Slashdot Mirror
New Sony E-Book Device To Debut This Year
Luke PiWalker writes "Sony hopes to pen a new chapter for e-books with a device set to debut later this year. The secret? A display based on E Ink technology that goes miles beyond LCDs and CRTs. From the article: 'Scheduled to go on sale this spring for between $300 and $400, the Reader is a compact slab about the size of a small paperback book (5-by-7 inches, and a half-inch thick). But it's the 3.5-by-4.8-inch display that made it the buzz of the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this month in Las Vegas.'"
No more Sony in my house, sorry.
As a college student I think this could really be a great gadget. The price seems a little steep at first but it's actually about the same as only two or three textboks. And if you could buy one of these and then download the book onto it for a few bucks a you'd actually save a lot of money over the course of your education. And it's much lighter than books too. Last year I was taking two physics courses and calculus and my bag weighed about 40 lbs and that was on days I didn't need to bring my lappy.
You are so boring that when I see you my feet go to sleep.
as he announces the final version to the world. How funny would that be at the press conference
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I bet he didn't even go to Castleton.
Monstar L
One of the factor which I personally think is very important is the battery life. No use having superior technology and yet with a weak battery. From what I see, this device will last about 7500 pages. Doesn't give me an idea of how long it will last.
I want one.
My problem with ebook readers to date has been the transmissive screens -- staring at a light-source is just not as comfortable as staring at paper.
I'm not even too worried about if/how the content is DRMed, since buying books is what money is for.
But what I don't really want to do is pay royalties for a book I've already paid royalties for.
What's the chance that ebooks will be available on a media-charge-only basis to those who already have the dead-tree edition? (Zero, I expect!)
While this sounds like a cool gizmo it's strange that they shut down their zire operation, which had some success, and are going in a pretty much unproven direction like this which will likely not do much in retail.
they'll take cool technology and make it useless by imposing stupid restrictions and design flaws.
for example, in TFA they talk about how iTunes is such a success because of its ease of use and non-obtrusive DRM. the Sony reader will use the Sony Connect store based on the same idea - except you can't even look at Sony Connect without IE5.5+
well done Sony, yet another fuckup.
To me, spending a few hundred dollars/euro's on such a thing is only worth consideration if there is a possibility to buy plenty of content for a price that's much lower that I'd pay for paper versions of the same stuff. I guess theoretically it's possible that Sony will do the the same for books as Apple did for music.
However, given the recent experiences with Sony, I seriously doubt they have the vision to make this work. Possible DRM issues aside, they will probably screw this up by having too little content for too high price.
This may be a chicken-and-egg problem, but it's not *my* chicken-and-egg problem - I'll stick to books for now.
"Money is a sign of poverty." - Iain Banks
Sony may have a good marketing machine, but I make a note to always stay way clear of them.
* Sony products are usually 20% more expensive, with *less* features than the competitors.
* Sony products adhere strictly to DVD Region coding: corrupt racketeering of the DVD distribution.
* Sony products are simply not as competitive as other products.
* Sony products are slow to move to the marketplace, MP3 players were the most amusing addition to their product line, almost 4 years after the ipod.
Everytime I see some fashion crazy gumby tell me they just bought the top of the line Sony TV I sit back and have a quiet chuckle. They just spent 20% more than they needed too, and with probably only 50% of the features found in other leading products.
My big question is, what will it display? If it will only show eBooks bought from Sony Connect, in whatever asinine incompatible format Sony dreams up this time, then I'll have no interest. But a device that could take an unencumbered text-like file (PDF, HTML, plaintext, etc) would be a killer device. If its compatible with Project Gutenberg, sign me up.
But this is Sony, so I'm not holding much hope.
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
Wired writes: "There's no flicker, because the pixels are completely static (in an LCD or a cathode-ray tube display, by contrast, pixels need to be "refreshed" 60 times per second or more)."
LCD pixels don't need to be refreshed, ever. LCD panels are typically updated at 60 Hz, but this is just new data being sent from the computer, and mostly just due to how things were done before. Incidently, CRTs are typically refreshed at at least 80 Hz to make the flickering less obvious and less straining. Electronic ink does have the distinct advantage of not having to look basically directly into a lamp all the time. But anyway, if your LCD flickers, you should return it because the backlight is damaged.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
Hopefully the clunky box exterior is some kind of prototype. It as ugly as hell.
It'd be nice to see some Apple-style design work go into this, unless Sony are hoping the buzz about the display will put people off looking at the case.
Just use a Nokia 770. 800 by 440 screen and small. Perfect for reading eBooks on.
Well, depends on what you call a book. And frankly, I prefer the ones written on treated animal skins. It's a personal preference thing.
Anyway, DRM or not, the big problem I have with Sony (and the other, with the cooler-looking, fancier device) is that they seem to think I want to buy this thing so I can buy more things.
I've got tons of files -- my own docs, a bunch of
If you sell me something I can put two bookshelves of texts I consult regularly on, and maybe throw in some nonsense on birdwatching, I'll probably buy it.
