Color E-Book Displays Coming From E Ink Next Year

waderoush writes "E Ink, which makes the monochrome electrophoretic screens used in the Amazon Kindle, the Barnes & Noble Nook, the Sony Reader line, and other e-readers, is gearing up to supply manufacturers with the first color versions of its displays by early next year, according to an Xconomy interview with T.H. Peng, a vice president with Taiwan's Prime View International, which bought E Ink last year. Peng argues that E Ink has nothing to fear from the e-book apps on the Apple iPad and other devices with color LCDs, which, in his view, produce more eye strain and aren't as suitable for digital reading. Nonetheless, the company says its first color screens in 2011 will have newspaper-quality color, followed within a couple of years by improved versions that can handle magazine-style content."

Comments

Cool, I'll wait for the magazine quality ones.

[2obvious4u]

Yeah, I bought a palm pilot and then one month later they announced the color version. I'm not getting bit by that again. I'll just wait for the color this time.

Re:Cool, I'll wait for the magazine quality ones.

[91degrees]

Yes, early adopters often get shafted. Rapid obsolescence is one of the costs of the bleeding edge.

Re:Cool, I'll wait for the magazine quality ones.

[Anonymous Coward]

Rapid obsolescence is the foundation of the consumer economy since post WW2

there fixed it for you.

Re:Cool, I'll wait for the magazine quality ones.

[Vanderhoth]

That being said, if it wasn't for early adopters, who end up getting screwed, I don't think some technologies would have taken off.

DVDs for example might not have been, or have gotten, as big as they are now if it wasn't for the people that went out and spent thousands of dollars on the original players and hundreds on the original DVDs.

Some companies use early adopters as their statistics to either continue or discontinue production of a product.

Re:Cool, I'll wait for the magazine quality ones.

[Chris_Stankowitz]

Yeah, I bought a palm pilot and then one month later they announced the color version. I'm not getting bit by that again. I'll just wait for the color this time.

You were bitten by your own ignorance, not by being am early adopter... there was no announcement and subsequent release of the color palm one moth after the B&W Palm. It was easily 10 - 12 months. That said, early adopters know the price they pay for being at the front of the line.

CS-

Re:Cool, I'll wait for the magazine quality ones.

[AvitarX]

I want e-ink digital photo frames.

Hopefully it will not be long until we can get that in magazine quality.

Re:Cool, I'll wait for the magazine quality ones.

[vlm]

DVDs for example might not have been, or have gotten, as big as they are now if it wasn't for the people that went out and spent thousands of dollars on the original players and hundreds on the original DVDs.

DVDs were substantially better than VCR tapes.

On the other hand, e-ink vs LCD, a big "eh".

Re:Cool, I'll wait for the magazine quality ones.

[Belial6]

There is also the problem of some technologies always being bleeding edge. CPUs being the most obvious example. If you waited until CPUs stopped becoming obsolete in a few years, you might just now be considering your first computer. Display screens...Not so much of a problem. Although, that will depend on how much they scale. If the manufacture scales as well as CPUs have...

You can skip the black and white while waiting for color.
You can skip newspaper quality color waiting for magazine quality color.
You can skip the single screen magazine quality color waiting for the dual screen clam shell color.
You can skip the clam shell screens waiting for the six screen 'book'.
You can skip the six page screen waiting for the 12 page book.
You can skip the 12 first gen book waiting for the book that has sub 5ms refresh times.

If there is ~18 months between releases, you could be looking at another decade before you get any kind of e-book reader.

I don't think that most people have really thought out what they will do with this kind of tech. Books have been their selling point because it was the best that the tech could do in it's crude state. Future e-ink will be as similar to the Kindal as the Vic-20 is to Windows 7 connected to the internet.

Even before they work on refresh rates, magazine quality color will wipe out the much of the non-"fine" art industry. When you can buy a poster size sheet of this, and it can maintain a poster quality picture without using any electricity, people will start reconsidering buying print. When you can buy a poster sized sheet for $50, you will see people considering it for use as wallpaper. When you can get this quality with sub 5ms refresh times, you will not only see people wallpapering with it, you will see it replacing TVs and computer monitors. Why bother mounting a fixed size TV to your wall when any or all of your walls can become TVs dynamically.

I don't know how well this tech will scale in size and price, but I would suggest treating it like any other tech. If it does what you want at a price you are happy with, buy it now, and accept that things will bet better and cheaper in the future.

Re:Cool, I'll wait for the magazine quality ones.

[91degrees]

Fixed what? I mean it's not like your change has shown what I said to be wrong. Shafting early adopters promotes economic growth.

Re:Cool, I'll wait for the magazine quality ones.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah same for me. I bought a black and white tv back in the days and after they announced color tv.

Re:Cool, I'll wait for the magazine quality ones.

[SimonInOz]

I bought a mono Palm pilot. Later they made colour one. I bought one of those, too.

But.
Here we are years later - the mono one still works. It has amazing battery life.
The colour one had horrible battery life and eventually got dumped somewhere.

Re:Cool, I'll wait for the magazine quality ones.

[TheRaven64]

On the other hand, e-ink vs LCD, a big "eh".

Seriously? I have a Nokia 770 and an iRex iLiad. The 770's TFT is 225dpi and is one of the nicest LCD's I've ever used (the nicest was an IBM monitor that was also 225dpi but was 23"). I can read books on it, but my eyes start to feel tired after an hour or so. Using it in direct sunlight is also a problem - the screen just looks white. The iLiad's eInk screen is only 166dpi, but it's significantly better. I can read outside in the sun for several hours without my eyes feeling at all tired.

This isn't the sort of comparison like HD and SD, where you see them side-by-side and see a big difference, but only see the inferior one by itself and don't really notice, it's a difference that you notice even when you just use one of them.

Re:Cool, I'll wait for the magazine quality ones.

[Splintax]

On the other hand, e-ink vs LCD, a big "eh".

Have you ever used an e-ink display? I've yet to encounter a backlit LCD that can be read easily in direct sunlight. Or indeed read at all for any length of time without inducing eyestrain.

Re:Cool, I'll wait for the magazine quality ones.

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Nevermind that the current crop of black and white ebook readers have amazing functionality and are perfectly suitable to their task - reading black print on a white page.

I'm starting to think that you're just not that into books, but you do enjoy looking at pictures. The color ebook readers are for porn.

Bendable

[tsa]

A few years ago I saw a demonstration by Philips on TV of a bendable e-ink screen. I think bendability is more important than colour. If the screen is bendable it can behave more like a real book.

Re:Bendable

[calibre-not-output]

If they make an e-ink screen that smells like an old book, I'll buy it.

Re:Bendable

[Anonymous Coward]

How about I buy one and shove some old musty paper in it and sell it for twice the price?

Re:Bendable

[Sir_Lewk]

1) Buy ebook
2) Cover it with nutmeg
3) ???
4) Sell it to calibre-not-output
5) PROFIT!!!

Re:Bendable

[drxenos]

The new Kindle! Now with that Old Book Smell (tm)!

Re:Bendable

[Ephemeriis]

A few years ago I saw a demonstration by Philips on TV of a bendable e-ink screen. I think bendability is more important than colour. If the screen is bendable it can behave more like a real book.

I'm not sure how much I care about the ability to bend my books.

Yes, paper bends... As I turn a page it bends... But bendability isn't really something fundamental to the function of a book. A book's primary purpose is the display of information.

I mean... Is a magazine somehow better than a 500 page novel just because it's more bendable?

Are hardcover books somehow inferior to paperbacks, simply because they're less bendable?

I have a nook, and I read plenty of books on it. And I have never, ever found myself thinking you know what would make this ereader perfect? If I could just bend it...

Re:Bendable

[jank1887]

the point of a bendable book is so you can turn the pages. how many pages do you think your e-ink book needs?

Re:Bendable

[Anonymous Coward]

I think any real reader would be insulted by what you said. What matters is the text, not the smell of the physical media or anything so superficial. Among the things that I really like about ebook readers is the possibility of zooming, my mother was complaining yesterday that she couldn't read a book because the font was too small, and my grandfather won't be able to read due to sight problems for the rest of his life, if only there was a way to enlarge any text...
  That said, I'd really like a reader with a leather cover, perhaps with a wooden bezel, but that's just golden (ok, wooden/leather) lining, not the main point of a book at all!

Re:Bendable

[tsa]

A book fits better on your pillow when reading in bed, because you can bend it a bit. As long as you use paperbacks, that is.

Re:Bendable

[Anonymous Coward]

Real books did not bend at all, the covers were made of wood, hence the name.

Re:Bendable

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you at least give a hint? What language or culture would provide an explanation for "covers made of wood, hence book"?

Re:Bendable

[Anonymous Coward]

You couldn't be more wrong. People love books for the experience, its texture, its smell. Smell is the strong sense linked to memory. The smell of books, especially old books, it why we love them. Any "real reader" would be insulted by your narrow-minded attitude. And THAT is coming from someone who loves eReaders.

Re:Bendable

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who considers themselves a "real" anything so they can look down on other people is a sad sack.

Re:Bendable

[TheRaven64]

I'd consider myself a 'real' reader. I've read three novels in the last four days (I joined a library a week ago, which was a terrible idea for my productivity). I've read a lot of books on an eBook reader (not sure how many exactly - over a hundred). Given the choice, I'd rather read the paper one. The smell isn't the most important thing, but the smell and texture of the book do add to the experience. The advantage of the eBook is that I can get access thousands of public domain texts almost instantly. To get them from the library I need to walk through the park for ten minutes, along the sea front for fifteen, and then sit in the cafe drinking coffee and looking out over the bay for an hour. The last part might not be strictly required, but it probably explains a lot of why I haven't read any eBooks for a while.

Re:Bendable

[Splintax]

I'm not really sure why that aspect of a book's behaviour is desirable. I like the fact that my ebook reader isn't 'bendable', because it means I can prop it up while I'm reading in bed without having to actually support its weight.

