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Electronic Paper's Past and Future
Iddo Genuth sends us to TFOT for his extended series of interviews around the question of how electronic paper will change our lives in the next few years. The article leads off with the "father of e-paper," Nick Sheridon, who came up with the idea almost 35 years ago at Xerox PARC, and goes on to explore how e-paper may evolve past its current incarnations in the likes of the Sony Reader.
the question of how electronic paper will change our lives in the next few years.
Two words: porn.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Can I still write on it?
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
From TFA:
Q: When do you predict we will see the real e-paper revolution?
A: It has already started but will become a real mass market in about 2012.
So that 's what the Mayans were worried about!
Ahhh, what an awful dream. Ones and zeroes everywhere... and I thought I saw a two.
My main thought is that since it's by Sony it'll be drenched in poisonous DRM.
I owned a Newton Messagepad back in the day. I've read fiction, non-fiction, short stories, novels, news articles and heaps of other stuff on everything from a PDA to one a laptop connected to Second Life. The only place ebooks have a decent chance of success is to replace the two tons of textbooks most schools require their students to carry. Otherwise it's hard to beat the convenience of Dead Tree Format.
When the display can be folded and put into a pocket, when I am able to read all of it on a single charge, when I can effortlessly pull down background info from varied sources - let me know, I'll be buy 10 of them.
Rumors are flying around that Amazon is going to release their own e-ink device any day/week now. A version of it went through the FCC a while ago since it might have a wireless modem in it. It will probably be more expensive than the Sony, but might have the ability to download newspapers and magazines directly.
Bookeen is coming out with their own device any day now that's really similar to the Sony reader but will use different file formats. They all read RTF, TXT, etc... but if you want to buy a new book, it's likely to have DRM in the file. The DRM file format that the Sony uses is different from the DRM files that the Bookeen and Amazon Kindle will use.
The Iliad is bigger and can render letter size PDF files without the hassle of the smaller devices. It has wifi and a writable screen that you can take notes with... but it's supposed to be slower and more than twice as much money.
I want one really bad, but I'm waiting to see what Bookeen and Amazon finally release before I throw down my cash. Sure they're all kind of expensive, but you can load up with free classic books from Project Gutenberg and you'll save money in the long run (if you read a lot and are too lazy/busy to make trips to the library).
http://www.mobileread.com/
http://www.engadget.com/2006/09/11/amazon-kindle-meet-amazons-e-book-reader/
http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/03/kindle-edition-books-appear-on-amazon-reader-launch-imminent/
http://www.bookeen.com/
http://www.irextechnologies.com/
Sony's e-paper reader is a disaster, I looked at it at Fry's and couldn't force myself to like it. Ghosting, low contrast, and most unpleasant is the low speed of updates (about 1 second to flip the page, with awful flickering all the way.) It is also a single purpose reader, nothing more. I ended up buying a Sansung Q1 Ultra, it is not perfect but at least it is a usable tablet with a Windows OS so you can load stuff onto it, run Mozilla, do things (802.11 + Bluetooth) and in general I like it. The handwriting recognition is excellent, though it has a keyboard as well. Some say it's slow, but as long as it's not your primary gaming box you would be OK :-) A tablet has many uses, and speed is not needed for any of them (as long as it's fast enough to decode MP3s.)
They're actually quite nice.
The e-paper screen is *beautiful*. The only thing you'll miss is a book light. It's very nice and contrasty (but more like black on a dull grey background), and the text isn't buried under glass, but appears on the surface, like real paper. It's a nice matte surface, so glare is a non-issue, and is extremely readable in all lighting conditions except pitch black (like a regular book).
The bad thing - if you want to use its internal memory, you need to use Sony's software (a poor imitation of iTunes). But luckily, it accepts Memory Stick and SD cards. Just plop in it text files, RTF, or PDF files onto your SD card and away you go (making this the OS agnostic way of using it - just need a card reader and external card). The other issue is ghosting - when the screen updates, the parts that were black don't return all the way to background color, but leaves an imprint. Not to worry - another refresh will fix it. Might be slightly irritating if the book lines alternate.
The other bad thing is when it needs to refresh the area - what happens is it inverts the entire screen, then writes the new image to it (in an effort to alleviate the ghosting).
But the screen is really nice, you can easily forget about such issues. Just remember the flashlight if reading beneath the covers.
I'm actually not sure that stable-image type displays (what I would generically consider e-paper) are going to be the first widespread paper-replacement. As nice as their low power consumption is, their bit depth, color, contrast, and refresh rate are all horrible at the moment. And while they are certainly improving in those areas, things like LCDs and OLEDs are improving in power consumption and form factor as well.