If you make something that lets me read the Da Vinci Code for the same price as the paperback, plus $400, and doesn't let me give the work to a friend (a friend I don't like too much, given the choice of fiction), then forget it.
Oh yeah, battery life isn't just the screen, it's the processor too.
I RTFA, but it didn't mention how much memory this thing will have. This would be a pretty awesome toy if I could store my whole library on it for reference wherever I go.
No more Sony Rootkit Joke in /., sorry.
Given Sony's track record I was hoping to see more of the right to read references.
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
Second comment on a story points out that it is a dupe. And is moded as Redundant??
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
Say's it all
These jerks will never learn as long as they own a music subsidiary
You owe me a new monitor and keyboard.
I laughed so loud it woke up the dogs and they woke up my wife.
My birthday is April Fool's Day. Today is not April 1.
I think this is when we see a new tv ad: the AFLAC duck turns around and bends over (BOHICA)[1]. You think he gives that excited look when he fills up the car, then looks at the total price? He's going to look even happier when he hears all of the deails for this project.
$300-$400?
It'll be like Safari: you'll be able to check out books at a time; (to keep you from loading Gutenberg et alia) at a time.
This is one thing which I will make sure the missus knows to tell everone never|not put this on my list. I'd rather get another screwdriver or a pair of pliers. We're going to see things sink like a three-inch putt.
.
There are so many stupid things Sony will do it'll make their DRM activities (there have multiple events) look like perfection. You'll purchase the new POS to your kid for Christmas, and they'll prepay for the final|7th Harry Potter book which is part of your holiday gift and you'll see it disappear from your little box about ten minutes later. (You'll call support, you'll hear sumimasen deshita "we're so sorry for what has happened. Go to the store, they'll handle everything. Gombatte yo! (good luck!) You'll get back in line to complain and there will be big signs behind the counter announcing "We're sorry, but we don't handle eBook sh%t. You'll have to send the receipt, the box, yadda-yadda, and wait six weeks, hoping you get a better deal than you do with CD|any other peripheral rebate. You'll get someone else's reconditioned box. Think of your family going to the same restaurant sitting at the same table once a week and when you're done, grabbinig the gum you put under there before you started eating. (I could tell you about a lot of things you wouldn't believeas a result of too much free time in high school an college. But this ranks pretty high. What's next? Two friends who have a cold swap the zneeze contents with each other and consume it?
They've got your money, it's up to you to get it back.
You'll also find restrictions: perhaps ten or twelve books at a time and you'll have to drop one book to get another book. I know you can't achieve the capacity of write-only memory[2].
The complimentary chapter will be entitled "How we screwed the pooch"
[1] BOHICA = Bend Over, Here It Comes Again.
[2] (if you haven't come up with this concept before, particularly in a group, someone needs to make sure you are actually drinking (e.g. a nice big goblet of Bombay Sapphire instead of cold water) then you, my fine feathered friend, are lying.
If it is universal in a sense that it reads numerous .pdf and .chm e-books (not to mention .txt and offline copies of web pages) that you can google for and download right now it could be a succsess. If you can only read overpaied crappy sony books, they will fail as usual on the inteligent buyers market and get only supported by idiots (as all DRM schemes were and are).
Copy-right,left,up or down, consumers don't care what the DRM whiners and sony-virus installers are yapping, we are only interested in the minimum investment and maximum return.
E-books are all free (some only on p2p networks but with sizes of couple of megs who cares where you get it from), only the "player" is the payable part and the player should play everything we users throw at it. If it doesn't guess what? Competitior's player WILL and we will buy their product and ignore sony's crap.
Another "Luke PiWalker" dupe -- A very successful troll (look at his link, he glories in it) -- who accumulates karma by copying high-rating comments, and recently has started submitting dupe stories, which the "editors" cheerfully post. See also:
...
Google Jumps into Radio Advertising
On January 18th, 2006 with 45 comments
Luke PiWalker writes
duping:
Google To Buy Radio Advertising Firm
On January 18th, 2006 with 144 comments
-- quite an achievement as the original was still on the front page.
This guy is an asshole, but he couldn't get away with it if the editors were half-awake.
Your prices are way too low. Try buying a school book you'll pass out.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
As someone once said,
No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.
This is hardly news, Sony Librie has been out in the market for quite a while already. Just about all the questions that are being asked have answers on the web.
This new version has inbuilt (I think) rechargeable battery instead of 4xAAA, whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, I don't know. I have preference for the AAAs, because you can always get disposable ones if you are somewhere you can't recharge the batteries.
Also new is that it accepts SD card as well as MemoryStick. This has got to be a good thing.
Layout is different, Librie had a ful QWERTY keyboard, missing on this new one I think.
The file format for Librie is annoying, but manageable. There are many third party softwares that can easily convert most kinds of text files to the BBeB format. At the moment, only Sony Japan sell e-books tailored for Librie, with DRM attached of course, these DRMed files also have some stupid 60 day (I think) expiry period. But files you convert yourself do not expire.
Converting files from Gutenberg is trivial. I've uploaded a lot of books on mine with no problem. Only beef I have with it is that in Gutenberg files the line breaks are hard, so I had to remove all linebreak characters at the end of lines which are not end of paragraphs. There are probably some 3rd party software that can do this easily.