Re:Bendable

[Anonymous Coward]

I was referring to his use of the word "real." Maybe you should turn up your sarcasm meter.

Re:Bendable

[calibre-not-output]

A "real reader" is a person who can, and does, read. Any narrower definition is elitist, ignorant and superfluous.

That said, the reason I (and many others) prefer a book over an eReader, and in many cases prefer an old book to a new one, is the sensation of reading, which goes beyond the words. It has to do with the smell, the texture of the paper, the weight of the book in my hands. Even the sings of occasional wear-and-tear often give the book a sense of personality. I take my Sony eReader with me whenever I travel because it's easier to pack than a ton of books. But apart from the "convenience factor", real printed books are still better in every respect.

I've got a better idea

[Pojut]

How about you first find a better process for making monochrome e-ink displays so the devices that use them aren't ridiculously priced?

Re:I've got a better idea

[grahamsz]

I have a feeling that increasing their desirability will increase their market share and that will inevitably reduce the price.

Re:I've got a better idea

[Monkeedude1212]

No one makes money on Niche products by making them less expensive. They could find a way to cut a dollar off production costs and they'd still charge you an arm and a leg.

Re:I've got a better idea

[lwsimon]

This.

There is a science to optimizing cost vs. production costs vs. demand. For niche product, the consumer's cost is going to be high.

I hope eInk stay profitable, though - I think that color eInk displays with be very nice in a few years.

Re:I've got a better idea

[canusaybimmmy]

lmfaoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. I agree very thoroughly

Re:I've got a better idea

[Pojut]

There is a science to optimizing cost vs. production costs vs. demand. For niche product, the consumer's cost is going to be high.

That's just it though...the only reason why it is such a niche product is because they are prohibitively expensive.

If the readers dropped down to $150 average for a GOOD one instead of a no-name bad one, I would buy an e-reader tomorrow. I doubt I'm the only person who doesn't own one just because of cost.

Re:I've got a better idea

[maxume]

The Sony Reader Pocket goes for about $170-$180.

Not exactly no name, but it does have a smaller screen and such.

Re:I've got a better idea

[Pojut]

Eh...that's still a little too much.

I know that making such a big deal over $20-$30 sounds stupid, but when you consider e-books are running $5-$15 each...

Re:I've got a better idea

[grahamsz]

Probably the same reason you didn't have a computer until the mid 80s.

Re:I've got a better idea

[Pojut]

Well...I mean, I personally didn't have a computer until the '88 because I was born in '84 :-) Ah, the days of playing Bop 'N Wrestle on my Commodore 64...

Re:I've got a better idea

[Anonymous Coward]

And when they're $125-150, you'll sit there demanding that they be $100 instead. Some people can never be pleased, and you very clearly seem to be one of them.

Re:I've got a better idea

[Pojut]

And when they're $125-150, you'll sit there demanding that they be $100 instead. Some people can never be pleased, and you very clearly seem to be one of them.

How do you figure? I already said that if there was a name-brand version that didn't suck priced at $150, I would go out tomorrow and buy one...as in, within 24 hours from now.

Re:I've got a better idea

[Eponymous Coward]

Cripes. Now that makes me feel old. People born in the mid '80's reminiscing about the good ol' days of computers. Thanks.

Re:I've got a better idea

[Al's Hat]

My Sinclair and Apple ][+ feel old. I'll be young forever now that I'm divorced.

Re:I've got a better idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I was born in '83, and got my first real computer in '85 (Prior to that I had a commodore 64)... Your point?

Re:I've got a better idea

[Pojut]

I still have a fully-functional TRS-80...with the tape drive!

Re:I've got a better idea

[Beardo the Bearded]

I got my first computer in 1985. It was a CoCo 2.

I was eight.

Re:I've got a better idea

[SnarfQuest]

I bought my first laptop if '69. Now I have one bolted to the side of my wheelchair. ...

Hint: Joke?

Re:I've got a better idea

[TheMidget]

The Sony Reader Pocket ... Not exactly no name,

You're right. That's not "no name", but rather "bad name". But I think what GP wanted was "good name".

Re:I've got a better idea

[hanabal]

interestingly enough. I recently did quite a bit of research into readers as my wife wanted one and the Sony one came out on top. The clearest screens and the best at reading open formats such as txt and PDF. I know /. is big on compatibility and openness so I thought I'd throw it out that at the moment Sony is the best. Sure you can get features like wifi and reading webpages on things like the kindle, but in terms of reading e-books, the Sony reader line is top notch

Re:I've got a better idea

[IronChef]

The new slightly smaller Sony reader is only $200. While that isn't so cheap that forgetting it on the bus would be painless, it's not ridiculously expensive either.

IMHO, YMMV.

Re:I've got a better idea

[Ephemeriis]

That's just it though...the only reason why it is such a niche product is because they are prohibitively expensive.

No it isn't.

Fine, you think $300 is too much for an ebook reader. You'd run out and buy one tomorrow if they were just $150. That's fine. Some other people would buy them at the lower price too. But you need to realize than an overwhelming number of people will never buy an ebook reader.

Not because they don't like ebooks... Or have some problem with DRM... Or they prefer the smell of old paper... There are tons of people out there who will never read a book for entertainment. Ever.

Reading for entertainment, novels in general, are a niche product.

Ebook readers are a niche within a niche.

Lowering the price will make them more affordable... But it isn't going to dramatically increase the number of people actually willing to read a book.

Re:I've got a better idea

[Jer]

And when they're $125-150, you'll sit there demanding that they be $100 instead. Some people can never be pleased, and you very clearly seem to be one of them.

You mock, but this idea is one of the basic foundations of economics.

Re:I've got a better idea

[Anonymous Coward]

In that case, you're a week late. Newegg had them on sale last week for $150. They'll be that price again soon, though. And I strongly suspect you'll find a reason not to buy one.

Re:I've got a better idea

[icebraining]

The clearest screens and the best at reading open formats such as txt and PDF.

I thought the best format for ebooks was ePub (which is also open, by the way).

Re:I've got a better idea

[hanabal]

well yeah it is, which the Sony ones do well. I was just saying that if you have existing files in txt, pdf or doc the reader will read them (which many others wont)

Re:I've got a better idea

[Pojut]

Aw man! Can't believe I missed it :-(

Re:I've got a better idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll buy one when it's $60. No more.

There, now am I the most honest man in the kingdom?

Re:I've got a better idea

[maxume]

The brand certainly doesn't enjoy the mindshare it had 20 years ago, but Sony still makes plenty of good products, along with plenty of bad products.

Re:I've got a better idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Oddly enough Sony is one of the *best* names in the ebook market as far as quality is concerned, and they have been in the market a lot longer than B&N or amazon.

Re:I've got a better idea

[edumacator]

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them. - Ray Bradbury

I'm sad...

Re:I've got a better idea

[Idbar]

Because you can show pictures in color! B&W movies are not that much appealing to people. Color screens can sell as better photo frames, while better B&W screens may not have more market than the one it currently has.

Re:I've got a better idea

[TheRaven64]

you consider e-books are running $5-$15 each

All of the eBooks that I've read have been free. There are a huge number of public domain and creative commons books out there. The best modern one I've read so far is Ventus, but when you consider that a lot of early science fiction, as well as pretty much all classic literature, is now in the public domain there's no shortage of things you can read for free. If I'd bought the Penguin Classics versions of all of the books that I've read on my eBook reader, I'd have spent more than I spent on the device. Plus I've also used it to read a large number of academic papers and a few classic textbooks like the original Smalltalk 80 book and the BeFS book.

Re:I've got a better idea

[shutdown -p now]

How about you first find a better process for making monochrome e-ink displays so the devices that use them aren't ridiculously priced?

The reason why devices are ridiculously priced is because E Ink holds a patent on those screens, and there is only a very limited number of factories that have license to manufacture them (all owned by the same company that owns E Ink, except for one owned by IREX). So, in effect, there is a monopoly artificially maintaining high prices.

Re:I've got a better idea

[blitziod]

i used to think i was one of those people..or maybe i used to be one.then i got a kindle 2 for xmas..WOW how did i go so long without it. Books are cheap( free if you find them on pirate bay hehe ARRR) and the e-ink screen rules!. I figure my kindle will last 3 years. I may use it for as many as 5. Do i care if it has color..NO not really. The size would make most magazine articles hard to read and not really be good for even comic books. It is just for reading books to me. and newspaper articles. will i buy apples new tablet..good chance i will. And good chance i will use it for the same things i use my laptop for now. Then i will upgrade my laptop to a desktop and not need a laptop. Would i like a color e ink reader for magazines, not really. I think the glossy look of magazines will work well on an lcd screen and frankly magazines do not take as long to read so the headache of staring at a backlit screen is not an issue. The only advantage would be having 1000's of magazines in a single portable unit. But it would have to be bigger than a kindle2 maybe the size of the DX model or bigger. Honestly I think the thing i would like to have would be a color e-ink screen that was at least comic book newsprint quality. Magazine quality would be nice but not something i would pay a lot extra for OR trade for a larger screen size. And with a 5 year plus lifespan( no need to upgrade for more power or features or to run software, just use it till it breaks) i would likely have a small size(kindle 2) e reader in BW and a larger color one for comics, provided the availability of lots of comics for purchase cheap and/or on the pirate bay( i think the latter is a given). I think apple's new product will help the sale of e-ink style readers...as more people try ebooks and want a better way to read them. The e - ink reader is about as good as it gets for electronic reading. And the costs are pretty good on many books, plus when you factor in all the free ones it is amazing. if you just save 5.00 on 10 books a year a kindle 2 pays for itself in 5 years. I have already since Xmas saved more than the thing would have cost. I mean I have downloaded 45 free books ( well i have read 15 of them so far but they are on my pc waiting lol). Assuming i would have bought them used for an average price of 6.00 that is 270.00 saved so far. Keep in mind that even public domain books cost money when you purchase a physical copy...now sure i could have read thos e 15 books on my laptop...but you know how many books i have read on a laptop screen? 1 and that was just the last harry potter book...i wanted to read it before it came out...sure i bought it later though..and reading that in 2 days ona laptop was MURDER!!! ...so the savings from e-ink is real for me.. I hear all this talk about upgrades and early adopters..i think it is kinda silly. E-ink readers are at the quality of paper back books now. That is the product they are "replacing" for most of us. Any other features/upgrades ( and i am sure there will be every year) are really gadgets that do not affect the prime usable function most of us would need the reader for. Also these are not laptops...no need to upgrade two years form now to run the latest antivirus software or whatever...this is more like buying a kitchen aid mixer than buying a PC. You want a good one that will last. When mine breaks i will buy one either just like it, or with new features. Plus with all the money i am saving on books..I could easily buy one kindle2 a year( or more likely a few different readers, maybe a color version of the DX when it comes out) and still be ahead.

