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LG Presents Solar Powered E-Book
MikeChino writes "At first glance, e-readers offer a great set of benefits over paper-bound books – they’re light, versatile, and a great alternative to lugging around a tote full of dead tree tomes on your next trip. However these new reading mediums have one glaring fault — can you imagine the frustration of running out of juice mid-sentence and halfway through Infinite Jest? LG's new solar e-book aims to address this issue by harnessing the sun's rays to power its display. The device features a 10 centimeter wide thin-film photovoltaic panel that can power the reader for a full day's worth of reading after 4-5 hours spent sitting in the sun."
... Warranty void if left out in the sun for prolonged exposure.
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
Every electronic device you've ever seen has a disclaimer that says "Do not leave in direct sunlight." This is a horrible idea, the batteries won't last two months.
Running out of juice with an e-book must feel as if all the pages that you still have to read are suddenly glued together.
-- Cheers!
Couldn't the aftermarket industry simply offer up a E-Book sleeve/cover that has a built in solar cell and stays connected to the reader's power jack and bring this 'breakthrough' to any other E-Book desired?
This requires actually being out in the sun. Unless there's a complex reflective tube apparatus streaming live sunlight into the basement it'll never sell here...
Task Mangler
A step in the right direction. All portable devices should have some amount of solar to extend their life. I don't know about leaving it out in the sun though, sounds like a good way to send it to an early grave. They also need to intergrate the panel into either the screen or the case and not have it as a seperate piece that gets in the way of using the device.
Now all I need is a portable sun to read in bed.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
The e-book itself is using an OLED display. This is different to the Kindle's eInk display which only requires power to update, so it has a battery life of several weeks. Chances are you'd be able to plug it in during that time, so there's not much need for a solar panel.
LG are a big manufacturer of LCD and OLED screens. Adding a solar panel to their e-book is simply to make up for the fact that their display uses far more power than competing products.
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
I have a cheap ereader that needs to be connected to your PC over USB to put new content on it. And the surprising thing is, that this seems enough to recharge it! I now have it for over a month and the battery indicator still says that it is full. It's amazing how view energy this thing consumes, just connect it to a PC once a week and that's enough.
But I admit that solar power seems nice for ereaders that don't use cable connections, e.g. the Kindle with it's whispernet. The only problem there is that you shouldn't expose e-ink to direct sunlight, which unfortunately turns the solar powered e-reader into a stupid idea.
(If you care, I use a Hanlin v5, it's not exactly perfect, but since Amazon deletes your books and Sony sells you rootkits it's okay)
I'm confused by the photos. Are they comparing it to a Sony PRS-505 reader or is it just a power source for the Sony reader?
Cory Doctorow talking about cloud computing makes as much sense as George W Bush talking about electrical engineering.
Yay... more e-Book vaporware. How many new, awesome, revolutionary E-Book readers are we going to hear about? Christ, it's getting old... the E-Book hype is getting out of hand. Every company out there seems to have an E-Book "in the works," but so far to date only a handful have actually shipped usable products. LG is only the latest to jump on the E-Book bandwagon, and I'm sure they won't be the last. The whole E-Book field is littered with junk announcements like this. Get back to me when someone actually SHIPS a product, not announces a prototype. Whopee do. In the case of E-Book Readers, if you can't buy it, who really cares? It's just another e-ink or LCD or OLED screen.
Uh...that's a Sony e-Reader, one of the early models. With a solar panel attached to the inside of the protective jacket (which seems like the wrong side...)
Please help metamoderate.
The solar panel adds more bulk than a bigger battery would. It takes up a huge amount of real estate that could be occupied by another display. And, it really only helps you if you are planning on spending time reading outside - an impracticality in most parts of the United States, most of the time. Most of the year, outside is too hot, too cold, or infested with swarms of disease carrying mosquitoes. I go outside plenty of times when the weather is nice - but I'm active then. Sitting still and reading just makes you an easy target for the mosquitoes.