The screen is amazing, but can only do 4 level greyscale. Great for text, not bad for comics, useless for photos. It's for reading, not for pictorial porn.
Text font size is changeable, there are some five or six level of font size you can select, depending on your eyesight and the book default.
In Librie, the sorting on the Bookshelf is useless, probably because I can't decipher the Japanese too well, I hope the US version is more useable.
At the moment, PDFs suck. Although you can convert pdf to the format, it's converted as image (I think) and the resolution is decreased to the native resolution of the screen: 800x600. The entire page is squeezed into the screen, and you can't zoom for images, so you can't read the PDF files, unless the text on the file is headline sized. I read somewhere that the new version can actually zoom, I hope this will improve.
Battery life is as good as Sony claims, although remember this is number of pages, and the number of pages per book depends on the font size and the actual book. If you use a big font size to read War and Peace, you will probably only get through half of the book.
And if you worried about rootkit, why, isn't this Slashdot? just use Linux and don't install Sony software. Just plug in your choice of the flash memory into the memory read, and upload the converted files and database/TOC without using Sony software. Even better, since the Librie (and I assume this new one too) runs on Linux (source is available from Sony), just hack this thing yourself!
http://www.irextechnologies.com/shop/products/ilia d.htm
If Apple made it.
I'm in no way an apple fanboy, but this seems like the kind of device that apple would do right.
Well, this is another customer that is not interested in the 20% of the market in Europe that does not use Internet Explorer.
It may be a good product (technically) but its marketing is fataly broken when it requires IE.
Thanks,
GerardM
I would keep this to myself, but, since it is highly unlikely I will ever develop it or even work seriously in its development, I will share this very simple requirements with you.
What I want (and what I think the market would love to) is an e-book reader I could hook up to my computer and see it as an USB hub connected to a disk and a printer. If I drag a bunch of PDF files to it (and a popular format is essential for this to work) I should be able to read them. If I print anything on the device, it will be PDFized and stored on it. The device should automatically index all documents as to make them searchable and provide a graphical search (maybe like the one I had with Folio Views). A timeline interface for locating stuff wouild be great. The device could have some DRM for books I buy in electronic format (if I ever buy any), but should be able to transmit non-protected documents by some wireless port (BlueTooth, IR, 802.11). Diffing PDFs would be a nice touch.
Also, making it become a PDA by allowing people to port software (hint - Qtopia should be rather easy) for it would make it a killer.
Will someone please build it? I really need one.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
I have one of the older readers, the RCA device. There were four major problems with it. It cost too much, the book selection wasn't there, the display was weak, and I couldn't upload my own files to it. The last was what really got me ticked off. Especially since the original advertising implied I could load my own files. If I got the story right, it was a "security" update that closed down that capability.
For me, and e-book will have to have a great display, be durable enough to give to a grade schooler, and must allow me to upload my own content. I want to be able to go to the Gutenberg Project and download some of the free classics that are stored there. I can't see why I should have to pay for books that are out of copyright to be put in some proprietary format.
The fact that Sony is making this device worries me a lot. The company has shown it can't be trusted with the whole root kit fiasco. Unfortunatly, I don't see consumers taking any concrete action to show their displeasure. Back in the 70's, I would have expected a boycott of Sony products, but now people just shrug off whatever these companies do. It's sad.
I'll probably wait until someone other than Sony comes out with a reader.
-All that is gold does not glitter - Tolkien
www.ra
Although the new technology is attractive, the technology in the Rocket eBook or the Franklin eBookman was more than adequate. I still have my five-year-old Rocket and I still use it. I can bring ten books on a trip in a device that's smaller and lighter than a trade paperback and have a pleasurable, immersive reading experience.
What has prevented the eBook from taking off--killed it, at least for the moment--is not the devices. It is, in order of importance: limited title availability, limited title availability, limited title availability, excessive price, and DRM. Fix those problems and the eBook market will take off, even if you have to read them on a cell phone screen.
Of these, title availability is the most serious. At one point I checked, and at that time, of about 44 books on Oprah's Book Club list, something like 35 of them were available as audiobooks... and something like six of them were available as ebooks in ANY format. And no more than about four of them in any specific format.
TFA is entitled "Screening the Latest Bestseller," but unless something changes drastically, only a small fraction of the latest bestsellers will be screenable. Maybe you don't care for Barbara Kingsolver but I do, and none of her books has ever been available as an eBook.
Price. I've had about half-a-dozen conversations with strangers who saw me using my Rocket. They would be interested, I'd hand it to them so they could scroll pages, they'd be impressed, they'd ask about price and capacity and so forth. Then would come the question: "How much do the eBooks cost?" I'd answer "About the same as a hardbound for books that are not out in paper, about the same as a paperback for books that are in paperback." They'd give me a you-gotta-be-kidding look of disbelief and that would be that. End of story.