Re:I've got a better idea

[BlackCreek]

But there is a lot of reading material that you can only get in PDF form. Scientific articles, documentation, etc. Conversion is not always possible (either due to technical issues or due to time). I read a Scott Adams free book (IIRC "God's debris") which was only available as PDF. So having a e-reader that does PDF reflow is a major usability point.

I normally use ePub on my HanlinV3, but very often I make use of the reflow-capable PDF reader in it.

Re:I've got a better idea

[bill_mcgonigle]

So, in effect, there is a monopoly artificially maintaining high prices.

In this case that seems to be good. They were in R&D burning untold VC rounds for what, a decade before they had a commercial product on the market?

I can't see how we'd be having this conversation if the technology went straight to commoditization, though I'd be happy to know of better models.

Re:I've got a better idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you incapable of following a threaded discussion?

Re:I've got a better idea

[shutdown -p now]

Didn't say it's bad. Just that prices now are much higher than what we should expect them to see eventually, and definitely higher than the raw price of ingredients.

Wonder what the patent filing date is...

Bendable E-Ink Screens Already Exist

[Senjutsu]

Unfortunately the bendable screen doesn't solve the non-bendable motherboard, CPU, battery, and case problems..

Re:Bendable E-Ink Screens Already Exist

[snooo53]

I don't see the problem. Books have a spine that isn't bendable; all they have to do is put the electronics in a rigid part of the device and let the rest be flexible.

Re:Bendable E-Ink Screens Already Exist

[tsa]

Exactly. Or you print the electronics on the other side of the screen. The only thing you can't make bendable is the holder for the memory card (and the memory card itself of course). An e-book that behaves like a book is so much nicer than the ones that are for sale now!

Re:Bendable E-Ink Screens Already Exist

[TheRaven64]

Motherboard? What motherboard; these things use a SoC that has pretty much everything on die, including the eInk controller. In a PoP configuration, the entire area of the electronics is under one square centimetre. The battery doesn't fold, but lithium polymer can come in any shape you want. You can easily make something the length of the spine of a book very thin that contains everything an eBook reader needs except for the screen. If you can roll up the screen, then the entire unit can be pocket sized.

Apple could offer a model with eink screen ...

[perpenso]

Peng argues that E Ink has nothing to fear from the e-book apps on the Apple iPad and other devices with color LCDs, which, in his view, produce more eye strain and aren't as suitable for digital reading.

E Ink certainly has less to fear from Apple since E Ink could sell their screens to Apple just like they sell to Amazon, Sony, etc. If the eye strain issue becomes a concern Apple could simply offer an iPad version, or a new product derived from iPad that is more focused as an eReader and not a gaming/multimedia platform, with an E Ink screen. I think it is premature to say that Amazon and Sony has nothing to fear.

--
Perpenso Calc for iPhone and iPod touch, scientific and bill/tip calculator, fractions, complex numbers, RPN

Re:Apple could offer a model with eink screen ...

[symes]

An Apple version of E ink? You mean iEink? That sounds wrong, like pain or something

Re:Apple could offer a model with eink screen ...

[gartogg]

Old Mcdonald had an Ebook reader, E-I-E-I-Ink
And on that Ebook reader were overpriced books, E-I-E-I-who the hell cares.

Re:Apple could offer a model with eink screen ...

[vlm]

E Ink certainly has less to fear from Apple since E Ink could sell their screens to Apple

Perpenso Calc for iPhone and iPod touch, scientific and bill/tip calculator, fractions, complex numbers, RPN

Oh the irony, oh the irony. E-ink display would kill your app. Nice app, gotta love a RPN calculator, but using your "20 digit precision" I don't want to go click / one second while the screen flashes a couple times / click / delay / click / delay on an eink display.

Heck, I could probably add and subtract in my head faster than your calculator could update a slow eink display.

I predict in the next version

[Orga]

We'll be able to physically feel and turn the pages of these color books. Makes notes in the margin and who knows, with advances on the DRM front be able to actually pass these books onto our children!

Re:I predict in the next version

[Shados]

I know you're joking, but taking notes in the margins has been there for a bit. Some of sony's e-readers have touchscreen display (which sucked in their first incarnation, but are better now), and let you annotate books at will.

Re:I predict in the next version

[Vanderhoth]

with advances on the DRM front be able to actually pass these books onto our children!

Now you're just dreaming!! Don't be so greedy! jk ;)

Re:I predict in the next version

[TheMidget]

Yes, and with DRM, your notes will be gone as well, when they decide to pull the book.

Re:I predict in the next version

[Anonymous Coward]

except when the book is a pdf with no drm. Or even better a .txt file.

Re:I predict in the next version

[StayFrosty]

That isn't true. Even with the 1984 incident on the Kindle, the user's notes were still intact. The other thing is purchasing DRM'd books is a choice. I don't understand the e-reader hate here on slashdot. Nobody's forcing anybody to buy DRM'd content. Think of an e-reader like an MP3 player. Sure, it can display DRM'd content if you so choose, but it will display DRM free content if you choose to go that route as well.

Instead of boycotting an entire class of devices because they can display DRM'd content, we should be targeting on the people who let this DRM scam go on in the first place: the publishers and the users who purchase that content.

Re:I predict in the next version

[failedlogic]

Starting at page one, photocopy the e-book reader. Continue to the end of the book.

The finished product, you should be able to pass along to the kids. ;)

Re:I predict in the next version

[mark-t]

Although I understand your tone to be humorous, electronic books have the distinct advantage over physical books of not really weighing anything. You can carry an entire library of information in your briefcase or backpack.

Still not convinced about e-ink

[Space cowboy]

Am I the only one who *doesn't* get eye-strain reading text on LCD's hour after hour ?

I'm beginning to wonder whether the difference is actually Mac vs PC and the font rendering technologies. I use a Mac all day, reading text on LCDs, and it doesn't bother me in the slightest. Perhaps it's because the fonts look nicer (yeah, I know, it's an opinion, not a fact) to my eye on the Mac. I've lost count of the number of times I've spent days poring over PDFs and somehow managed to not notice this 'eye strain' that LCDs apparently cause. I actually *prefer* to read documents on the screen rather than printed out on paper...

I'm also pretty convinced I'd get a lot more wound up over the slow refresh of the e-ink displays than the supposed eyestrain from LCDs...

Simon.

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, fanboy, your Mac is sooooo fabulous it magically does away with eye strain from the LCD. Maybe you don't get eye strain because of all practice crossing your eyes while your nose is in Steve Jobs' butt.

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[buruonbrails]

Just read from E-Ink screen to feel the difference. I was skeptical about E-Ink too before having tried it out. It looks almost exactly like the real paper. So, now I can't imagine using LCD for prolonged reading when you can use E-Ink device or (even better!) good old paper book.

By the way, another key advantage of E-Ink is energy consumption: it doesn't use battery when static, and uses quite a small amount of energy to redraw the page. Due to this feature, eBooks can run for weeks or even months on a single charge.

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[Anonymous Coward]

The joy of e-ink is that there is no refresh rate to keep a single page on the screen, its just a single refresh for every page of your book. The DPI is very high for e-ink displays so it's very easy on the eyes. E-ink displays don't shine light, they only reflect light much like real books. It's completely different than LCD or CRT or any other display that must refresh the screen even when it isn't changing and has to emit light.

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[MozeeToby]

After an hour? No. After 12 hours a day, 5 days a week? Yes. If I've been sitting in front of a computer screen for several hours and close my eyes I can feel the muscles unwinding. It's not something I'm conciously away of until I look away from the screen, but the muscles of and around my eyes are constantly tense when reading off a monitor.

As for the refresh rate of e-ink, for me it is almost exactly equal to the time it takes my eyes to travel from the bottom to the top of the page. The only time I notice it is if I need to go back/forward several pages, then the slow refresh is frustrating since you have to wait for a page to display before you can move to the next one.

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[digitalhermit]

Hmm.. Could be eye strain caused by looking down your nose at the PC??

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[CastrTroy]

I a programmer, so naturally, I spend all day looking at the computer. My eyes don't get tired looking at an LCD all day long. I really don't get it either. I've ready plenty of books on my laptop. No problems there either. Oh, and I use a PC, so I don't think it's the font thing.

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[Anonymous Coward]

After an hour? No. After 12 hours a day, 5 days a week? Yes. If I've been sitting in front of a computer screen for several hours and close my eyes I can feel the muscles unwinding. (...)

The GP didn't say "after an hour". He said:

Am I the only one who *doesn't* get eye-strain reading text on LCD's hour after hour ?
(...)
I use a Mac all day, reading text on LCDs, and it doesn't bother me in the slightest.
(...)
I've lost count of the number of times I've spent days poring over PDFs and somehow managed to not notice this 'eye strain' that LCDs apparently cause. I actually *prefer* to read documents on the screen rather than printed out on paper...

