Digital Books Start A New Chapter

conq writes "BusinessWeek has a piece on the latest advancements in eBooks, and how this time they might just take off. From the article: 'Portable devices are becoming lighter and more appealing. The most important step forward may be in digital ink, the technology used for displaying letters on a screen. A small company called E Ink has created a method for arranging tiny black and white capsules into words and images with an electronic charge. Because no power is used unless the reader changes the page, devices with the technology could go as long as 20 books between battery charges'."

Comments

Can I Take It Into The Bath?

[Cranky Weasel]

I only care about e-books if the following conditions are met:

1 - The image has to be inert - no glow effect of any kind. Ideally it should look just like paper.

2 - The "book" has to be waterproof. I read in the tub.

3 - The technology has to be sturdy. ANY portable technology should be sturdy.

4 - It has to be affordable.

5 - In the event of a crash I need to be able to replace the books in it without charge.

If I'm going to read, oh, say 100 books over the life of the product, it better cost me less for the unit plus the e-copies of the books than it would to buy the books outright. Otherwise there is no point.

Re:This crap again?

[ucblockhead]

It's been ready for many years. I've been reading books on Palm devices for a decade and O'Reilly has a great web-based subscription service.

The only issue has been that the "real" ebook readers have all utterly sucked because the idiots that make them are so concerned with controlling what their users read that they produce a product no one wants to buy.