And, DRM. Look guys, don't you get it? One of the pleasures of books is lending them. Why do you think bookplates were invented? If I can't lend my son the latest Stephen King, don't bother. True story: just last year, my wife bought a copy of Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything." "Wow, this is really good," she says. "You'd probably like to read it when I'm done with it." Pregnant pause. "Uh, honey... I'm afraid I've already read it. I bought it for my Rocket eBook a couple of years ago." Phooey. Paid twice for the damn book. Not that it would have mattered, as my wife doesn't own a Rocket eBook, and even if she did the content was keyed to the serial number of the individual device and I couldn't have loaned it to her anyway.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
i will buy it
According to prophecy
... e-hilighter?
I'll stick with dead tree format, thanks. Less chance of my collection being rendered useless because of some stupid "upgrade".
To all the people pooh-poohing Sony on here- have any of you ever owned a (cassette) walkman or a (cd) discman? How about a Viao laptop, or a portable minidisc player? Whatever your opinions are about their non-portable equipment; their politics or their policies, Sony has ALWAYS made very durable and dependable portable equipment. Paying a "premium" for Sony equipment is like paying a premium for Apple equipment- except that you get durable devices instead of pretty ones.
Oh, and everyone saying they'll wait for Apple to release one? Remember, Apple hasn't always been the forward-thinking design firm they are today- gee, it's almost like they somehow CHANGED the way they do business? *gasp*... but Sony could NEVER do that! All sarcasm aside- Sony screwed up, folks, pure and simple. This rootkit business would obviously never have happened if their security people has been controlled better... and you can bet it probably won't happen again (at least not soon). Sony makes, has made, and will continute to make quality hardware, and I doubt that will change in the near future. These people brought us the betamax wars (beta was better!) and, more popularly, the CD format that has been the basis for data and audio transfer for two decades. Let it go.
Oh yes, Apple fans, remember- expect to actually pay MORE for a compareable Apple product then the Sony MSRP because, well, it's Apple!
That being said, I probably won't buy this product, but for different reasons then most people. I prefer my books in dead-tree format, because I can toss them in bags, bang them around, sit on them, whatever, and they only cost me about $6 to replace. Also, many of the books I like are out of print now, and although I'm sure the library they have available when these are released will be large, I doubt it'll have much in the way of out-of-print science fiction and fantasy.
What I'd like to see come out of this is the development of a thin-but-durable paper/plastic product that you can write on, and then save the data to put on a computer later. Pair this screen technology with a memory recording device and a touch-screen applique, and you'd have a low-power electronic 'notebook' that's good for taking notes in classes or at work, but doesn't require hauling around a $700+ device.
I'd certainly be interested in using an e-book device with a high-quality display. But not for reading books, more for reading articles, reports, PDF files and even web pages. I have so many documents in electronic form, but reading them online is still not particularly pleasant (particularly for PDFs, which despite what Adobe claims, are not a good format for online reading).
Printing all these articles would probably be equivalent to destroying a small forest in terms of paper consumed. But let's face it, even on the web, we tend to browse a large amount of plain text content. Simply reading online articles, even discussions like this one on Slashdot, perhaps saved for offline reading (yes I know you lose the interactive element of responding to posts), would be more pleasant on a display that matched the appearance of paper.
I hope the e-ink technology is adopted by other manufacturers so we have a number of vendors (and prices) to choose from.
I'm getting quite tired of the "boycott SONY!" tirades some people go on.
:D
Yes, the music/CDs branch of SONY f'ed up royally.. and if you want to boycott them - by all means.
But boycott the entire company? That's just a little strange - do you really think that, for example, their overhead projector group has *anything* to do with the music division? Yet you're perfectly willing to 'punish' them equally. It's like as if you were to scratch up my car, and I suddenly shun business from your entire family - and make this clear to everybody, too.
So far my thoughts on it.. and I respect that you may not share those thoughts. You may still wish to boycott all of SONY. So be it.
However, have you considered just exactly how much you will be needing to boycott?
Just for kicks - did you happen to see "Memoirs of a geisha"? Let's say you did - oops: you already screwed up.. Memoirs of a geisha is a Sony Pictures Entertainment distribution. Maybe you didn't see it - but you'd like to go see "The DaVinci Code", "Spider-Man 3", "Hellboy 2", etc. Well, if you were to stick to your "boycott SONY", then you'll have to shun those, too. I'm sure your friends will understand when they ask you to go out with them, and you tell them "no - I'm boycotting SONY".
Of course it's not just these new movies. Did you happen to watch, rent, or buy any Columbia, Tristar or MGM movie? Yes? Oops again - SONY owns most of them. Yes, that's right - watching Tom & Jerry cartoons (that you didn't already own) means you're supporting SONY financially.
Maybe you don't care for those, though - I've yet to see any Slashdot person not like Stargate SG-1, however... and assuming you are among them.. I feel for you - for Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis are Sony Pictures Television productions.
Now, obviously you didn't buy a PSP - but maybe some of your friends have, and you know they would really, really like this game for it.. and their birthday is coming up. Well, tough for them - because buying a PSP game also supports SONY.
And you certainly won't buy any CDs, yes (if you aren't already)? As, of course, SONY (and Philips) still get a tiny scraping of a dollar for every CD made - even if the music isn't connected to SONY in any way.