But nevertheless in your reply you decided to ignore pretty much everything he said.

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[Anonymous Coward]

Two words: Power consumption.

Seriously, regardless of eyestrain (and LCDs do cause eyestrain, I use them 10-12 hours per day), this alone is why eInk readers won't be displace by netbooks. I actually love my netbook, it does just fine for reading in a pinch, but it's crap for it in lieu of an eInk display. Yeah, I'd make sure I really wanted to read a lot on the go before I plunked down 300 bucks for one, but don't pretend your netbook is a viable replacement for someone who does have a need to read a lot on the go, it's not.

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps you are still young ?
As for myself, I could always see the refresh rate on CRT displays when it was under 70-75Hz, while other people claimed they see no difference. Therefore, it might be that some people aren't actually as bothered as others are by the displays.

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[Piranhaa]

By the way, another key advantage of E-Ink is energy consumption: it doesn't use battery when static, and uses quite a small amount of energy to redraw the page. Due to this feature, eBooks can run for weeks or even months on a single charge.

As much as I'd like to back this up, it's not entirely true. The "screen" doesn't use any energy in a static state and requires very little power to redraw. However, the device itself stays in a "standby" state and does use (very little) power 24/7.

I have a Sony PRS-505 and absolutely love it. It does drop to half power if I turn it off for 2-3 weeks (there's a REAL way to turn it off, but it takes too long to boot), but that is still much better than the HOURS battery life that the iPad, laptops, and netbooks get. It's simply comparing apples to oranges.

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[Anonymous Coward]

Just read from E-Ink screen to feel the difference. I was skeptical about E-Ink too before having tried it out. It looks almost exactly like the real paper. So, now I can't imagine using LCD for prolonged reading when you can use E-Ink device or (even better!) good old paper book.

You make a good point about trying an E-Ink screen for himself. But he did say:

I actually *prefer* to read documents on the screen rather than printed out on paper...

So if E-Ink "looks almost exactly like real paper" and he "actually prefers to read documents on the screen rather than printed out on paper" I don't see how he is going to "get it" if he tries an E-Ink screen.

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[__aasqbs9791]

Same with me on both Windows and Linux machines. The only thing that really stops me is the portability factor.

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[Anonymous Coward]

By the way, another key advantage of E-Ink is energy consumption: it doesn't use battery when static, and uses quite a small amount of energy to redraw the page. Due to this feature, eBooks can run for weeks or even months on a single charge.

Another benefit of this feature is that it can take weeks or even months to render a single video.

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a Sony PRS-505 and absolutely love it. It does drop to half power if I turn it off for 2-3 weeks (there's a REAL way to turn it off, but it takes too long to boot), but that is still much better than the HOURS battery life that the iPad, laptops, and netbooks get.

The very low consumption of E-Ink displays is certainly very appealing. On the other hand, the iPad's battery is supposed to last 30 days in standby mode (if you are to believe what was said in the keynote where it was presented), and it comes out of standby mode in a second or so like any iPhone or iPod touch.

Of course you can't read the screen while it's in standby mode (unlike E-Ink), but since you are not going to be using the device 24/7 this does compensate at least partially since you may not need to charge it every single day.

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[buruonbrails]

When speaking about power consumption, I was referring to the screen. As for overall power consumption, right you are: most of the eBook readers have Linux within, and this beast has a well-known appetite for power.

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[broken_chaos]

The only time I notice it is if I need to go back/forward several pages, then the slow refresh is frustrating since you have to wait for a page to display before you can move to the next one.

On some readers (definitely Sony, dunno about others), press-and-hold on the back/forward buttons will make it start going through pages without doing a full page refresh.

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[TheMidget]

By the way, another key advantage of E-Ink is energy consumption: it doesn't use battery when static, and uses quite a small amount of energy to redraw the page. Due to this feature, eBooks can run for weeks or even months on a single charge.

This technology would be perfect for digital picture frames. Anybody aware of any e-ink based picture frames?

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[vlm]

I was skeptical about E-Ink too before having tried it out. It looks almost exactly like the real paper.

Yeah, if everything you print on real paper is dull dark gray on dull light gray.

Been there, tried it, couldn't stand the ultra low contrast, the flickering screen, the 1 Hz (or so) refresh rate. Also the lack of a backlight really sucked.

Kind of like going back to a 1992 laptop after you've been using a 2010 laptop for awhile.

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[vlm]

After an hour? No. After 12 hours a day, 5 days a week? Yes. If I've been sitting in front of a computer screen for several hours and close my eyes I can feel the muscles unwinding. It's not something I'm conciously away of until I look away from the screen, but the muscles of and around my eyes are constantly tense when reading off a monitor.

Visit an eye doctor / optometrist please. Seriously. People with healthy eyes don't have that problem. The problem is inside your eyeballs, not the monitors display technology.

You can wait, like my grandma did, of course she's blind in one eye now. Or you can get it taken care of before you're permanently disabled. Annoying as starting glaucoma eyedrops might be, it beats the hell out of blindness.

I'm serious, stop posting to slashdot about how wonderful e-ink would be, and fix yer eyes. Once you're blind, e-ink vs LCD vs CRT is all pretty irrelevant.

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[Ephemeriis]

Am I the only one who *doesn't* get eye-strain reading text on LCD's hour after hour ?

I'm beginning to wonder whether the difference is actually Mac vs PC and the font rendering [codinghorror.com] technologies. I use a Mac all day, reading text on LCDs, and it doesn't bother me in the slightest. Perhaps it's because the fonts look nicer (yeah, I know, it's an opinion, not a fact) to my eye on the Mac. I've lost count of the number of times I've spent days poring over PDFs and somehow managed to not notice this 'eye strain' that LCDs apparently cause. I actually *prefer* to read documents on the screen rather than printed out on paper...

Well, I guess YMMV and all that...

I personally spend a good amount of my day reading text on an LCD. But it isn't the same as reading a novel recreationally.

When I'm reading stuff at work I'm not generally staring at pure text on an LCD for hours at a time. I'm generally being interrupted by phone calls... Or having to answer an IM or an email... Or I'm switching between multiple documents... Or I'll be navigating through something's GUI... Or a co-worker will stop by to ask a question...

Normally none of that generates any eyestrain. I've got plenty of chances throughout the day to let my eyes rest and refocus and whatever they need to do.

When I'm reading recreationally, however, it isn't unusual to get completely sucked in to a good book. Hours can go by without my notice. I will literally be staring at text for hours at a time - no interruptions, no breaks, no rest for my eyes.

This can cause me eyestrain.

I have been reading ebooks for probably a decade now. I started out with an old Handspring Visor... Then moved on to a Palm PDA... I've spent a couple years reading ebooks on laptops and netbooks and desktop computers... And have just recently purchased a nook...

The LCDs have all been harder to read for extended periods of time. The nook, however, doesn't bother me any more than paper does.

I'm also pretty convinced I'd get a lot more wound up over the slow refresh of the e-ink displays than the supposed eyestrain from LCDs...

Lots of folks say this. From my experience, the delay is no different than the delay in turning a page in a paper book. It isn't any more jarring or distracting or time-consuming or derailing or anything else. There's just a momentary pause in your reading as you turn the page - just like if it were a paper book.

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[Anonymous Coward]

Mac Fanboy Mod Point Wasters Assemble!

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[bkaul01]

The quality of the LCD makes a big difference. I'll notice eyestrain after a couple hours of reading on my Dell laptop at work. The HP I have at home, I didn't have a problem with even when using it to write my dissertation: can make it to the next meal/bathroom/etc. break before it becomes an issue. But having seen the non-backlit e-Ink displays, I can see how they'd eliminate the problem altogether.

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[mdielmann]

I get eyestrain from LCD's. For me, it reminds me of a long day standing on concrete. Most days, it's not really that bad, but it's never as good as standing on turf. When I read a book, with proper lighting, it is never as bad. Like the foot strain analogy, I'm aware that it affect some people more than others.
Now, I wouldn't give up the benefits of search and portability to reduce that eyestrain. But if I could reduce eyestrain while keeping those benefits from an electronic device, I'm interested. Even now, I prefer to read from a screen, eyestrain notwithstanding. When the prices are reasonable, I intend to buy an ebook reader.

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[genghisjahn]

Maybe the eye strain is from something else. He should check his palms and see if there's any abnormal hair growth.

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[bonius_rex]

In my experience, the eyestrain thing seems to be correlated with age. When I was a younger man, I read all sorts of e-books on my palm pilot with no problem. That was maybe 10 years ago. Now that I'm a wizened old geezer (35), I can only read on my droid for maybe half an hour before my eyes fee like they're starting to melt, but I can read on my Kindle for hours and hours with no problem. The fonts on the Kindle aren't especially good, so I doubt it's font-related.

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[nedlohs]

No.

I spend hours straight reading off LCD screens. I don't get eye-strain, headaches, etc.

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a programmer and I do get eye strain. Its not a day to day thing. But some days I come home and I simply can't use my computer or watch tv.

I think it may be the difference from good code and bad code. Good code has a lot of white space. Bad code is line after line of dense text.

I think people who say E-Ink is not important are ignoring history. E-books are not new. The form factor for these readers are not new. The invention that has pushed these devices to mass market is E-Ink.

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[Ephemeriis]

After an hour? No. After 12 hours a day, 5 days a week? Yes. If I've been sitting in front of a computer screen for several hours and close my eyes I can feel the muscles unwinding. It's not something I'm conciously away of until I look away from the screen, but the muscles of and around my eyes are constantly tense when reading off a monitor.

Visit an eye doctor / optometrist please. Seriously. People with healthy eyes don't have that problem.

It's called eye strain and it's a real thing. When you focus on relatively small and close things, like text, the muscles around your eyes tighten. Any muscle, when worked for long periods of time, tires out. This doesn't mean you've got some horrible disease. It isn't a sign of impending blindness, or glaucoma, or a cataract. It's just muscle fatigue.

