Priest]

Yeah, there are some big things you're not getting:

1. It's higher resolution than even a modern LCD display, and way higher than those old ones.

2. You turn it off, and the picture doesn't go away. (More accurately, it only draws power when changing pages... I wouldn't be surprised if there's no on/off switch at all.) This is huge.

2b. Runs fscking forever on almost no power, as a consequence.

3. It's vastly more readable than those old displays, and probably more readable than your nice backlit TFT.

But in a way, you're right: The initial applications for this will be as a (vastly superior) replacement for monochrome LCDs. It's PERFECT for low-end Palm OS devices.

And can I just add: I want it I want it I want it.

This product has already failed in the US

[phillyiselite]

Anyone remember the Data Discman?

Re:Oh the humanity! (OOPS, found dimentions!)

[evilviper]

LCD can musster up to some 120 dpi

No problem there.

Good LCD is almost bound to have backlight, but even without it, it cincumes way more than this thing.

No, there's no reason for a backlight on a B&W LCD. Take a look at a Psion Revo some time.

Also, you'll see that the Revo lasts for something like a month on 2AA batteries. LCDs may consume a bit more power, but not enough to be a concern, and certainly not enough to justify a device that costs 4X what an LCD-based device would.

Besides, it uses polarisers, so it can never look wquite lake paper, which is essential for this application..

A B&W LCD is quite easy to read. It is not hard on your eyes like a CRT or backlit LCD are. It may not look exactly like paper, but why does it need to? I certainly don't think paper is the panacea of visual representation.

Re:Er. . . This looks like an old LCD display. . .

[Fantastic Lad]

You turn it off, and the picture doesn't go away. (More accurately, it only draws power when changing pages... I wouldn't be surprised if there's no on/off switch at all.) This is huge.

Ahhh. Yes, I see now. That IS cool.

-FL