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.
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
I want one too, but only if it can read HTML.
If it can't access Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/ or the Baen free library (and subscriptions) http://www.baen.com/library/, well, what use is it?
But wouldn't RSS imply the ability to display HTML as well?
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.
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.
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!
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!
This is exactly the sentiment that ensures the consumer will get screwed every time. Let me sum up your claim:
The logic is so flawed, it's insane. It's like saying "You can't keep all the dirt off your counters, so what's the point of cleaning, ever?", or "You can't live forever, so why live at all?". Every penny this guy, or someone else like him, can keep out of Sony's pockets, is one less penny that Sony can use to marginalize and repress the public good. Whether I agree with his choices or not, he's acting in a conscientious way, with the ultimate goal of improving our society.
You probably think everyone's overreacting, but there are always calm, contented people who wake up to a new world one day, full of regret. "Slippery Slope" isn't just a Historical Analysis tool.
Jasin NataelTrue science means that when you re-evaluate the evidence, you re-evaluate your faith.