Sure, yes, random problems with your eyes can be indicative of something bigger... But if you spend all day long helping your friends move and wake up the next morning to find that your muscles ache it probably isn't a symptom of some horrible disease - it's just muscle fatigue. Nothing more, nothing less.

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[mdwh2]

I don't get eye strain as such, but reading large amounts of text - we're talking a book, not Slashdot, code or a few PDFs - is far less enjoyable on an LCD screen. There's also the point about battery life.

But still, if you're happy with LCD, think yourself lucky - you can just use any dirt cheap tablet or netbook as an e-reader.

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[mdwh2]

And can you read off the Ipad in standby mode? If not, how is that comparable to an e-reader? And indeed, how is that any different to the long standby life mode of a dirt cheap netbook?

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[shutdown -p now]

It's not exactly a secret that reflected light (esp. sunlight) is better for the eyes than directly emitted light. You don't stare at the sun, and you (I hope) don't stare directly at lamps, either; why do you think that staring at what is, effectively, a lamp behind the surface of your monitor for long periods of time is a good idea?

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[Hurricane78]

The only time I notice it is if I need to go back/forward several pages, then the slow refresh is frustrating since you have to wait for a page to display before you can move to the next one.

Definitely a programmers’ error. It should simply stop rendering the current page and start with the new one, as soon as you press the button. Which would make it as fast as you could possibly press the button.

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[ucblockhead]

Have you actually tried it?

I've noticed that people who like to post long screeds about how LCD is no worse than eInk usually have never actually used eInk.

Personally, I've read extensively on everything from a CRT to a laptop to an old Palm III, and I am willing to pay for a dedicated eInk device because, in my extensive experience, eInk is more comfortable to read on. If you've done the same and find LCD adequate, that's fine, but if your one of the many people that's never actually used eInk for a minute or two, I'm not sure your opinion on the adequacy of LCD for reading is particularly useful.

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get LCD eyestrain either, as long as i do the following.

1. Match brightness to surroundings. My MacbookPro tries to do this "automagically", but i find that manual adjustment is better and more accurate to my viewing needs. The display is plenty bright enough to read outdoors.*

2.make sure to look around and stretch every 15 minutes or so. Mostly i think this is just for my mental sanity.

*Who the fuck actually reads a book in direct sunlight !?! i tried that shit just because i realized never done it and the sun dun' fried my shit!. seriously, i hear that that's supposed to be the eInk's big deal. i hate it.

All of the eInk displays i've seen (kindle, sony, nook) all look like dark grey on light grey to me. Contrast ratio is balls compared to my lappy with the screen adjusted to the right level.

They are not at all comfortable to read in low light and since there is a bit of glare on the anitglare screens i'm forced to hold it at weird angles to comfortably read in real world scenarios.

-Simon (a different simon)

by the way Space Cowboy, you always seem to have very good comments. You've actually posted crap i was going to post and freaked me out when the byline said "simon" and for a brief moment i thought i had posted without remembering ;)

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, you really need to improve your reading comprehension skills.

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called eye strain and it's a real thing. When you focus on relatively small and close things, like text, the muscles around your eyes tighten. Any muscle, when worked for long periods of time, tires out. This doesn't mean you've got some horrible disease. It isn't a sign of impending blindness, or glaucoma, or a cataract. It's just muscle fatigue.

Cool, thanks for the insightful input. But note that your description og "eye strain" applies to both LCD and E Ink displays, which is the point of the whole thread. The description doesn't say anything about backlight vs reflected light, etc., only about size and proximity of the object being observed, which is the same for both technologies.

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[blitziod]

e-ink reminds me more of a REALLY hi res etch a sketch than any other kind of display.

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[mark-t]

If you don't get eye strain from monitors, that's great.

The problem a lot of people have with monitors, however, is that emit light. It amounts essentially to trying to read while looking into a flashlight. If enough ambient light is present, the problem of feeling like one is looking directly into a light source subsides, but sometimes even very modest amounts of ambient light can washed out the screen, reducing effective contrast on the contents of the display and making it very hard to read.

Having a monitor that adjusts its brightness to compensate for ambient light can often be helpful at solving this problem, but there are always extreme (but not uncommon) cases where it will still not be effective, such as near a sunlit window where the display invariably gets washed out by sunlight (to produce enough contrast to still be legible, it would likely be hazardous to look directly into for prolonged periods), or in very dark rooms, where in order to produce enough contrast to be readable, the display has to still output a certain minimum amount of light that can still end up feeling like one is staring directing into a light source when staring at it for a prolonged period.

So, while it's great that you don't have a problem with reading information on computer screens... a lot of people still do.. and what I've mentioned above is the key issue with it. The issue is generally not actually harmful to the eyes or visual cortex in any way, but still can induce fatigue far more rapidly than would happen otherwise.

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you actually tried it?

I've noticed that people who like to post long screeds about how LCD is no worse than eInk usually have never actually used eInk.

I guess he has not tried it, but he did say that he "actually *prefers* to read documents on the screen rather than printed out on paper".

So unless the "E Ink experience" tops the "real paper and ink" experience, I doubt that he (or I, for that matter) will be convinced by it.

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you are...

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[drinkypoo]

As far as I can tell the only problem is that the light is not sufficiently diffuse. Isn't this the kind of problem that could be solved with a plastic filter, perhaps between backlight and LCD panel? It doesn't really matter whether light is coming from something, or bouncing off of it, the intensity and character of the light are what is relevant. How you get there is irrelevant.

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[shutdown -p now]

It doesn't really matter whether light is coming from something, or bouncing off of it, the intensity and character of the light are what is relevant. How you get there is irrelevant.

That's true. It just so happens that our eyes are best accustomed to the characteristics of light that are typical of that reflected by non-shiny surfaces (for obvious evolutionary reasons), so the simplest way to reproduce it is to use the same mechanism, which is what eInk does.

Isn't this the kind of problem that could be solved with a plastic filter, perhaps between backlight and LCD panel?

Possibly. I don't really know enough about light physics to say how well that would work, nor enough about human physiology to say how specific the emitted light needs to be (and in what, exactly - whether it's just intensity that would need to be regulated, or other things as well).

In any case, it would still seemingly necessitate a special kind of screen.

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[Painted]

I have, I've used both quite a bit, and I'll take LCD and all it can do hands down over eInk. It's basically a general purpose screen that can* be used, quite successfully, as a text reader in virtually any environment except direct sunlight versus a single purpose screen that works ok in most light but does excel in direct sunlight.

Hence, for me, an iPad with LCD is 30x the machine a Kindle is, since the iPad can do many, many things in almost any environment and the Kindle can really, do just one- and it works poorly in low light. I will admit that I am far more likely to want to read in an environment where there's not enough light than one with too much...

Re:Still not convinced about e-ink

[Anonymous Coward]

How many people really want an expensive black and white picture frame?

When they get their touted magazine quality e-ink tech developed and into production, I'm sure they'll start to appear.

The actual cost is still more important. but...

[Caue]

The reasons I love printed books are still overseen by the manufacturers: lendability, durability, exchangability, highlightexability, pencilnoteability, trashability (when I simply don't enjoy the book, like reading dan brown for the first time.. urgh.)

Re:The actual cost is still more important. but...

[darjen]

Everything except portability and storage...

Re:The actual cost is still more important. but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Lendability is a problem inherent in digital media, though some manufacturers are trying (the Nook, for example). Durability of course increases with each generation, and I see no reason not to expect parity with books relatively soon (which is easier to waterproof?). Exchangability is just lendability without temporal limits. Highlighting digital text is a solved problem, annotating digital text (even with a plastic pencil, where touchscreen exist) is a solved problem, and while you don't get the physical satisfaction of throwing a digital book away, you *can* delete it.

No, the better reasons are: DRM (especially the ability to remotely delete books), lack of color/limited resolution, and ridiculous prices. Maybe the inability to use them during long power outages, but the battery life on these things is pretty good.

Re:The actual cost is still more important. but...

[vlm]

And freely shared digital copies of everything. Ooops, did I just say that?

Seriously though, isn't the ratio of legit vs illegit content slightly better on ebooks than ipods due to project gutenberg and friends? But the ratio is not going to be dramatically different.

So you'll have poor kids with million book library collections, and clueless execs claiming that's a "loss" of a million times the cost of a book, if not more. Yet regardless of that, apple, or someone, will have a billion dollar ebook store. And the mall bookstores will go the way of the mall record stores.

Re:The actual cost is still more important. but...

[icebraining]

Search also sucks. And making copies of your notes (in case you lose the book) is terribly time consuming.

Re:The actual cost is still more important. but...

[BlackCreek]

Add to that zooming and changing the fonts to something of my own choice.

Comics

[Kenshin]

This is now the ideal platform for comics. If content is moved to this format, you won't have to deal with horrible collectors if you want to read back issues.

Re:Comics

[grahamsz]

s/comics/porn/g

Re:Comics

[Vanderhoth]

I doubt you'd ever see comics (DC and Marvel style) move to a digital format. Part of their appeal and value is that over time only limited copies survive. The chance to be the owner of the fist superman for example would loose its value if it was a digital version that can be infinity copied. I completely understand where you're coming from, I believe comics are written to be read and for someone to buy and original copy, seal it up and lock it away where no one can ever see it again is a real crime in my mind.

I think I'll create a comic about a super hero that goes around "rescuing" comics from evil collectors.

Re:Comics

[Vanderhoth]

Sorry for the spelling mistakes. I clicked preview and nothing happened. I clicked it a second time and the post was made.

Re:Comics

[Yvan256]

If content is moved to this format, you won't have to deal with horrible collectors if you want to read back issues.

Worst. Comment. Ever. - Comic Book Guy.

Re:Comics

[hanabal]

I can buy marvel and DC comics for my psp now.

