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New Color E-Reader Tech To Challenge E-Ink Dominance
Technology Review reports from the Consumer Elecronics Show in Las Vegas that potential e-reader competitors to E-Ink are everywhere. The current market leader in e-book displays is greyscale-only, and it takes a long time to change the display ("turn the page"), so video applications are not possible. E-Ink says they will have a color display shipping by late next year, but it will be dimmer than the current greyscale and its response time will still be too slow for video. The wannabe competitors — Pixel Qi, Qualcomm MEMS Technologies, Liquavista, and Kent Displays — all do color and some of them can do video (Pixel Qi, Qualcomm, Liquavista), and some of them (Pixel Qi, Kent) are shipping now.
The beauty of grayscale eink is that it's very close to paper - making it easy to read for long periods of time. However, the transition time on the Kindle or other grayscale eink devices is long enough to be annoying. Making these transitions longer will decrease my satisfaction in them, making the display dimmer will make them worthless to me.
If I wanted color, I'd hit an iPod touch, tablet PC, or laptop.
Keep It Simple Stupid.
We see in the summary "e-reader", "e-book"...ignoring that those screens (well, at least Pixel Qi one, that I'm sure of) are great also as replacements for screens in netbooks (remember commercials of those depicting them on the beach, in the park or bright cafe?); generally any highly portable device.
Those are the screens which were supposed to be in place all along. Finally we can have them. Who cares about e-book readers?
One that hath name thou can not otter
Why on earth do these things appear to have screensavers?
The Kindle does display an image, usually of a famous author, when it's turned off. While displaying that image does use some power, it's a negligible amount considering how many page turns the thing gets on a single charge. And it looks pretty cool too.
I don't understand these complaints about the response times for the screens on e-readers. They're designed to be easy to read for the purpose of replacing paper books, not replacing LCD TVs or computer monitors. A real book doesn't have instant page turn times and there's a bit of "flicker" as the page flips up and over the current page. I've used a kindle before and it takes longer to turn a real page than for the kindle to refresh so I don't see a problem here.
Seems like people are really bitching that e-readers can't be used for video. My question is why did you buy an e-READER if you wanted to watch VIDEO? You should have bought a laptop.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
Do you have a desktop computer AND a phone? They both can get online, edit documents etc. . . why do you have both? Don't knock ebook readers till you try them. Anyone that has one will laugh at comparing them to reading a book on a phone. LAUGH.
1) Failure to understand the benefits of the technology. CHECK
2) Offer proposal not based in reality (Technical or Fiscal) CHECK
3) Typical "Someone should do something about ..." bitching. CHECK
Three strikes and you are out.
The problem here is that people are forgetting that the entire purpose of these gadgets is for reading books. How many books that are read by adults have significant amounts of color in them? Almost zero have pictures...let alone color pictures. Furthermore, video (while cool) has nothing whatever to do with reading books.
I got a Kindle for Xmas - the older one with the smaller display.
It uses very, VERY little power (I've read about 3000 pages on it - and it still hasn't needed to be recharged) - which is a plus because I want to spend a long time reading books and I don't want a power cord. The reason it uses so little power is that (like an actual book), it doesn't consume power when you're S-L-O-W-L-Y reading through a page because ePaper retains it's image even when the device is switched off - so the kindle pretty much turns everything off until you press a button - then it does what you asked and then turns itself off again.
The page turn time is indeed rather slow - but it's comparable to the time it takes to turn a page on a paper book - which we've already deemed "acceptable"...I only find that a problem when I'm using it for something non-bookish.
The huge range of angles through which you can view the ePaper is useful for reading in bed. The fact that it's reflective lets you read in bright sunlight. It's resolution is good enough to let me get the equivalent of an entire page of a paperback on one screenful. It's super lightweight.
All of those things are what matters for an actual book reader...not color or video.
If you want video and color and that stuff - it's not for book reading - it's for something else. Worse still, the steep increase in power consumption, drop in resolution, increase in weight and failure to be readable in bright sunlight that is required to make that happen makes them dramatically LESS good as book readers. I can read my Kindle in bed (I use a little clip-on white LED light as I do with paper books so as not to disturb my wife with bright lights) - and it's actually dramatically better than an actual paperback because the screen is always at right angles to my line of sight - which is something that's tough to achieve on both the odd and even pages of an actual book. The price of the cheaper Kindle is about the same as my annual book buying budget and because eBooks are about 50% of the price of paper books, it'll pay for itself in 2 years.