Come next hardware-upgrade, please also be sure to bring a magnifying glass so that you can check out the components on the PCB. Good chance there's some SONY Semiconductor...semiconductors on there.
The list goes on and on... quite honestly, you would be hurting yourself more than you would be hurting SONY. And what tiny little hurt you -do- do to SONY is being done to divisions that had zilch to do with the goof-up at SONY's music branch.
I'd love to see the day that Unilever, Nestlé and Procter & Gamble would all do something so outrageous (maybe RFID tracking) that somebody wishes to boycott them - hell, somebody make a documentary about that, and I'll gladly pay to see it
... part of the "100$ notebook" from MIT ... education is the most important place for such a technology !!!
The story itself is stupid, too:
It's not for a lack of dedicated e-book devices, either.
Yes it is. When i decided to go ebook two years ago, I had to go through a ton of 5-year-old reviews and wound up buying a discontinued franklin ebookman on the 'bay. There were a ton of dedicated devices in 2000, but of course there was no content aside from proj. gutenburg and i mean, i like Mark Twain as much as anyone, which is why i've already read his stuff. and so pretty much everyone except heibook stopped making the devices. there's a real need for a decent reader.
What's the point? Well, i should have some coffee before I post. But also, this is a great device with a crippling flaw that fills a real hole in the market. Fortunately for all of us, someone in a country that gets like 12 minutes of daylight will crack the DRM in like a week, and we should be good to go. It's just a shame that Sony is so freaking stupid about this.
god is just pretend.
A half an inch thick E-ink based gadget? What are they thinking? The whole point with the E-ink is that it can be on a flexible super thin piece of plastic. All Sony is doing...is making an inferior PDA like gadget with a worse screen, sure - it will save batteries... but then again - so will an black and grey Palm-pilot without backlight too. Pointless stuff.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Consider that for the price of Sony's proposed reader you could purchase a PDA that could also be used to read books. These devices can run multiple reader apps. Thus, they aren't limited to a given e-book format. In addition, they are small and easy to handle. They are also backlit which makes it possible to read at night in bed without rousing your partner.
Finally, and in my mind, most importantly, they are (usually) carried everywhere by their user. That means your book(s) is/are always available (as you stand in line waiting for a bank machine, lunch etc.) You can leaf through a couple of pages at the drop of a hat. Given their advantages, I do not see what Sony (or any other manufacturer of a dedicted reader) has to offer. As far as E Ink itself, I think it rocks and can't wait for it to make its way into PDAs. Of course, it will likely have to be able to co-exist with a standard LCD screen or produce color images before this will happen.
Bruce A. Knack
Silicon Surfers
If this thing is as hyped, I've been waiting for something like this for a long time. I have a lot of manuals and documents that I have to read. They are very large PDF files, so I don't want to waste the paper printing them out. But I really, really hate trying to read them while sitting in front of the computer. I was thinking about buying a tablet just for this purpose, but it seems like a waste of money to buy one just to read docs more comfortably. I've look at all the ebook devices out there, and even besides all the differing formats, they all seemed to be laking.
Anonymous Cowards suck.
No matter how good or useful it will be, it's a Sony. pI hate their memory policy (only use proprietary expensive undersized crap) and they have not yet apologized properly for the rootkit fiasco. I want to see heads roll.
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
my understanding is the ebook uses a new display technology (epaper). It holds the image on the screen without power like "flash memory" you use in digital cameras. So battery life is described in "# of page flips", instead of hours.
Its described in the article. How readable is in all lighting conditions is anyones guess.
Let's see... I'm about 40 and I have a Shakespeare and a Chaucer that my Grandmother (who had a PHD in Linguistics) used in college. Wonder how long these sony ebooks would hang around someone's house? Also, you might try tossing a hardcover copy of Paradise Lost out of a second story window, vs. tossing the Sony reader containing the eParadise Lost out the same window and see which one turns into Paradise Reclaimed.
Will it let you view non protected content that you make yourself? ( like a pdf.. )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
SONY has had a reader like this available in Japan for the last year or so. Was very tempted as the pages are really readable, nice, crisp high-res text. Don't know if this is an improved version or not but after playing with it for a while I noticed that the screen takes a while to refresh and it has problems with the previous page remaining as a latent image. Also, it seemed *very* underpowered CPU wise and the UI was oh, so SONY, clunky. So be sure to play with it before you buy...
How about proposing just that to the manufacturers?
(BTW not that this would be needed in a PDA, but they do have even have color prototypes already...)
I just blogged (http://mark-watson.blogspot.com/) about this. For people who need to do a lot of offline reading of technical papers, etc., I think that this device is a winner. You can load it with PDF files in addition buying DRMed eBooks. This will work well with material from, for example, ACM's Digital Portal.
I am a big fan of the iTunes Store. My wife and I watched an old Alfred Hitchcock show last night (fantastic, BTW) that I bought for $2. I have no problem buying DRMed eBooks as long as I can back them up (as iTunes allows).
