Slashdot Mirror
Asus Plans Dual-Display E-Reader
adeelarshad82 writes "Yet more confirmation has emerged that Asus plans its own e-book reader. An Asus representative in the UK appears to have confirmed this, with the additional details that there may be a value-priced as well as a premium version. The article guesses at the price point for the low-end model — around £100 ($192). Unlike current e-book readers, which take the form of a single flat screen, the Asus device has a hinged spine, like a printed book. This, in theory, enables its owner to read an e-book much like a normal book, using the touchscreen to 'turn' the pages from one screen to the next. Asus showed off a prototype of the device at the CeBIT trade show in March." Reader NeverBotedBush adds, "Asus's e-reader will likely have color touch screens, a speaker, a webcam, and a microphone, along with the capability to make inexpensive Skype calls." The color screen rules out using E Ink technology, so long battery life seems to be unlikely.
It's an overstuffed Nintendo DX for reading e-books? Asus Christ.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
~$200 may be low-end, but that's still not mainstream. E-books still have a lot of cons they have to get past, and a 200 entry fee isn't helping. As a college student, I would need to be able to resell books, but e-books are "rentals" where I can never sell them, without selling the account. IMO that's the biggest reason E-books are still on the launching pad, many (college) books are bought for $120, but resold for $80, so effectively, I payed for a $40 book. With E-books, it's the same price, but I can't sell them. Once we can buy and sell e-books like used books, I may look into it, but that and the high entry cost basically guarantee that I'll never buy one.
If our elected representatives no longer represent us, do we still live in a Democracy?
I refuse to get excited until I know whether it's More of the Same (TM) or not, shiny features be damned.
I keep reading the post over and over, trying to figure out how they hide the words "...includes the words "Don't Panic" written in large letters on the back."
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Backlit screens are useless outdoors. In my recent quest to replace an aging mp3 player, I found everything has color screens now, which suck because a) they're hard to read outdoors and b) they burn power, so you have to push a button to turn them on. E-ink seems fine, but I also think there is a large, unjustified bias against good old black & white LCD - yeah, like a Casio digital watch, or a PDA from 1999 - but so what? Those screens were/are very useful.
Does it run Linux?
I am tired of all those eInk readers (I've owned a couple); their slow refresh time makes them awful.
You say that like "the rest of you" is more than you and your virtual cat.
Then can you explain this?
And that's not even mentioning color electronic ink from other companies.
Why not make one screen E Ink and the other more conventional color (LED-backlit, TFT)? If you want the long battery life and don't care about color at a particular time, keep the color display powered off. Otherwise, if there's an illustration or photo that you want to see in color, drag/swipe the picture/page over to the color display and spend some battery juice. Bonus points if the entire color display is simply a snap-on accessory that you don't have to buy and don't have to carry everywhere.
It isn't an ebook reader if it has a microphone, webcam and the ability to make Skype calls. It is a flat computer.
I can see the justification for speakers, possibly helping with ADA compliance and reading text to the sight impaired. The rest is loss-of-focus, lets add features to disguise the shitty battery life, crap.
Give me extended battery life in an ebook reader over all that crap any day.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
A touch screen (finger-print analysis)
A camera (visual surveillance)
A microphone (audio surveillance)
Skype calls (call tapping)
A speaker (subliminal suggestion?)
Does it come with a free copy of of George Orwell's "1984"?
Oh, right...thats been yanked already.
But seriously, this combination of tech in a fucking BOOK reader? Call me Tinfoil Tom, but doesn't this make any of you just a wee bit nervous?
I'm hoping these will come out with PixelQi screens, as it will make it a truly revolutionary product. Although at this point it is pure speculation, I think there is a good chance Asus has signed a deal with PixelQi. Not only do the videos on PixelQi's sites show netbooks which resembles the Eee, their site mentions the displays will be in production in the late 2009, which coincides with the introduction of this new e-Reader. PixelQi could stand to benefit from teaming up with a company such as Asus, and I bet this is what has happened (in a couple month's we'll see how well my prediction fares!)
