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

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: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.