If you're going backpacking or to the third world, it's more convenient to just bring a dedicated solar panel with battery pack and adapters for your gadgets.
The only market for this device is eco-freaks with too much money and not enough sense. Which is usually self limiting - the people who earn the most money usually have enough intelligence and common sense to spot the flaws I just mentioned. The only reason that they might buy a device like this is to give the appearance of being 'green' to their friends.
How many beers is it going to knock back during its 4-5 hours sitting in the sun? And will that full day of work it's supposed to put in afterward have to be done over by another, more responsible e-book?
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
My kindle's got like 2 weeks of battery life...it gets enough charge just from the times I momentarily plug it in to transfer pdfs...
Pocket calculators used to plug into the wall too. Then they had batteries and now solar. Having e-books go this way makes sense now power requirements are dropping.
As for the "solar won't work at night" people - batteries exist and just need to be charged. The ironic thing for the "solar won't work at night" people is that the real killer application for photovoltaics at the moment is solar powered LED lights replacing kerosene lanterns in the third world.
If they're not using an eInk display, then they should use one of those fancy new displays from Pixel Qi. From the various videos of Mary Lou Jepsen showing off their in-development screens it seems like they're really solved the problem of using displays in the sun. I mean, if you have to be out in the sun to charge it, you better be able to read books on it at the same time.
coding is life
If you find out where they sell the portable suns, let me know too. I can probably resell them in northern Alaska and Canada so they can use their LG e-books in the winter!
Bad example. Halfway through the book is where Infinite Jest ends.
Is it wrong to want an ebook with a little furnace to burn books as fuel?
Wow talk about /vertisement. This sounds like it was written by a marketing person. Scary :/
Kindles always spout how great it is you can read in the sun, because their eInk allows better viewing in direct light, but without that technology, this new device will be far less useful.
I thought this would have been fairly obvious, but from TFA: We hope that LG has included a passively-lit e-paper display option in the device.
If the pattern goes 9am, 10am, 11am, why isn't noon 12am?
It would have to be in full sunlight in order for it to charge, so unless you have a private sun-lit balcony handy, would you sit in the sun 4-5 hours a day just to babysit your expensive solar-powered E-reader? You'd pay a lot more for sunscreen than AA batteries cost.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
Give me a $99 ebook reader, not a solar powered one. I'll buy batteries for the bloody thing.
The device pictured is built into a Sony Reader housing. It is, in fact, a Sony Reader. The solar cell is the real LG product, aimed at other manufacturers.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Where do you get OLED from? The press release doesn't include such a notion. In fact, the press release actually only discusses the solar panel itself, which is sensible given that it's the only part of the device that LG makes. The reader itself is a hacked Sony unit that's only there to demonstrate what the solar panel can power.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
so that excludes Slashdot readers
But in a year you just know you're friends are all going to say 'Dude, your eBook reader looks really gnarly and well, liked sun bleached to death. What did you do to it?'
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Nice catch, good eye.
Tubular Skylights
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Imagine that - it would be like the book just ENDED HALFWAY THROUGH THE STORY.
Should work a treat here in the UK as we head into Winter and 6 hour overcast days!!!
So this is not a lot of use unless you live somewhere with at least 8 hours ( to guarantee the required 4-5 hours of direct sun for charging ) a day of reasonably good sun quota? Not great for us high northern hemisphere dwellers then!
I have an ebook reader and I'm reading Infinite Jest on it right now. I'm over halfway through and haven't had to recharge it yet. But I will do that overnight in the next few days, at which point I'm 100% positive that I'll be able to finish the book before the battery needs another recharging. This notion that e-ink readers suck up power is clearly coming from people who've never used one. The fact that I can go 2-3 weeks without even thinking about needing a charge is a huge advantage. And I simply can't envision a scenario where I would've managed to ignore the "low battery" warnings for a good 3 or 4 days (that's how long it lasts on the last bar in the battery indicator) without remembering to recharge the thing.