Really? An ebook with a color screen just sounds soo useless. Color does not mean black and white, when reading long enough on a computer you start to see the rgb bleeding through off the white. I can't belive Asus is soo far off target with this.
OLPC's XO-2 concept was similar to this - a dual panel color touch screen readable outdoors (like the XO-1's single panel non-touch screen). I don't know if they're going forward with the XO-2, but the XO-1.5 is nearing it's unveiling.
Reader NeverBotedBush adds, "Asus's e-reader will likely have color touch screens, a speaker, a webcam, and a microphone, along with the capability to make inexpensive Skype calls." The color screen rules out using E Ink technology, so long battery life seems to be unlikely.
So it must look something like this.
It doesn't make much sense to me. Bound books use both sides of the paper because the other side would be blank otherwise... Two screens on a device like this is pretty pointless.
I'm walking into the Stop and Shop the other day, and I look over at a beat up car, the kind in which you typically see some old duffer checking his scratch tickets and reading the Herald. Only this old guy was checking his scratch tickets and reading his Kindle. I thought, Perhaps this moment is time zero.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
What we need is a tablet that has a superfast, hirez display, superfast wireless networking, and nearly nothing else. A wireless display peripheral at 1920x1080 (or, better yet, WQUXGA at 3840x1200) with a full color, high frame rate layer and a super low power B&W e-ink layer. A minimal CPU for running an X server's application and Linux - or some smaller "remote display" network OS and application. A 2-channel stereo soundchip. And a 600Mbps (DVI 552Mbps + 48Mbps data) that's 3x the speed of 802.11n.
The audio/video data delivered to it (and from it, as videophone, for a "deluxe" bidirectional media terminal) would be delivered by local feeds for home and conference use, or over really fast broadband. But the unit itself should be just a display (and recording) terminal, with app processing hosted at a stationary host.
So we've probably got at least 5 years before we get one of these. The display and networking bandwidth are higher than even the fastest desktop machines, with a few pioneering exceptions. By that time it should cost under $300. Until then, the rest are just prototypes.
--
make install -not war
Sure, color is neat but I'm still holding out for an a4 or letter-sized document reader with a photon-reflective, as opposed to a photon-emissive display... oh and it has to handle PDF's.
AFAIK, the closest anyone's come so far is a 10.4" diagonal screen, which is still about 30% too small.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
it is on my ASUS eeePC 701. Wife got it for me while my primary notebook was in the shop and i was compiling C code on it and everything while i was in notebook withdrawal, but now all we ever use it for is Skype video calls, even though it still runs Fedora and has lots of software. I wonder how often that becomes the main use of gadgets like this after the excitement dies down.
I am a life-long reader; I love reading a book or newspaper as much as anything in life. I was very ill as a child and spent most of ages 4-6 in bed. We didn't own a TV, so my only companions were books from the local library and the daily papers. (That was back when you got a morning AND an evening paper on your doorstep.) When I could get out, I bought all the comic books my allowance would allow. That was when an Action Comics Superman from DC was a whopping 10 cents. I was highly pissed when the price went to 12 cents an issue, as I recall.
One of the gadgets I've wanted for years is a decent e-reader with lots of content. I passed on the Sony and Kindle machines because they were "close, but no cigar" for my taste. Color was a requirement for me as I still love comics and graphic novels.
Recently, I got an iPhone 3GS and discovered Stanza, Comics (Comixology), NYTimes, and NPR News. I had assumed the small screen on the phone would be terrible for reading. Instead, I find that I read something with ALL of those apps, everyday. Just finished reading ALL of the Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars novels with Stanza. Absolutely loved them. Coincidentally, the Science Fiction Book Club (of which I've been a member since 1972) is offering a reissue of those same books in hardcover.
Cost from SFBC = $50, plus shipping. Cost of the ebook versions on Stanza = $0. Also recently read the entire Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes books and stories, again for a cost of $0.
The Comics app, even bereft of titles from DC and Marvel (so far), is excellent. I'm currently reading Omega Chase and loving it. I've spent about $10 on various comics thus far and haven't regretted a single penny.