Re:Comics

[Jer]

The same can be said for books. Book collectors spend much, much more on rare first editions of various tomes than anyone has spent on individual rare comic book issues. Even with the recent "record setting" Batman and Superman sales of over a million dollars at auction, the book market sees collectors spending well over that on rare books every year, and records for the most money spent on a single book are more in the tens-of-millions of dollars range rather than in the one million dollar range.

The difference between normal books and comic books is that the (superhero) comic book publishers have run their market into the ground so that there are only about a 100,000 dedicated monthly readers left in the US at this point (with similar numbers abroad). So the collectors have an outsized influence on the market as a whole (not even getting into the fact that almost every comics retailer out there is himself a collector and lets that influence his purchasing decisions). It doesn't have to be that way - a cheap distribution platform with instant world-wide access could be just the thing to get some mainstream appeal for comics again - but for now the major comics companies are sitting tight and seem to be content to just milk their existing collector-heavy readership base until the market finally shrinks to the point where it isn't profitable to print and distribute books anymore.

Re:Comics

[TenLeftFingers]

It'll be more hygenic too. When you pass it on to a friend you keep the stains on your Kindle display.

Why improve mono, just replace with color ...

[perpenso]

How about you first find a better process for making monochrome e-ink displays so the devices that use them aren't ridiculously priced?

Why? Mono is probably a dead end technology. It may be better to get to color as quickly as possible and then concentrate on process improvements. A color Kindle would be a much better commercial product. It is difficult to imagine textbooks moving to electronic media without color. Regarding the possibility of reduced eye strain with mono, perhaps a reader app on a color device could choose to only show black and white for pure text content.

--
Perpenso Calc for iPhone and iPod touch, scientific and bill/tip calculator, fractions, complex numbers, RPN

Re:Why improve mono, just replace with color ...

[Pojut]

Chances are the availability of color devices will drive the selling price of the monochrome ones after they are on the market for a little bit anyway...but I think they would watch the market grow a lot faster if the price of entry wasn't as high as it is. At this stage in the technology's life though, you may be right about it being pointless to invest further in monochrome displays.

Still, I know they are trying, and I know the market is doing decently well despite the high prices, but when you consider the rest of the components that make up an e-reader, the e-ink display is obviously where the bulk of the price comes from.

Re:Why improve mono, just replace with color ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? Mono is probably a dead end technology. It may be better to get to color as quickly as possible and then concentrate on process improvements. A color Kindle would be a much better commercial product. It is difficult to imagine textbooks moving to electronic media without color.

I'm sure black text on white background will look so much better on color screen!
Really now, you forget what *ebook* readers are meant for.

Re:Why improve mono, just replace with color ...

[Anonymous Coward]

What about comic books? Really now, you forget what a *display* is meant for.

Re:Why improve mono, just replace with color ...

[Hurricane78]

Why? Mono is probably a dead end technology.

He’s an engineer. ;)

Leaving research exclusively in the hands of engineers, we would have perfectly functioning oil lamps, but no electricity. — Einstein

Comics? C'Mon! This is Porn's Entre to the Market

[RobotRunAmok]

From the VHS player forward, the establishment of a new medium relied upon how well it handled pornography: what it looked like on the device, what was available for it, how anonymous the purchase/distribution could be.

Adoption of E-books like the Kindle has been slow to catch fire NOT because people could not read Batman on them...

How is the kindle prohibitively expensive?

[Shivetya]

Whats wrong, no Apple logo?

Seriously, its under $500, does what it does very very well.

3G jacks up its cost, probably not as much as Apple will hit iPad users for it, but it is no small part of the price. Let alone many people will piss away more money in frivolous purchases they cannot recall than on something like this.

I know people who would bitch at $150 yet will pay that in two months for the phones. Go figure. Its relative. The e-readers are niche products because people haven't seen a need for them. If the books were cheaper on the readers by a good amount than what you pay for the paper versions people might jump, but that option may be out the window as Apple seems willing to throw the consumer under the bus and have publishers set what price they want.

Re:How is the kindle prohibitively expensive?

[demonlapin]

Books are already cheaper on Kindle than paper, often by a fair amount. The problem is that right now e-Ink screens are really good only for continuous text streams without graphics. Now, for that one purpose, they're fantastic. I love my Kindle. But I would have had a lot of trouble justifying the cost if I were a casual reader (5-6 books/year).

Re:How is the kindle prohibitively expensive?

[Ephemeriis]

If the books were cheaper on the readers by a good amount than what you pay for the paper versions people might jump

Unlikely.

Many titles are already cheaper in ebook format than printed paper. And there are tons of places where I can get my hands on free ebooks.

But folks aren't paying $400 for ebook readers because they're too cheap to pay $8 for a paperback.

The killer app for ebook readers is portability. Yes, a single paperback novel is wonderfully portable... But a multi-volume encyclopedia is much less so... Or a hardcover novel. Or an entire bookshelf full of random novels and stories.

Re:How is the kindle prohibitively expensive?

[bkaul01]

Books are already cheaper on Kindle than paper, often by a fair amount. The problem is that right now e-Ink screens are really good only for continuous text streams without graphics.

The other problem is that there's no real bundled discount option for buying both the hard copy and the Kindle version. For myself, with books I intend to keep, I want a nice hardcover. For books I only intend to read once and throw away, I can get a used paperback cheaper than the Kindle copy even if I don't borrow from a library. The Kindle would be convenient at times, but if I have to essentially buy the book twice, rather than just paying an extra dollar or two on top of the price I'm already paying for the physical book, I'm not going to do it. If I have to choose between the electronic and physical copies, I'll go for the real thing.

Re:How is the kindle prohibitively expensive?

[david_thornley]

I'm looking forward to watching the eBook market. While there haven't been really good sound recordings until the last several decades, and so there isn't much in the way of non-copyrighted music, there are really good books out there that are out of copyright. This hasn't been as much of a drain on physical book prices, since they still cost book-like amounts of money, but it's going to watch the long-term effects of having Dickens and Austen and Twain and many others available for free.

Re:How is the kindle prohibitively expensive?

[wwfarch]

Ebooks are already cheaper than hardcover books. The boat I am in, and many others I am sure, is that we would like them cheaper than paperbacks (once paperback is available). I never buy hardcover books so an ebook reader plus the cost of books would be significantly more expensive for me than just buying the books in the first place.

Re:Comics? C'Mon! This is Porn's Entre to the Mark

[snowraver1]

Not true. Beta failed because of VHS was cheaper. HD-DVD failed because of the PS3 blueray penetration. .gif failed because of licensing. DVD didn't really have any competition...

Slackers!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

We want it and we want it NOW. Hopefully a competitor will rise just to spite you.

Re:Comics? C'Mon! This is Porn's Entre to the Mark

[2obvious4u]

DVD didn't really have any competition...

So VCD and Divx weren't competition to DVD?

But how does it work?

[d1r3lnd]

As I understand, monochrome e-ink displays are a bunch of tiny spheres, with one white hemisphere and one black hemisphere - so how the hell does the color version work? C/W M/W Y/W K/W spheres? What's the resolution going to look like? Sounds like it might be good for reproducing Roy Lichetenstein's oeuvre... Seriously, how do you have color e-ink and have it remain e-ink? I'll wait until they explain how it works before I make plans to buy any devices that use it.

Re:But how does it work?

[shutdown -p now]

As I understand, monochrome e-ink displays are a bunch of tiny spheres, with one white hemisphere and one black hemisphere - so how the hell does the color version work?

Today's "monochrome" eInk displays are actually capable of displaying 16 gradations of grey, so probably the same approach would be applied to individual color subpixels.

Not sure how exactly they do it, but one thing about your description is incorrect - every eInk capsule (a single pixel) is a transparent cell filled with tiny spherical particles, half of which are black, and half a white. Particles of different colors also have different electric charges, and thus, by applying an electric field, you can get those of desired color to float up, and the other kind to sink. I'd imagine that getting half-tones involves resetting them to some "clear" initial state first (say, all white on top, all black on bottom), and then applying the field with reduced strength, so that only so many black particles float.

If you now replace "white" with any other color, the same mechanism could be used to get the same range of tones for that color, from completely black to full luminosity. I wonder how (and if) they're going to control saturation, though...

But, yeah, any such scheme would, obviously, require resolution significantly (3x) higher than what's offered by eInk today to get the same quality.

Another Reason to wait

[TrippTDF]

There is obviously going to be some class of device that is part ereader, part computer and part media center, but, just as the smartphone market too years to take shape, the accepted version of this device is still years away, so don't waste your money on an iPad or Kindle just yet... wait for the market to mature.

Re:Another Reason to wait

[demonlapin]

Yep. I'm thinking that the iPad is going to become a compelling product around v3-v4.

Re:Another Reason to wait

[Stray7Xi]

If you're waiting for a new technology around the corner, then you'll never buy any technology. I got one a few months ago and have already read over a dozen books and I read blogs on it. I could have waited, but then I wouldn't have gotten the enjoyment out of using it.

That's like telling someone still using a 4 year old phone that they should wait to buy an iphone because a new version is coming out.

Re:Another Reason to wait

[TrippTDF]

No, but if you are budget-conscious at all (and not everyone is), you do know that the next version will be a bit better, so you weigh if you need to get the current model.

I came into a 1st gen iPod for nearly free when the 3rd gen came out... Then I used that same one until the 80 GB Classic came out. Had I upgraded at every new model, I would have spent more than the $300 total for both units... I just had to "suffer" without the ability to play video for an extra couple of years.

Re:Another Reason to wait

[Painted]

I know from your post you've considered this, but how is the iPad not what you're describing?

Are you referring to general purpose computing, mouse and all?

Re:Comics? C'Mon! This is Porn's Entre to the Mark

[Anonymous Coward]

Cheap, penetration, are you sure you're not talking about porn?