4-5 hours spent sitting in the sun
How many people are going to leave their e-book reader sitting in the sun for 4-5 hours? We're talking direct, full sunlight here. Any clouds, shadows, or off-perpendicular variations and that charging time goes up by many more hours. We're talking hours here under optimal conditions. We're talking electronics at a cost of several hundred dollars you don't want to leave lying around unwatched. In reality, most people just can't/won't do it.
I have a Solio solar battery. Sounded nifty, cheap enough to play with. I soon discovered that there was just nowhere I could _leave_ it for hours on end, not just to assure full solar exposure, but where I was sure it would still be there and not get stolen. Car dashboard? overheated so badly it stopped charging. Clipped to shoulder bag? angles, shadows, etc. wrecked charging time. Patio? rain.
I like the idea of solar self-charging devices, but only as serving a last-ditch survival scenario. If a solar panel can be built in for trivial bulk, weight, and cost then fine - but really folks, slapping a solar panel on something you don't/won't leave in the sun for prolonged periods on a regular basis just doesn't cut it.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
I'm guessing this won't sell too well in Finland.
Tell me when I can get juice enough for the whole day by going out for just a couple of minutes. I don't go outdoors you insensitive clods!
Paper books are carbon neutral, bio-degradable, and very stable. Most of the energy used to make the paper comes from the trees themselves, again carbon neutral. Ebooks? How are ebooks better?
What about those of us that read books in buildings.. using man made light, and sometimes not a whole lot ( think 60watt bulb by the couch ). Will that be enough to charge this thing?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
... can you imaging the frustration of running out of BOOK mid-sentence and halfway through Infinite Jest? LG’s new solar e-book aims to address this issue... now it's a really good ebook reader for us.
LG is essentially selling a solar panel. And okay people are complaining that if the device is in direct sunlight in order to charge it will harm the device. Now for those who RTFA! They saw a nice picture of a a solar panel hooked to a Sony PRS-505 which like the Kindle charges usually by USB. Now USB provides around 2.5W (5V 500mA approx) most consumer based solar doesn't really need full direct sunlight, but most any sort of light will send a bit of current. A 2.5W panel isn't that large, and could fit on that particular hacked model on the outside of the cheapo cover sleeve you get, if your so concerned about your reading in direct sunlight, its less effective when your actually reading unless your holding the book in a way it gets light on the panel directly (say lying down book above you, or even holding the book vertically gets some light) but given when your NOT reading its charging automatically as long as its in light and won't easily run down in a few hours of reading as a charge lasts a freakishly long time, I think this works rather well. Now if readers were actually affordable?
You mean we'd have to go outside? That e-book's as good as useless.
/* No Comment */
....or you could just get an after market solar charger that connects to any mini-usb device and charge your ebook reader, mp3 player, cellphone , etc. Given that the ebook reader can go for 2 weeks without a charge, I do not see this as a selling point. Now drop the price $100.00 and you will get my attention.
How am I supposed to charge my netbook if I never leave the basement.
... is when they can generate enough power from solar cells such that if there is enough ambient light to create contrast on the passive display to comfortably read it, then the unit will not ever run out power at all.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
But what about the .7mm wide credit card invention, from the article - "10 centimeter wide thin-film panel that is .7mm thin - the width of a credit card."
What a crappy article. And what a crappy lot of slashdot replies, you (we?) really embarrass yourselves with your stupidity sometimes.
- Who reads for 24 hours in a day and would require the full sunlight for the 5 hours to keep it going?
- Obviously many of you haven't seen solar powered calculaters that have never been outside in their still operating lives.
- Why can't many of you see the immediate benefit of never having to recharge? Hye, load on the full gutenburg and never ever need another book in your life and never have to recharge. Unless you can't miss Dan Brown's latest of course.
- Why would LG release details and images of such a crappy prototype device? When a much better sample would have been trivial.