I came to this realization when I looked at the new 505 revision of the Sony Reader's marketing, and it occurred to me that I'd rather get an iPod touch. Recharging every few days instead of every few months is a sacrifice I'd be willing to make for real web content and video (while Sony could probably put some sort of basic very-static web browser on it's reader despite the display's low refresh rate if they wanted to support HTML, video and quick interactivity are going to be out of the question until there are fairly major changes in the display technology). And, as more and more content moves online, from static paper to dynamic computer screens, moving content is only getting more prevalent (rollovers, pull-down menus, AJAX widgets of all sorts, and even content in flash and other plug-ins)...
I kind of suspect that e-paper has missed the window where it could have widely succeeded with a refresh rate measured in seconds rather than milliseconds. Stable-image type displays may have to get their refresh rates down into the low-double-digit milliseconds (and coincidentally gain high bit depth color and decent contrast) before they can take on to the mainstream.
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
The Sony's PRS-505 is at $299. I will wait until the price drop to 199. I have seen the epaper made from E Ink, it is very easy on the eyes and the latest Sony ebook has made a significant advancement in the refresh rate.
There are tons of copy right expired content online. I can't wait to curl up on the couch and read a good classic novel.
The purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning, and inhibit clarity....Calvin
I don't think epaper will make a huge difference in our life in the years to come. The biggest reason is that it's overpriced. A laptop is a good example. Laptops go from $400 to thousands. On the upside, they will save you money after you have used at least 400000 (four hundred thousand) sheets of paper roughly. It is also more environmentally friendly and efficient. Not to mention more organized and smaller! However you've also got battery life... It works just as well without the price and no batteries required. If you could make some sort of pocket book that had an easy input method such as a widely sold stylus and a battery life lasting at least 200 hours on full power. I think for now I will stick with good old fashioned paper.
Please visit http://www.mederbil.com/ i7, GTX 275, 4 1TB Caviar Green in RAID 0+1 array, EVGA X58 3X SLI Board, Silver
The latest incarnation of the Sony Reader plugs in to a USB host and shows up like a drive, to drag files over. It can handle .txt and .PDF as well as JPEG and MP3. Feel free to totally ignore installing their software and never using DRM. I have one and it is fantastic for taking with me when I travel.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
If you believe there is some other interest group that would favor e-books over paper, I can't find one. Every "normal" book reader would pick a paper book without thinking. That's what libraries have, right? Only a geek would choose an obscure electronic device for such a mundane use.
The new model will show up as USB Mass Storage, so you can just plug it in and drag files across. No more Sony software.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Great, we've managed to replicate yet another crappy input device which is still many levels below direct neural interfacing. Seriously, we're almost 2010... c'mon guys, I'm not lashing out until the Logitech (TM) Direct Neural (TM) connection hits the shelves. And cerebral subprocessors... I mean, I'm still trying to do maths with my woefully inadequate brain - and why can't I use Google by thinking about it??
People from 20 years in the future will laugh at us for our crappy IO devices. Still, they'll all be wearing badly done external implants. Now the people of 100 years in the future with internal bio-processor implants, I'm really jealous of.
First of all the PDF functionality is non-existent despite the claims. However the .doc .txt translation is fan freakin tastic. Pictures are pretty crisp and the major bugs with it were patched. I imagine sony has some evil rootkit what have you on my computer, but quite honestly the program hasn't done anything I can think of as invasive, and other than being a little slow it's ok.
Right now I have a slight gripe with the browsing ability on the reader itself when there are lots of books or documents on it. The ability to magnify documents and books is also really nice and it is really easy on the eyes. This is definitely still first gen hardware, so you can wait for better, but honestly this thing keeps me sane on train travel, airplanes, etc. I often just copy whole online articles, paste them in word, and then browse at my leisure on the go.
Actually IMHO college textbooks are the LEAST likely place for ebooks to take off. College students like myself, being poor as we are, like to sell their books after their courses are done. There have been eBook initiative tried in some schools, but the lack of resale ability really killed it. I can get about 70% retail value for my books after I've used them, why would I pay something like 50% of the dead-tree price for something I can't sell later on?
You missed the point. E-paper as the name implies isn't a replacement for computer screens. It's a replacement for a printed paper as in newspapers and books. Most of the people still get their knowledge from dead trees and e-paper for them is more or less just like paper, only better, since you can "print" on it many times.
I am an avid ebook reader using Palms for the purpose for years, but as soon as I can get an e-paper reader without stupid limitations at a reasonable price (which for me is anything south of 250eur), I'll go that route. I mean, that would be the best of both world: paper book with the ability to (non-destructivelly) bookmark, annotate, search, copy text at will.
Robert
Bastard Operator From 193.219.28.162
Other than a specific crowd that will purchase anything neat (and I am very much in that group) who cares about any of those issue?
To largely replace paper books we need a minimum of large size, lots of contrast, rugged construction, light weight, and generally usable anywhere for long periods of time. We are no where *near* that. Add in cost and being able to make marks on it being a requirement for many applications and we have some real issues.