Eye strain my hair ass

[RapmasterT]

"Peng argues that E Ink has nothing to fear from the e-book apps on the Apple iPad and other devices with color LCDs, which, in his view, produce more eye strain and aren't as suitable for digital reading. "

LCD's aren't suitable for digital reading? You mean the LCD's I read off of 10 hours a day at work are completely unacceptable for reading now? I have a Kindle which uses the wonderful to read e-ink display and the low contrast, washed out grey text on lighter grey background, with no backlighting, slow page draws, and previous page ghosting, is NOT a superior reading experience to a decent LCD. Not even close. To claim otherwise is just bald faced LYING.

I do a LOT of ebook reading on my iphone, and on my kindle, so I actually do know the difference. e-ink displays excel in battery life and that is the ONLY category they are better than modern LCD

Re:Eye strain my hair ass

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, people with a different opinion than you are lying.

Re:Eye strain my hair ass

[ravenscar]

Unless you're reading on the beach in the sun. Or in low light situations where a glowing screen can be a strain. I'm going to guess that the 10 hours a day you spend looking at an LCD do not include such activities. The hour or two a day you may spend reading a book might. What the world really needs is a display that is both e-ink and LCD with users given the option to choose the display type based upon content.

Re:Eye strain my hair ass

[RapmasterT]

Yes, people with a different opinion than you are lying.

Yes, thank you for agreeing.

Re:Eye strain my hair ass

[RapmasterT]

Unless you're reading on the beach in the sun. Or in low light situations where a glowing screen can be a strain. I'm going to guess that the 10 hours a day you spend looking at an LCD do not include such activities. The hour or two a day you may spend reading a book might.

Try reading a kindle in the dark. Now try reading it with the clip on book light they want you to use, constantly adjusting the position because of glare is not a great experience.

And I'm not sure how much you paid for an LCD that doesn't have adjustable brightness, but it was probably too much. When I read on my iphone at night, I use the inverted screen (white txt on black) and it's not only very nice at night, it works well in bright sunlight too.

I don't understand why people don't just TRY these things instead of parroting this nonsense about LCD's being no good for reading.

Re:Eye strain my hair ass

[Anonymous Coward]

I need to drop your delusions and turn up your sarcasm meter.

Re:Eye strain my hair ass

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand why people don't just TRY these things instead of parroting this nonsense about LCD's being no good for reading.

I read these forums and see it differently. Every time there is mention of an e-reader people start posting, "Why not just use an iPod it's the same price and can do XYZ!"

Just look at where you are posting for example. An article about e-ink. Yet we have tons about how LCD is "da-bomb!" E-readers have a lot of great features. iPod/iPad have a lot of great features.

iPod-ers can't seem to understand thought why someone would want a device dedicated JUST to reading though.

Re:Eye strain my hair ass

[Ephemeriis]

You mean the LCD's I read off of 10 hours a day at work are completely unacceptable for reading now?

Obviously everyone is entitled to their own opinions and preferences and whatever else... And there's certainly room for individual variation in how your eyes perform at different tasks...

But, from what I've seen, most of the folks who claim that they're reading for 10 hours a day at work, aren't actually reading for 10 hours a day at work.

If you actually look at their workflow, it doesn't generally involve staring at a screen containing nothing but text for a full 10 hours. Usually it involves looking at a screen running some kind of GUI that contains text elements. Usually it involves navigating through that GUI in order to display different text elements. Normally it involves looking at various images and diagrams in addition to text. Normally it involves periodic breaks to type or click buttons or answer the phone or speak with a co-worker or whatever.

Which is actually pretty similar to what my workflow looks like. And in the average day I don't have any problem working off my LCD at work for 10 hours either. But that's a very different experience from when I'm curled up with a good book and reading for fun.

When I'm reading for fun I'll attempt to remove as many distractions as possible. I will, hopefully, not be distracted from my book for many hours. I might very well spend 10 hours staring at text.

I've been reading ebooks on various devices for years now. First a Handspring Visor... Then a Palm PDA... Then an assortment of netbooks and laptops and desktop computers... And now I'm reading them on a nook...

And I'll tell you right now that when I wind up reading something engaging - literally staring at text for multiple hours with no distractions - on an LCD I definitely experience eyestrain. There have been days when I wound up doing literally what you suggest in your post - staring at text for 10 hours straight - and by the time I get home in the evening my eyes basically refuse to focus. It becomes impossible to read much of anything.

No, I don't have some kind of degenerative eye disease... It's just eye strain, nothing more. And it can happen reading off of paper or watching TV or anything else. It just so happens that for me an LCD causes more strain than printed paper, or an e-ink display.

Now, I'm not going to call you a liar simply because I disagree with you...

And I personally agree that the Kindle has a less-than-wonderful display - which is why I bought a nook, which has better contrast in my opinion.

But I suspect that you don't spend quite as much time staring at text on a screen as you suggested in your post.

Re:Eye strain my hair ass

[RapmasterT]

iPod-ers can't seem to understand thought why someone would want a device dedicated JUST to reading though.

You've missed my point entirely.

Personally, I DO own a device dedicated to just reading because my iphone screen is smaller than I like, and there's no page turn button.

The point of contention is the ridiculous claims that come from the e-ink people about how unusable LCD is for ebooks, and wildly exaggerating the benefits of e-ink.

The entire e-book industry is on the verge of stillbirth due to corporate politics and greed on the BOOK side. The readers are a non issue in my opinion.

Re:Eye strain my hair ass

[PPalmgren]

As someone who has tried both and prefers e-ink, I'd like to ask your age and if you have to wear glasses. I'm almost 25 and have bad vision, and LCDs tear my eyes up. It takes me longer to go to sleep sometimes after long days at work just because my eyes hurt when laying in bed from staring at LCDs all day (8-bit IPS panels too, no cheap TN).

I used to think like you, that I could live staring at monitors all day, until my vision took a dive. It is common knowledge that e-ink produces less eyestrain, for proven reasons dealing with staring into a light all day (thats what a monitor is). I also find it funny that everyone my age who grew up on TV's and computers can swap glasses due to similar perscriptions (hinting that backlit displays damage vision, especially since these vision problems dont' follow genetic history). To deny common experience solely on personal anecdote and say everyone is is wrong is arrogant. Chill out and stop being an asshat.

I'll use an apple fanboy line since you're so high on the kool-aid: Apparently this product isn't designed for you.

Re:Eye strain my hair ass

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait 'till you get older, kid. You'll be ready to eat your words soon enough.

Re:Eye strain my hair ass

[Anonymous Coward]

Well you know it depends on what KIND of lcd you have in some cases. I have a reflective lcd that is not back lit that for me causes LESS eyestrain than reading a paper book. With all the e-ink backers saying how e-ink is virtually as good as a paper book I guess that makes my lcd BETTER than an e-ink for me at least.

Re:Eye strain my hair ass

[The End Of Days]

You provided nothing but anecdotes, so you didn't actually prove anything despite your assertions. Feel free to fill in your citations, but until then, realize that your post was the equivalent of screaming "I know you are, but what am I?"

Re:Eye strain my hair ass

[indiechild]

Point taken, though I suspect your eyes would be just as wrecked if you spent 10 hours reading on a Kindle or a real paperback book. At least, my eyes feel like that after a marathon reading session.

It's important to take breaks, no matter what device/medium you're reading on, and no matter how addictive the book is.

Re:Comics? C'Mon! This is Porn's Entre to the Mark

[Anonymous Coward]

VHS didn't beat Betamax because of porn. That is a myth that needs to die. VHS beat Beat because it had a less restrictive license and could record more than an hour. Before the idiots come out: Yes, originally Beta could only record for an hour. Yes, I know some of you kids have Beta tapes longer than an hour. In later revisions, they made the tapes longer and thinner and slowed the speed down to increase the recording time, but by then it was already to late. VHS was entrenched.

optimize for speed first, please

[Anonymous Coward]

first try to optimize them for speed please... i want to be able to *scroll* text... and not wait between 0.5 and 1 second on every page flip.

What market for this?

[SnarfQuest]

What's the market for color e-ink? It's not really suitble for a laptop because it is too slow. The cursor wouldn't move well, you cannot watch video, video games would be painful. As a control panel on some device, there are a lot more cheaper solutions, and you'd need to have some reason for an expensive color display on your coffee machine. You might be able to put a curved display on something, but since they aren't doing this with the B&W version, why would the do it with color? So, you're probably limited to e-book type of uses.

Normal mass market books are plain black and white, so color is only necessary if you have some speciality book with pictures. So, you're mostly looking at textbooks, comic books, and magazines. Textbooks cost the same, or more, for electronic instead of printed versions, and you cannot write in the margins, so there isn't going to be a large demand by students. Comic book readers aren't likely to spend an extra $400, which would probably be better spent on 200 or so more comics that could eventually be resold by some ancester. The only other option would be for porn, but the abuse of the device would be awful.

So, unless the price is about the same as the black and white version, it's not likely to have a very large market.

Re:What market for this?

[Kyont]

The only other option would be for porn, but the abuse of the device would be awful.

It wouldn't be the first time in tech history that porn has led the way in technological innovation. Unsavory mental images aside, adoption of technology by millions of horny young people with credit cards can lower price barriers and/or create critical mass for adoption by the rest of you. Er, I mean, the rest of US!

Re:What market for this?

[DragonWriter]

What's the market for color e-ink?

The same as the market for books printed in color.

Normal mass market books are plain black and white

Sure, mass market novels tend to be black and white; technical books fairly often use color (and more often do in electronic formats where there is no substantial difference in production costs associated with that choice.) Graphic novels, tabletop RPG manuals, cookbooks, craft books, etc., all frequently use color.

Textbooks cost the same, or more, for electronic instead of printed versions, and you cannot write in the margins, so there isn't going to be a large demand by students.

Many electronic formats support annotations, so this is simply false.

Comic book readers aren't likely to spend an extra $400, which would probably be better spent on 200 or so more comics that could eventually be resold by some ancester.

Its probably a bad idea, in general, to consider the price of a reader as competing with the price of content. Mostly, it should be viewed against the cost of storage and transportation for dead-tree media: an ereader doesn't replace printed books, it replaces bookshelves to hold them and backpacks to carry them; ebooks replace printed books.

Re:What market for this?

[drinkypoo]

Normal mass market books are plain black and white, so color is only necessary if you have some speciality book with pictures. So, you're mostly looking at textbooks, comic books, and magazines.

That's pretty much the story. Don't forget picture books, too; there are plenty of books which are just full of pictures. If the display were scaled up a bit, I believe you could sell some of the smaller ones in this format quite successfully.

Newpaper Color?

[Anonymous Coward]

the company says its first color screens in 2011 will have newspaper-quality color,

So, in other words, they will suck balls. Hard.

Eh no?

[SmallFurryCreature]

He was a LATE adaptor. If he had bought his palm pilot at the beginning, then he would have had one for a long time before the color version.

And if you buy an E-ink device now, you are also a late adaptor. Bleeding edge was passed long ago.

Re:Comics? C'Mon! This is Porn's Entre to the Mark

[RapmasterT]

DVD didn't really have any competition...

So VCD and Divx weren't competition to DVD?

that's not a real question, is it?

Hmm, low power digital picture frames.

[Drethon]

Low frame rate on those things so power use would be almost negligible. I wonder if you could almost power something like that with solar panels from the florescent lights in my building (no clue how much power you can capture from those).

Re:Hmm, low power digital picture frames.

[drinkypoo]

I wonder if you could almost power something like that with solar panels from the florescent lights in my building

If you're satisfied with very low frame rates, and very slow image changes, you probably could. With some solid capacitors in there to handle power, it might even last...

Re:Hmm, low power digital picture frames.

[Drethon]

Id be fine with an hour in between images, a minute or two morph between images could be an interesting effect...

Re:Comics? C'Mon! This is Porn's Entre to the Mark

[Yvan256]

I think one more reason why VHS won over Beta is the fact that a VHS tape could hold more hours of video.

PS3 Blu-ray penetration. I see what you did there.

GIF failed because of licensing? GIF failed?! In my universe, this event never happened. PNG still can't replace GIFs for animations because MNG failed to catch on.

Why colour?

[Rix]

How many books have colour in them anywhere other than the cover? I'm not going to pay a premium for that, so monochrome readers will continue to dominate until there's negligible price difference.

Textbooks are unlikely to factor into the mainstream readers, which are optimized for reading novels.

Re:Why colour?

[gvaness]

I am waiting for color. My main reason is comics. Widespread color ereaders would be huge for comic companys. Marvel is already offering a ton of older books online through their website. I would subscribe today to a good half a dozen comics if they were loaded overnight to my reader, in full color.

I disagree

[Rix]

Primates who never read are not people, at least by any reasonable definition.

Re:I disagree

[MartinSchou]

Does that mean that illiterate homo sapiens do not count as people?

Calculators could survive a slow display

[perpenso]

Perpenso Calc for iPhone and iPod touch, scientific and bill/tip calculator, fractions, complex numbers, RPN

Oh the irony, oh the irony. E-ink display would kill your app. Nice app, gotta love a RPN calculator, but using your "20 digit precision" I don't want to go click / one second while the screen flashes a couple times / click / delay / click / delay on an eink display. Heck, I could probably add and subtract in my head faster than your calculator could update a slow eink display.

It wouldn't really kill the app, every app would face the same limitation on such a device. Sure some redesign may be necessary, the animation as you flip between the main view with the calculator and the flipside view with the tape and manual would be a bad idea. That said millions of students managed to use calculators in the 1970s with some pretty slow screen updates. If its a limitation of the hardware people adapt, or they buy different hardware. The app is cross platform at its core so I'll just follow the customers.

Reader with textbook will become the mainstream

[perpenso]

How many books have colour in them anywhere other than the cover? ... Textbooks are unlikely to factor into the mainstream readers, which are optimized for reading novels.

E readers are in their infancy, we can't draw many conclusions from such a small market primarily populated with early adopters. The public at large has not "voted" yet. A reader that offers textbooks (elementary, high school and university) would probably become the mainstream reader. Color is used quite heavily in textbooks and a mono device essentially forsakes this market.
--
Perpenso Calc for iPhone and iPod touch, scientific and bill/tip calculator, fractions, complex numbers, RPN

I think it will be a while

[sg3000]

Yeah, I bought a palm pilot and then one month later they announced the color version. I'm not getting bit by that again. I'll just wait for the color this time.

I think it will be a while for a color Kindle. Admittedly I skimmed the article, but they sound vague about when E-Ink will have a color version available. On one hand, they're saying the color version screen will be available at the end of the year, but then they say:

X: What can you tell me about your technical ideas for creating better color displays? Is adding color simply a matter of tweaking the company’s existing microcapsule technology, or do you have to go back to the drawing board and approach it in an entirely new way?

SP: Even if we slightly describe it, we will probably reveal stuff that we are not ready to talk about. There is more than one approach, and exactly which one we will choose in the future, we don’t know.

So they haven't picked an approach yet? That doesn't sound like they'll have something ready in the next nine months.

The question of when they would have color technology has been bandied about by E-Ink since their inception. I read back in 2005 that Intel Capital invested in E-Ink with the hopes of getting a color-capable version and customers have always been asking for it. A color version is something they've been struggling to bring to market for a while. If they're still trying to figure out approaches, they could be a minimum of 1 years away for a prototype, and even longer for a color Kindle available in volume.

So, in short, if you want a Kindle, don't wait for the color version. Or just buy an iPad :-)

Re:I think it will be a while

[TheRaven64]

You can get colour eInk displays now. The problem is the resolution. A black and white eInk display is around 166dpi. A colour eInk display is also 166dpi (actually, it tends to be a bit less, but not much). The problem is that with a black and white display, one dot is one pixel. With a colour display, one dot is 1/3 or 1/4 of a pixel (depending on whether you have CMY or CMYK). This means that a colour eInk display give around 55 pixels per inch, which is pretty terrible. That's why, currently, they're only used for fixed-format things, where you just want to turn on and off patches of colour, rather than display entire images.

Re:I think it will be a while

[mark-t]

I think it will be a while for a color Kindle.

Fall, 2010

Re:I think it will be a while

[sg3000]

It could happen soon, but the problem is there is considerable lag between when a prototype appears at a trade show for demonstration purposes and when manufacturing ramp-up makes it available in volume.

EEP OP ORK AH AH

[Anonymous Coward]

does /. count?

When light is equal, so is strain

[SuperKendall]

Unless you're reading on the beach in the sun.

Then it depends on how good your display is. I've used a laptop outdoors before. This is a weakness of LCD's to be sure, but I prefer to read in the shade anyway and that is usually good enough to make a bright LCD useful.

Or in low light situations where a glowing screen can be a strain.

And in that situation, how exactly are you going be reading the somewhat grayish Kindle screen?

Here's my beef with claims that LCD's are hard to read - it's because people are using them in lighting they would not read a real book in. As soon as you equalize the ambient light to the same levels you would for a book or eInk screen, you pretty much have no eyestrain from LCD's either. But, at least you have the option to read in the dark if you need to...

What the world really needs is a display that is both e-ink and LCD with users given the option to choose the display type based upon content.

A company in India has developed that screen, pretty clever really. It's monochrome with the backlight off but you can turn it on for color. Not sure how it matches up with traditional LCD screens but it would seem to whomp these color eInk displays.

Agree. e-ink is trying to build a business on FUD.

[guidryp]

I would like to know what mechanism he attributes to the extra LCD eyestrain to.

You can just as easily argue that having a fully adjustable back light allows you to reduce eyestrain by always having access to ideal illumination levels.

FUD

 

glaucoma

[manekineko2]

Are these symptoms actually consistent with glaucoma, and do you have sufficient field knowledge for giving this advice?

If not, it seems like kinda an irresponsible thing to do to say that, because you'd be unnecessarily freaking out/wasting the time of a large number of people who read Slashdot and get vision fatigue, including me. I actually visited an ophthalmologist over my eye strain and eye tiredness from using computers all day, and he said at the time it was fairly normal. If this is seriously something that indicates glaucoma, or impending blindness, I might be inclined to get a second opinion.

And the new Amiga could too

[mdwh2]

Indeed. They also have nothing to fear from a device that doesn't even exist yet. The more obvious factor would be netbooks and existing tablets, which have already sold tens of millions, but nonetheless there's still a market for dedicated readers with e-ink displays.

To be honest, it's sad that it's only because of the Ipad hype that he even needed to make that argument. Before, it was well understood the advantages of e-ink devices, and how an LCD wasn't in the same market. Consider how, on Slashdot, everytime there was an article about a "colour e-reader", there'd be no end of comments asking if it was really an e-reader (good display, long battery life). Yet now we have no end of comments claiming how the Ipad will be a wonderful colour e-reader killer, and giving us special pleading that the advantages of e-ink no longer matter.

Re:Comics? C'Mon! This is Porn's Entre to the Mark

[Anonymous Coward]

No. VCD sucked and DivX was never going to work in a physical medium.

Different format reader

[Rix]

I wouldn't want to read comics on my current reader even if it did support colour. The display is too small, but big enough for comics would be too big to comfortably read a novel on. And wouldn't be as easy to pocket.

adopter...

[Anonymous Coward]

not adapter.

color sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't read it outdoors in the sunlight.

Don't hold your breath

[Shagg]

EInk has been saying "we'll have a color display next year"... for at least 5 years now.

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just great. Now my entire collection of books printed in monochrome will have to be "enhanced" with the addition of color, and cost will be increased due to the "added value."

Except some of us prefer text to be kept simple.