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Plastic Logic E-Newspaper
Ostracus writes with news of another contender for a next-gen device suitable for displaying a newspaper page. It's very thin but weighs a bit more than a Kindle. "Plastic Logic, a spin-off company from the Cambridge University's Cavendish Laboratory, has recently released its design of a future electronic newspaper reader. This lightweight plastic screen copies the appearance, but not the feel, of a printed newspaper. This electronic paper technology was pioneered by the E-Ink Corporation and is used in the current generation Sony eReader and Amazon.com's Kindle. Plastic Logic's device, yet to be named, has a highly legible black-and-white display and a screen more than twice as large compared to current versions available on the market."
The alternative link listed in the article is working at the moment.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
This is a little more like it.
I've recently seen a similar new product for musicians and teachers. It's a display like this one except mounted on a standard music stand. It's got a monochrome display, a SD card slot and a USB port (I believe there's a wireless option, too) and is made to display pages of sheet music. The pages are "turned" by a foot pedal. It can hold scanned sheet music as well as connect to music publishers. There are already several "fake books" (something working musicians use to enhance their repertoires) available in this device's native format. It can also display PDFs and the native format of some of the sheet music editing/publishing applications on the market, such as Sibelius Forte.
As someone who teaches music a bit and has tons of printed music, I can see this (or the less expensive version which is sure to come soon) making my life a lot easier.
Oh yeah, I think there's even a touch screen for making annotations or for input of musical calligraphy.
We've been waiting for products like this - e-readers, etc - to hit the mainstream market for what seems like an awful long time now. I think it might finally be here (I hope).
You are welcome on my lawn.
"Why should I buy a Kindle when I have a perfectly good laptop and a palmtop or two (phone, PDA) that have basically the same technology?"
They don't have the same technology though. The advantages over LCD are that they are much much nicer to read, the battery lasts (apparently) for weeks and they are (at least in plastic logic's case) considerably more light-weight.
The advantage over actual paper is that they can store many more pages, and they don't waste paper.
They will succeed even if they aren't quite as nice as paper simply because you can carry your entire collection of books/papers/sheet music around with you. You might say 'Why do I need that?' but then why do you need to carry your entire music collection with you?
Sit in the middle of the park on a sunny day with your $300 laptop reading the screen and then tell me it's as good as an eInk display. I spent a lot of this summer reading papers in the park on my iLiad. I could sit anywhere from shaded areas to the noonday sun and still read the screen easily. With my laptop I can only just see it in the shade and it's completely invisible in direct sunlight. The battery life is also a lot better than the laptop too - I can read the iLiad for a transatlantic flight, while my laptop battery will run out sometime in the middle.
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