The point is, I'm no longer "waiting" for an e-reader; I have all I need.
One could argue that I own a +$2000 e-reader in the iPhone, but since it IS a nice phone, game machine (finally getting good at F.A.S.T.), web and e-mail appliance, AND a decent e-reader, I am still happy. Plus, I only have to carry and manage ONE device.
Bottom line: Sony, Amazon, Asus, etc. will never see a nickel from me for their readers. They missed any opportunity with me.
I am my own gestalt.
Probably the nicest feature of a book is the ability to bend it and flip pages by running it against your thumb, then sticking a forefinger in to hold the place. Once an Ebook reader can do that, I'll be impressed.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I checked out the Kindle and took a pass. The cost of entry is too high just so I can purchase/rent books. Other than the cost I really didn't like knowing Amazon zapped content off people's Kindles. Shouldn't be legal to do such a thing. Then I researched more and found out that Amazon collects all sorts of usage data from those who purchase their product and there is no means to opt out of this privacy invasion. Then I noticed that if I wanted blogs that are free on the web delivered to the Kindle I would have to pony up a buck or two per month per blog for content that is more limited than the free web version. Not really a selling point.
So, I read about these competing devices with what may or may not be technological improvements, but their library is very limited and none of them seem to be saying they won't have the same draw backs as Amazon's product such as the ability to remotely remove content or massively invade privacy as if they are entitled to whatever info they please simply because I purchased their hardware.
For now I am sticking with stuff printed on dead trees and downloaded from torrent sites on my laptop. When a more compelling alternative comes about I will use that, but I don't see anything on the horizon.
Asus Origami dual-screen prototype laptop Fixed that for you...
Ask anyone who has used an OLPC, and they will tell you that not only is it possible to use an LCD in full, direct sunlight, the image quality actually improves; the stronger the light, the better. The OLPC's limitation, however, is that daylight-readable version is monochrome only.
The 3Qi is the commercialized next generation of the same screen technology. It adds EPaper, color, and video to the line up. Mary Lou Jepsen, the engineering genius behind the company, is trying to get the power requirements down far enough to allow 20-40 hours of run time, using current battery technology. The current version of the 3Qi is apparently not able to achieve that kind of power management without changes to the motherboard, but is still able to reduce power requirements by 20%.
Engadget did a series of side-by-side video comparisons with the Kindle earlier this year, and the results are very impressive.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
I'd like to see a tablet device with a touch screen about the size of a hardback book's pages with wi-fi, bluetooth, a DVD/CD burner, sound chip, and Linux, with plugs for a keyboard, monitor, earphones/speakers, and ethernet. For a hundred bucks.
That's actually the computer of my dreams. Why hasn't anybody put one on the market yet?
Free Martian Whores!
I like e-books and e-book readers, but one thing I definitely wouldn't want is dual screens. One of the biggest advantages of reading an electronic book with a nice handheld device vs a paper book is that it's compact and a single, non-hinged piece. It doesn't take two hands to hold it and it doesn't flop around.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
It's great how fast ebook technology is coming along. Can't be doing with the Kindle sinces it's too interlinked with amazon (and that's before you even consider the DRM). I'm hoping that if Asus get round to manufacturing this, they'll be 'open'. As in - once I put a book (or some other kind of document) on it, it'll stay put and not lock me out after a set period of time. If they do that, I'm heading straight to DubLi to buy one. So here's hoping you're listening, Asus!
I don't see this as a big seller. The advantage of the tablet format is that it's compact. I'd opt for a bigger, more dense (DPI) and better contrast screen over a two page device. I guess it would be kinda useful in being able to browse for stuff (scanning two pages at once), but other than that it doesn't seem to out-weigh the fact that you have to have this thing opened like a book.
Amazon, Sony and some small company use the D-Ink to built their e-book reader. Asus join the battle. Newspaper and magazine will die, the new material replace the old ones. e-PDF To Word Converter http://www.111download.com/product/e-pdf-to-word-converter.html