It's nice you can hold it in one hand and all, but real books open up and have two viewing surfaces. To me, something like that would be preferrable. If you are trying to mimic a book, mimic the design that's been around and works.
Sony is shit, just buy a TabletPC and you'll have the best eBook device ever. Can read anything! And do a lot more!
When they make things digitally restricted and quite literally "locked up in crypto bottles" (John Perry Barlow), the fallout (especially among all the tech-savvy that should be the earliest adopters at premium prices) tends to be the one that can be seen from the start of this discussion: an immediate association with practices perceived as "evil" (why would any company in their right mind want to match Microsoft on this one?!) that only billions in advertising (if anything) can make go away again...
Once they do get over their impulse to restrict and restrain, however, and simply sell the customer what the customer wants (cf. reprogrammable Aibos, MP3/4-capable players - and remember when everyone wanted a "Walkman(TM)"?), volume, clever additional applications, and the power of a premium brand more than make up for anything DRM (and lawsuits against tinkerers) could ever have earned them - and this improves rather than taints the image they enjoy in the public eye.
If you read the fine print on their web page, it can display PDF and other open formats but only if you run them through their converter. Sorry, no go.
Sony has some *serious* dick sucking to do before I will buy anything which displays the "sony" label. Dollars are the only thing they understand. They will not get any more of mine until I see a disolution of the riaa and the mpaa, and an ethical treatment of consumers. As I said, some serious cock gobbling.
^..^
Nobody collects printer cartridges. Nobody gets emotionally attached to printer cartridges. Nobody finds a dusty old printer cartridge in their grandfather's attic and weeps that they're unable to use the glorious old ink it undoubtedly contains.
Printer cartridges are just throwaway consumables; obsolescence is built in. Many people don't consider their favourite books, music or films to be throwaway; when they buy them, they expect to be able to keep them for as long as they want to. DRM combined with proprietary formats fails that expectation; if you can't space/time/format-shift a work freely, you *will* lose access to it sooner or later. That's what many of us find unacceptable.
Textbooks contains color figures & pictures, that's why they are expensive.
...it's called a Palm!
With my Palm I can read EBOOK, PDF, MSWORD, POWERPOINT, HTML, TEXT and much more..no DRM and no Sony crap. Plus I can add 1GB of memory for less than 50 bucks.
on iTunes, you can get crappy compressed music, fully DRMed. For the same price you can get a full-quality CD, and rip it to whatever you like. Still, people love iTunes... and now iTVSeries.
Why should it be different/cheaper for iBooks ?
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
It seems a large quantity of people need to RTFA, or atleast do their research. It's going to be able to read jpg images, text files, PDF files, and-- OH MY GOD --a SINGLE DRM'd eBook format. (And probably other stuff, too.)
For the people crying 'Rootkit!', I have the same reply I give to people who say my purchase of a PSP is eroding my rights as a consumer or similar nonsense that I'd just as soon not dignify with a reply if not for the fact that it pisses me off beyond what is reasonable: SonyBMG isn't even the same as Sony Music let alone SCEI or their consumer electronics division, so why should I let what ONE part of a MASSIVE multinational corporation did, keep me from enjoying my PSP/eBook reader/headphones/home theatre receiver/Playstation 3? The answer is; I shouldn't. Leave the asinine and baseless arguments to people like Jack Thompson. Sony-bashing is no longer hip, get over it.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
It's not just the music division that's screwed up. The original Librie had DRM that would DELETE the books you BOUGHT after 60 days. Everybody has standardized on SD and/or MMC (but since SD is compatible with MMC, they're effectively the same thing) but Sony is still using its memory stick which by the way has DRM built in. This goes across the entire corporation. Sony needs to stop punishing its customers. Best way to make that happen is to not be a customer.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Only PDF and Sony's proprietary format? What about various things I have in text formats? Could they really not implement a few open-standard text formats?
The sony e-book doesn't handle the web particularly well, but there are plenty of articles, not to mention the daily paper, that I would really like reading on e-paper. This screen on the back of connected device like the Nokia 770 would be perfect: articles could be fetched on the main screen and sent to the e-paper display.
Plus, the beauty if e-ink is that it's supposed to be cheap to make, so that it could be added as a second display.
I expect you're right. If this thing takes off, it's because we will agree on a standard, open, easy-to-convert-to format that will have both DRMed and un-DRMed flavors. I don't doubt that Sony will propose such a standard, but who will sign on to it? Companies are scared of letting Sony own the standards. The fights about Betamax and Blu-ray are just two of several examples.
In a much better position to legislate a standard for this would be:
Maybe the two could team up on ebooks, the buzz alone would sideline competitors. If they're hesitating at all, it's because they're not sure there will ever be much of a market for ebooks.
This whole rootkit thing surely plays a role in my deciding not to buy this thing, but I never liked Sony's products actually. This thing too has a memory stick, which makes it more expensive than necessary. I really want a device like this but I want to be able to choose the manufacturer of the memory, and I want to be able to upload any .pdf file to it without having to convert it first. O, and I also want to be able to read ASCII text files on it, because I'd like to use it to read the books you can download from the Gutenberg project.
-- Cheers!