Size, rugged, and battery life do not go together. I need something I can carry in my car, backpack, or just mostly leave lying around and not have it break or get scratched to the point of unusable. I need to be able to expect to take it to most places I go and have it work *and* be readable at the same time - having to have it plugged up every 10 hours is, in many cases, unacceptable.
That is only concerning replacing books, let alone paper. Can I fold it and stick it in my pocket? Will I care if I happen to destroy it? If I can't stick it in my pocket what good does it do me? If I can't carry it in any place other than carefully controlled environments due to its cost - again what good does it do me? Heck, if I can not make a note and give it to someone else that doesn't have one what good does it do me? Everyone on the planet isn't going to carry around their e-paper (which can not be folded, carried in their pocket, exposed to water, exposed to much shock, exposed to high/low temperatures, and all the other things any current or foreseeable future technology has to offer).
E-paper has not come close to its window - it hasn't even come close to the point that most people would seriously look at it. Heck, even the totally made up stuff we saw in Star Trek didn't really replace paper books, let alone paper. That's not to say it will not happen (I think it will), but anything I have remotely seen companies working on do not come close to meeting the requirements to replace paper. They are trying to force books/paper into existing technology and technological paradigms instead of trying to make electronics work like books/paper.
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
... we are going to cut down even more trees...
I'm not a tree hugger as trees are just crops that take monger to harvest, but the point is clear.
I am a happy owner of an iRex iLiad, which has a fairly large display (8" vs the Sony's 6, 16 gray shades vs 4), and it is absolutely brilliant for reading. I used to read some books on a Sharp CL860, but the eInk is so much better on the eyes it's hard to describe. I can write on it, which makes it excellent for academic purposes - I read and make changes to quite a few papers and articles. And it is excellent for Sudoku solving. :-)
The sweetest thing though, is that it runs Linux and has an increasing amount of community applications. It uses GTK, so quite some apps have been ported, and several nice changes has been done to the in-house PDF viewer. Together with some scripts on a PC, the iLiad can wake up in the morning, download the newspapers off the WIFI for me and turn itself off.
Only bad thing (except for the steep price tag) is that the battery only lasts for about 10-12 hours on a charge, as they in one way or another managed to not make it able to suspend...
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I have two models, V8 - which doesn't have an OS and runs on Epson cpu and V3 - that runs LINUX and runs on ARM 200mhz processor.
Both are great. Both have MMC/SD card, no DRM. V3 can display PDF and DJVU files. Both have SDKs for you to tinker with. While V8 is very basic and you have to use ANSI C to code your things, V3 is somewhat more powerful.
Nevertheless, as a reader, I prefer V8, because it has cover built in and an additional small display :) and I do most of my reading in FB2 and TXT.
I'm the happy owner of one. After years spent looking at e-books and never finding one whose functionality/price was good enough, i almost found the holy grail. Battery life is brilliant, though something like 10 times less than advertised (i think they advertise 7500 page turns of autonomy, and my experience is that i can read books up to 800 pages on a full charge).
On DRM, the reader's best supported format is the sony one (.lrf files), which provides the best rendering, and which *can* support a DRM layer. It also happens to be a trivial format that also works without embedded restrictions. Therefore, you can download many books from the Gutenberg project in unencumbered lrf format from Manybooks.net. You can also convert many document formats (txt, rtf, html, doc) to unencumbered lrf. PDF support is not good though, as most A4 formatted pdfs will be too small when read in portrait, and will require you to scroll when in landscape. Good enough if you really need to access a pdf from time to time, but there's no way you'll ever read a book that way.
Finally, on accessing the device, mine doesn't work as a usb mass storage device, and i don't know if that's going to happen in the next models (sure hope so, obviously). However, there's a cross-platform open source driver available, which means that since i have the reader, i never had to use the crap software sony provides more than once, just to have a look. Never bothered again, and it doesn't run on my linux box anyway. That driver also comes with a GUI software, and many basic command line tools to access the device (cp, rm, ls etc), and to convert file formats (html2lrf being one of the most useful).
In the end, i really love that 'toy'. The hindrance of not having a backlight on the screen makes it more comfortable on the long run: no more visual fatigue than reading paper. The battery life is good, it is small enough to be carried comfortably (i'm looking at you iLiad), it can read most of the free books out there on the web. The main downside of course, is that you won't get access to the most recent books, as they're only sold with DRM, and usually not in Sony's format. Personally, i wasn't looking for that, so i'm fine, but this *is* a hindrance, and will be until ebook shops change their policies, which could take many years... Ah, and also, it's an ebook reader, nothing else. Well ok, it can display images and play mp3s, but that's really a waste of battery life. It doesn't browse the web, it has no wifi. It's only a book reader. But it's a damn good one.
This post is awesome.
