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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.'"
As electricity is usen only when you turn pages, it will last as long as it takes you to flip 7500 pages.
how long does it take you to read 10 - 20 books.
From what I understand, once the page is displayed, they use no power to keep it displayed. they only use power to turn the pixels
"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
Won't happen this decade. College textbooks, and primary/secondary school as well, is a profit-hungry business. Why would they only charge a few dollars for something they can get a hundred for? Say a textbook costs $15 to print and sells for $50. The same e-book which costs $0 to reproduce would still cost $35 to download if they publisher wants to maintain their profits.
Supposedly, eInk screens only use power when changing the image they display. If that's true the batteries really will last for however long it takes you to read 7,500 pages. That is as long as you don't take so long to read 7,500 pages that the self discharge rate of whatever type of batteries it uses becomes a factor...
^I'm with stupid.^
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.
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.
You'll be able to view plaintext, HTML and PDF on the new reader... but, before it gets loaded onto the reader, it gets converted into Sony's proprietary file format. So, it's not a simple matter of drag-and-drop, you have to run it through a file converter to get it onto the reader.
:/
That's the deal-breaker for me.
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!
Of course you can still buy minidisks, you think Sony doesn't profit from them? They sold well in Asia, if not the US.
As for printers, the printer manufacturers profit obscenely from selling cartridges, to the point of selling the printers below cost to get them into your home. They'll happily be making them as long as anyone is buying, though it would be a rare inkjet to last more than a year or two. Actually, I have a HP laser vintage 1992, and just sold a Panasonic impact printer (1989). You can buy cartridges (toner and ribbon respectively) for both machines almost anywhere.
http://www.irextechnologies.com/shop/products/ilia d.htm
Whatever your opinions are about their non-portable equipment; their politics or their policies, Sony has ALWAYS made very durable and dependable portable equipment.
You're confusing "then" Sony with "now" Sony. Sony's reputation for quality remains largely unblemished even though they've stopped providing the quality of old for a few years now.
Paying a "premium" for Sony equipment is like paying a premium for Apple equipment- except that you get durable devices instead of pretty ones.
I'd say that the converse is true. Sony still has very appealing designs but the build quality and component reliability suck. Apple has their lemons sometimes but seems rather committed to a rewarding user experience. I'm not convinced that Sony has yet returned to the customer-oriented path.
[snip]
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.
When did we start talking about Philips? You make it sound like Sony originated or innovated. They eventually collaborated and made good contributions but...
To all the people pooh-poohing Sony on here- have any of you ever owned a (cassette) walkman
Not since the early 80's when they were the only show in town. It was replaced by an AIWA who made far superior portable cassette players than the walkmans. They weren't as neat or pretty, but they had far better sound quality.
or a (cd) discman?
Yes it crapped out after 18 months, the price SONY quoted to fix it was more than the price of the unit, and it wasn't one of their cheaper models.
How about a Viao laptop,
No, I'm daft but I'm not that stupid
or a portable minidisc player?
Yes, and exactly the same happened as with the discman. The microphone I bought with it still works, but I never use it, the gain is so low that it's useless for recording. The headphones I bought at the same time fell apart after two years due to poor materials, and I've had similar issues with a Sony Ericsson phone. Before you say anything, I've always looked after my stuff, it's only Sony equipment I've ever had problems with.
Whatever your opinions are about their non-potable 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.
No, with both companies you are paying for the brand name. It's like buying Calvin Klein underpants you can get better and cheaper. In Sony's case my experience is that you would be hard pushed to find worse.
How about using a regular Palm (or any other PDA)?
.doc, .pdf and pretty much anything else I can think of.
I use iSilo on my Palm and I read already around 50 regular books on it and it felt great (partly due to how awesome iSilo and partly to the nice, even if small, Zire71 screen). It can accept anything you can convert to HTML or plain text. That means
The only other device I'd consider to read my books:
1) Treo-like device - Because then it is PDA, books, video, music AND cellphone.
2) DRM-less eBook reader that's written on elastic e-paper that I can bend.
Yes (multiple), yes (multiple), No, and Yes (multiple).
Walkmans were good, but nearly every (all but one) Sony discman I've owned went defective in about 3 months of heavy use, and I'm talking about a dozen super-expensive ($200+) units (when $50 was normal). Similar situation for Minidisc players, I traded-in about 2 of each of 3 different models of $400 portable minidisc recorders (over the corse of my ~2-year warranty) before I gave-up.
They used-to, but it's been a long time since that was the case. They've made nothing but complete CRAP for the past 15 years, and they still charge premium prices for it.
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