To be fair, from TFA it sounds like this device is supposed to support PDFs when it arrives. I hope it does so in a fast, unencumbered way that really allows you to view other people's PDFs. I kind of doubt it, though, and what's more PDF doesn't sound like a particularly good format for a device like this. PDF is page-based. What if the page format of the PDF doesn't fit the form factor of this device? The device sounds like it's designed to display a page at a time. How will you scroll around an oversized PDF? What's more, how will color text and graphics be represented?
I'd much rather see this device support the same e-book format I've been using on my Nokia 770: plain HTML. It's pretty much ideal for most purposes, as it turns out. Page form factor is not a problem. You can pick the font you find the most readable, in the size you want. You've got plain text, italics, bold, subheads for emphasis. You can put space between paragraphs and break at the end of a chapter. As it turns out, most books don't really use many more typographical conventions than those. All the fancy-formatting stuff that PDF gives you is really just cruft. When we read, we really just want to read text.
Everybody loves talking about the iPod and the iTunes store interchangeably now, as if it was the iTunes store that made the iPod a success. That's rewriting history. Good design made the iPod a success, and let's not forget that the iPod was used for playing MP3s, which everybody either already had or could get from their friends, Web sites, or Napster. Unless an e-book reader has a way to get your own content onto it -- and let's pretend for argument's sake that none of it will be pirated -- then it won't find a market.
Breakfast served all day!
What Wired claims is a picture of the screen looks terrible. The text is dark grey on light grey. The bezel has more contrast than the screen. Standard LCDs look better. If that's "E-Ink", it's a nonstarter.
Is if I can pull up any document & format I want after having transferred the files from my own laptop because I'm primarily going to keep all my "documents" there on the laptop where I can use them (and copy & paste, etc) each day.
I am NOT going to add another device as a main storage component, unless it also is readable and usable on my laptop and then worse yet would be to have my 'downloaded ebook' go awry and not be viewable anymore, because of screwy DRM.
I can't see paying for content which vaporizes if my hard drive crashes, my laptop is stolen or I upgrade to a newer OS or change OS's. The "lock-in" or lose it mentality is not one I will buy into, never ever anyway and Sony needs to know this!
Why would you want to take it *off* the ebook reader?
I mean, I read lengthy HTML and text files regularly on my computer -- right now, I'm reading a free copy of Journey to the West. I have a bunch of scripts that render them to PDF and make them look really nice (two columns of text, antialising), so that I can just tap spacebar or backspace in xpdf to read them. Half of the problem with reading long amounts of text on a computer is that the readers are abysmal (web browsers are not suitable), and this solves the problem.
I've *never* been unhappy that I have to use PDF -- I still have the master.
I'm suspicious that some of the people here are just worried that they won't be able to pirate commercial ebooks. Don't worry -- nobody's ever managed to effectively lock down a consumer electronics device. I'm quite sure that someone will crack this in short order, and in any event, books can be obtained in other formats.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
Let me know when that color model comes out for sub $500. That looks promising and more flexible.
"If I were bound by all laws everywhere I'm sure I would have committed a capital crime somewhere."
I saw a similar device back last summer. The display was absolutely beautiful; the first time that I saw it, it looked for all the world like a fake display model, with a piece of cardboard instead of the real screen -- that's how much like paper it looks.
I would have bought it on the spot -- it was something like 30,000 yen -- but from looking at the fliers, it seemed like you had to rent the books... You buy a book for 300 yen or something, you get to see it for some amount of time, and that's it. At the time there seemed to be no facilities for viewing PDF documents, text files, HTML, etc. -- only support for the 300-yen rent-a-books.
I'll buy one of these the very second that it'll read a PDF file.
- In Capitalist America, law violates YOU!
As soon as the prices of this e-ink come down, market share will expand when someoby can put two 'pages' side by side with a hinge down the middle.
.pdf and plain-text capabilities please).
Cover it with leather (non-dead animal coverings availible as well), allow bluetooth or other wireless connectivity for transfer (and power if possible), get the price point below $150, and ensure customers that ebooks will remain a certain percentage price below the dead-tree versions, and you've got a product.
Feeling ambitious? Get a gumsix and some e-ink and go out and build one (built in
Want design ideas for your next project/product? Have a sticky problem and need a brainstorm? I charge nothing. [cyrus at 80d dot org]
On any Sony music player you know that you can buffer keystrokes, press pause during track seeking to cue up at the beginning of the track, get a true track shuffle instead of amnesiac random play, and initiate shuffle in the middle of a track to start shuffling as soon as the track ends. You can also swap up your shuffle and repeat options at any time without interrupting play.
You might think that this stuff is minor, but try using a Sony music device for an extended period, then switching over to something else. It's like having a limb amputated. Many players don't consistently buffer keystrokes, don't let you cue up tracks on pause, only have pure random play, immediately switch tracks when you initiate random play, etc. And most product reviews don't even cover these sorts of things, so unless you're able to try out the product beforehand you can get totally screwed.