I love the Kindle as a book reader.
The only downside is the DRM crap...but I don't imagine for one moment that these new color machines will be any less encumbered than the Kindle in that regard. The Kindle can be persuaded to read free books from Project Guthenburg for $0 - so free books are still free.
I fully realise that it makes a crappy laptop/pda/netbook/cellphone/pizza-oven/etc - but that's OK because what I actually WANTED was an eBook reader. If you're offering me color and video, I'll take it - but only so long as there are zero compromises to the main function of the machine - and that's flat out not true right now.
I don't care that much about e-readers, but hey, getting a laptop that could be viewed under full sunlight is just revolutionary for me.
That might be fine if you love format restricted, DRM'd up the ass proprietary devices, but not so good if you don't.
(sigh) clearly Slashdot geeks don't read much.
1. You can't easily carry a laptop around with you for six or seven days in a variety of non-office circumstances. Laptops are heavy and fragile.
2. You have to charge a laptop often. You can't pick up War and Peace and read it cover-to-cover on battery power on a laptop.
3. Laptops are obtrusive or not allowed in many circumstances.
4. WHILE READING, laptops require that they sit on your lap or a desk. ebook readers can be read in ANY POSITION.
5. The user interface of a laptop imposes all kinds of extra work; ebook reader you just open and read, no navigation of user interface.
I'm a serious reader. I've probably read 50-100k pages on my Kindle 1. I've had a personal laptop since the late '80s. I never read a single document on a laptop longer than about 50 pages. If I had to do that, I'd just buy the book. Since acquiring Kindle, I only buy academic books in printed form. For all other reading (newspapers, magazines, novels, non-academic nonfiction) I just buy it on Kindle. Easy impulse buy, easy, flexibile tool for reading. I charge maybe once or twice a week. I can carry my Kindle in a tiny messenger bag, wherever I go.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
e-ink is to book readers what monster cables are to cables, if monster cables were the only cables you could buy anywhere with no lower priced competition.
But Monster Cables don't have any advantages over cheaper cables. Electronic Ink displays do have advantages over other types of display.
This is price fixing.
I don't think you know what "price fixing" means.
Once someone starts selling a fairly priced LCD alternative, it's all over for the e-ink people as their overpriced gadgets will only be bought by hardcore textophiles.
So, how can it be "price fixing" if somebody could just make an LCD-based alternative and take over the market? Price fixing implies collusion among industry players not to allow such competition. But in reality, there are lots of different companies competing for this market with different technology. There's not an agreement among them to fix prices.
I also know that a paperback book sized LCD device could be mass manufactured and sold for $19.99
Well, why don't you produce such a device, take over the market, and become wealthy for life, then?
... and then they built the supercollider.
At first it's slightly easier to read than an LCD but if you want to sit down for a few hours to read it it'll save you one hell of a headache.
What is wrong with you slashdotters? Not so much you individually, but in general? Every week we have the required slashvertisement for e-ink based displays, and the astroturfers come out and post unbelievable claims about humans eyes being physically unable to gaze upon LCDs, like they're a medusa's head made of silicon.
It would be laughable if read on time.com or something, but its even worse here. Come on, this is slashdot. Supposedly we all spend 16 hours a day gazing into our L C D computer screens doing programming or sysadmining or WOW or Pr0n or slashdot or whatever. I have spent 40 hours a week at work gazing into my "horrible LCD" since the early 2000s, and prior to that I spent at least a decade or so gazing into CRTs. It doesn't hurt. At all. Its actually kind of nice.
What does hurt, is holding a Sony e-ink reader and being able to read the tiny little page faster than it refreshes, while I squint at gray on gray color scheme and no proper backlight so its always got weird distracting shadows. Its about as appealing as reading a book in a cave with the worlds slowest robot arm turning the pages. I'm sorry if it ruins the slashvertisement, but the product just sucks. It may be useful as a marketing bullet point, after all, the public is trained that if its more expensive, it must be better, look at automotive SUV vs car or pretty much anything else. Marketing wants me to buy e-ink, and there is no other compelling reason to buy e-ink, that's why I bought a LCD based ebook reader. I simply don't care if I have to charge it every second week instead of every fourth week, it looks great, works fast, and its cheap.
If your eyes hurt, see an eye doctor, like TODAY. Spending more on display technology that is heavily marketed is not a good long term solution if you're currently losing your eyesight due to untreated illness. And if its just slashvertising, stop the campaign, its reached annoyance stage.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger