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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If our elected representatives no longer represent us, do we still live in a Democracy?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.
Then can you explain this?
And that's not even mentioning color electronic ink from other companies.
The point of e-Ink is that it doesn't need to refresh multiple times per second to keep the text on there. It works more like paper, and so refresh time isn't really important. What's the refresh time on your paperback, when you turn a page?
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.
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!)
Instant. I can the text on the page as I'm turing it. If someone is interrupting me and I have to re-read the last paragraph on the last page because I forgot it, I can do that really fast on real book.
With eInk, you have to put up with the switching delay.
I know they're getting better, but it is an issue right now.
I think a big part of the problem is that the full screen has to turn one color then the other to prevent ghosting. That effectively doubles refresh time and that "flash" makes it much more noticeable than if, like the LCD I'm typing on right now, it only switched the pixels that changed.
eInk works great once you have the page displayed, especially if you have a large screen. Wouldn't something iPhone sized (or a little bigger) with an eInk screen be pretty great? Imagine the batter life! But all the page refreshes would make it rather annoying to use.
If we could get something with a refresh rate akin to an old passive matrix LCD, we'd be in good shape. What was that, 50ms or so?
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Also, it isn't a computer if it has a microphone, webcam, color screen, and the ability to connect to a global network. :)
You forget that as technology advances, so must our names for things.
That, and it sounds like, well, you wouldn't want the product - however, I, and I think many millions more, /do/, just as it is.
E ink doesn't give you the strain on your eyes that normal LCDs do. Us geeks might be relatively unaffected by it because of how often we use them. But after a while your eyes hurt. E-ink doesn't have to refresh as often so it reads a lot more like paper.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
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
The touchscreen can't be used for fingerprint analysis.
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.
LCDs don't give people eye strain anymore than books or eInk displays.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asthenopia
If anything, due to their lower contrast, eInk displays are worse than LCDs in terms of eye strain.
eInk is superior to LCDs only in terms of power consumption. In terms of readability in sunlight, it's comparable to LCDs designed for outdoor use. And in terms of contrast ratio, color, and refresh rate, it's much worse than other display technologies.
15 seconds of trying to make sense of an article I can't read without a subscription:
This is a tablet PC with a built in fingerprint reader AND a touchscreen.
Next time spend 30 seconds before making a snarky comment. Also, try reading the fucking article you link to.
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!
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!