Personally, I think that anyone who makes a car MP3 player that doesn't implement an actual shuffle function needs to be shot. (Yes, I'm talking to you, Panasonic.) With pure random play, an MP3 CD with 8 hours of music will start having an oppressive number of repeats after only 2 or 2.5 hours, which completely defeats the purpose of using the thing on a long road trip. Sony understands this, but many other companies don't. So until the other people figure it out, I'll just have to stick with Sony.
(Yeah, yeah, "just get an iPod and use it everywhere instead." Except I don't want my ability to listen to music to be tied completely to a single expensive device, and I like having the option of listening to uncompressed music of my choosing alongside the compressed library.)
I say it's Sony, and I say to hell with it.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
At that price point, why not buy a LAPTOP that can let you read books and do a thousand other things? This Xmas I helped my fatehr buy a laptop for just over $400, but there were good deals I saw for a Toshiba laptop for $300. Sure, no uber-cool e-ink screen, but isn't the vast increase in functionality a good trade off? Slighly larger size for a laptop too and perhaps shorter battery life, but it's very common to carry laptops around and somewhat rare to be >10 feet from an electric outlet for long periods of time. And, if this Sony device does not support open formats like what Project Gutenberg supports, you would have the added bonus of thousands of free titles from Gutenberg. Now, if the price point of this device were closer to $200, then I could start to see the light.
I just don't think people will pay $400 for an ebook reader and then still have to pay the same amount per book. I'll pay $400 for an ebook reader when it includes all books to be read.
Does the e-book explode and erase public libraries from the map?
Join the Eternal Boycott of everything SONY:
NO Sony Cameras
NO Sony Music
NO Sony Games
NO Sony Vaio computers
NO Sony HDTVs
NO Sony Radios
NO Sony Movies
NO Sony Memory Sticks
Did I miss anything?
Oh, ya - same boycott stands for BMG too.
Rootkit the planet once = Goodbye customer base!
Sony has ALWAYS made very durable and dependable portable equipment.
O rly?
is the highlight of sony products. I still concider it (and it's related technologies) the gold standard for CRT's. Just about everything else they have touched in recent years has been sub-par and basicly just sucks. Memory Stick? HOW MANY FLASH FORMATS DO WE NEED? Albeit sony is not the only one to fault here but I can think of few other companies that made their own flash format just to lock in customers. They had a few good digital cameras but I could never see buying of JUST BECUASE of that damn memory stick format.
"relatively durable and versatile technology. Sony's new Reader will not spell the end of that"
Yep that's the true Sony we all know and avoid. Buy quick folks, special offer on now - a free rootkit for the first 100 customers who call right now.
This http://www.jinke.com.cn/compagesql/English/embedpr o/prodetail.asp?id=20 device look like it should supply everybodys needs. It comes out this spring and will read txt,pdf,html and others and runs Linux!
If you're an avid reader like me, you'll want one and may forgive Sony its past mistakes: I've owned many PDAs and eBooks (the Apple Newton, the original Palm Pilot, one of of the newer Palm PDAs, a laptop, the RocketBook eReader, the RCA 1100 and 1200,and now the Sony Librie).
But until Sony's Librie, I always gave up reading eBooks after a month or so due to eye strain (because in my opinion even the newest non-eInk screens are crappy for reading from for more than a few minutes). But thanks to the eInk, the Sony Librie screen is virtually like paper. (Yes, the Librie could use a faster CPU and better book-conversion software, but aside from that it's a damn fine reader.)
I'd love for the Sony Reader to become very popular... NOT because I like Sony (I don't), but because I want mass adoption of an eInk reader so that it goes down in price and becomes as ubiquitous the iPod... Imagine, no more having to take 3 or 4 heavy paper books on your holiday, when your one eBook reader will hold 100 books at once! Imagine being able to finally get your work manuals, college textbooks, and the rest of your books in a portable, readeable format, instead of having to haul heavy dead trees anywhere (and imagine reducing the demand on the poor trees)! Imagine that due to popular demand, books that used to be out-of-print become readily available again! (I mean, I love Project Gutenberg and all, but I do want to read something more current than Emma!) I think these possibilities is why we should give the Sony Reader a chance...
...I imported a japenese PSP to the UK just after they came out. Less than a year later, the screen started playing up. Sony UK didnt want to know (well they did, they wanted £140 + postage to sort it out as punishment for being a fan of theirs and importing a PSP early). Took it apart, and it turns out the screen cable is attached to the motherboard by a brittle plastic clip that is about 0.5mm square in cross section, and a couple of inches long, and arranged so the long length is parallel to the long side of the psp. Result? when the PSP flexes during use, the clip snaps, and the display wire falls out. I fixed it with blue tack stuffed between the wire and the back of the screen. Sony should make stuff more like Nokia - i have seen Nokia phones survive falls of several feet onto concrete without a whimper...
This thing costs as much as what I'll spend when I replace my Palm Pilot with my tax return. Were I to buy this, I'd have a mono-functional device, the bane of Alton Brown. I read ebooks with my Palm Vx, I read ebooks on my laptop. The price is just not reasonable, bring it down under $200 and much closer to $100 and I'd consider it. But since this is Sony, that ain't gonna happen.
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.