Depends on the subject. One of the most irritating things about being a law student is that by and large your books go out of date really fast. Almost every book from my undergraduate degree, which I only completed earlier this year, is now in a different edition. E-books would be really useful from our perspective. Not to mention the fact that libraries can only stock a limited number of journals and case-books.
Tomorrow, I may eat another house plant
Eh, you can, but you're going to get the best results regarding display quality (because you can control font and size), as well as not waiting (feels like an eternity) for the reader to format the file itself.
If you do want to just drop books in, at least convert them to Sony's native book format. They really do tend to be better. The tool I use for this purpose is called BookDesigner, and it makes for some very comfortable reading. Still have the formatting wait though.
While I'm at it, PDFrasterfarian can format your PDF files. You can crop the pdfs, force one pdf page to use two frames (thats usually what i go for) portrait or landscape modes, all free stuff. Google should lend you a hand finding these.
for the record, i own one of these, and i absolutely love it. my only real gripe is the lack of backlighting, but i think i might be able to hack something up to make a frontlight that wont send a glare back at me.
Fast-forward several years. "Browsing devices" are the "VHS moviecams" to epaper's version of Polavision. Before anyone starts ranting against web-browsers, let me point out...
- the ORIGINAL web, as developed at CERN, was text-only with browsers like lynx
- you can read files on your local drive with Firefox or IE or Lynx
Note that I said "browsing devices", not PDAs, or micro-laptops. I think that cellphones with browsers are going to be far more of an epaper-killer than laptops...- there are a lot more people already lugging around cellphones/smartphones than will ever buy single-purpose "ebook readers"
- many cellphones/smartphones already have browsers built-in
Which do you think the average person WHO IS ALREADY LUGGING AROUND A CELLPHONE/SMARTPHONE more likely to do for casual reading...- buy yet another $200 device that they have to lug around, or
- use the cellphone/smartphone THEY'VE ALREADY PAID FOR AND THEY'RE ALREADY LUGGING AROUND to accomplish the same task
In a world where cellphones/smartphones/PDAs do not exist, a $200 stand-alone "ebook-reader" might have a market. In today's world, fuggedaboutit. Most people will end up sticking a USB stick into a cellphone/smartphone/PDA and reading text directly with their browser. Verizon subscribers, however, will find that their cellphones are crippled, and they have to upload the file to their account, and Verizon will charge them by the kbyte for the uploads.I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
I regularly read newspapers that are days old and never minded their lack of "freshness".
Apart from a few very specific things (maybe stock markets or the weather), freshness has no impact on the interest or validity of news.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
I once got 17 cents for a textbook I paid $50 for.
If I had the choice, I would go e-book all the way.
Randy Hall
(I wrote this up for the bookpeople mailing list....)
.lrx)
.rtfs is _awful_, allowing widows and orphans and pages to end on a hyphen .pdfs which break at a line end become two distinct hyperlinks (this may be a problem in how the user guide .pdf was created)
.pdfs especially for this and leave page numbers off?
The local Borders store set up a display w/ one of these yesterday and I spent a while playing with it. Initial impressions:
- nice size, _very_ thin
- crisp, sharp greyscale display --- very readable
- uses GPL software (there's a list of utilities in the user manual as well as notes on where to d/l the source for the software)
- decent interface w/ sensible buttons and okay layout
- supports pdf, txt, rtf, bmp, jpeg, gif and png files as well as the proprietar? BBeB books (.lrf and
- plays mp3s
- switches from portrait to landscape and back quite easily
- nice magnification mode
On the downside:
- ~2--3 seconds to switch from one page to another sometimes one gets a distracting flashing
- sometimes one gets ``ghosting'' if the new page has a lot of white space where text or image was before
- the text H&J when displaying text files and
- the font used for displaying rtfs uses oblique, not italic for emphasis
- sidebars of some of the text font characters, ``i'' most egregiously is not good resulting in poorly spaced text
- urls in
- while one can play an mp3 while reading, controlling the mp3 functions require going all the way back to the main menu --- would've been better to've over-ridden the number buttons for use as audio controls while an mp3 is playing.
One can't help but wonder if the status bar at the bottom can be turned off --- it displays a persistent page number --- perhaps people will format
More information on the reader at:
http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&categoryId=16184
Apparently this is an updated model and the text updating used to be even slower.
Borders didn't seem to have a mechanism for selling BBeB books in their stores though which is strange since they can be stored on memory cards (Sony proprietary sticks and SD memory cards).
William
(who found it inspiring enough to want to put some more effort into getting his Fujitsu Stylistic to boot off of a compact flash card in a CF-IDE adapter, since he uses that to read a _lot_ of ebooks and the hard drive noise is distracting (and to make them, see http://members.aol.com/willadams/portfolio.html which includes my version of _The Book of Tea_ which is in the TeX Showcase))
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.