Slashdot Mirror
Will Tablets Kill Off e-Readers?
Nerval's Lobster writes "Are e-readers doomed? A research note earlier this week from IHS iSuppli suggested that, after years of solid growth, the e-book reader market was 'on an alarmingly precipitous decline' thanks to the rise of tablets. The firm suggested that e-reader sales had declined from 23.2 million units in 2011 to 14.9 million this year — around 36 percent, in other words. The note blames tablets: 'Single-task devices like the ebook are being replaced without remorse in the lives of consumers by their multifunction equivalents, in this case by media tablets.' Even Amazon and Barnes & Noble, the reigning champs of the e-reader marketplace, have increasingly embraced full-color tablets as the best medium for selling their digital products. Backed by enormous cloud-based libraries that offer far more than just e-books, these devices are altogether more versatile than grayscale e-readers, provided their users want to do more than just read plain text."
However, I don't think that e-readers will die completely. Those hardcore people who prefer reflected light for reading books will likely cling to their devices (I'm one of them).
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
In the same way that smart phones killed of mp3 players and cameras for a lot of people. Why by a single purpose device when you can get many more features for a little bit more money?
The only reason I bought a Kindle is that I can't stare at a backlit tablet for hours on end.
Isn't it also reasonable to suppose that eReaders are on the decline because all the people most likely to buy them have already bought them?
This is one reason why I got a Nook Color. I mainly wanted an eReader, but people had rooted the NC, provided instructions on how to fully 'open up' its copy of Android to essentially use it as a full tablet, and it perfectly suffices in that role for my uses.
I've known people who have done similar getting the really cheap no-name Android-based eReaders to use as an entry-level or small tablet and have worked just great.
1) high contrast displays (several ordered of magnitude)
2) superior battery life (several orders of magnitude)
Of course... if manufacturers dump these advantages because of OMG COLOR, OMG VIDEO, then "e-readers" are undifferentiated from tablets, and the people making those decisions need to go back to MBA school to learn the basics of strategy and marketing.
No eReaders are not doomed by tablets.
eReader prices are doomed.
Bring a tablet, I'll bring my e-ink reader, and let's go sit in the sun and read for 4 hours.
Yes, they're a niche item, but it's a substantial and highly useful niche.
There is no question: anyone who spends more than a few minutes/day reading will agree reading books on LCD is really tiring. That is why I love my e-book reader, I can read for hours and my eyes won't get tired. Before it, I used to read on LCD, and after about 20 minutes my eyes would start bothering me.
On the other hand, I don't think most people read enough to be bothered by it, which is sad in many different levels. But hardcore readers won't give up their e-readers for LCD. Too bad we are a minority.
morcego
I just can't read in a tablet (or computer), I just get distracted and never finish reading anything.
Give me a reflective screen tablet with 500 hours and a "reading only mode" and I'd give up my e-reader certainly. So, maybe in a decade?
The e-Ink display gives insanely long battery life, is viewable in most light conditions and is easy on my ageing eyes. A tablet is heavy and chews through it's battery in a day.
However, web surfing on my e-reader is painful and apps/games are non-existant.
Just because they are similar looking doesn't mean they can (or should) do each other's job. Each has it's strengths and they are cheap enough that there's no need to worry about combining their roles.
What I want is the ten inch paper white touch screen at a reasonable price ($200 - $300 or so)
I also want the weight to be somewhat less than my ipad3.
I also want my kindle to support epub without having to do crazy side loading.
I don't use the kindle that much because it really is only useful for reading on the train and such, which I don't do that often.
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What I want is the ten inch paper white touch screen at a reasonable price ($200 - $300 or so)
I also want the weight to be somewhat less than my ipad3.
I also want my kindle to support epub without having to do crazy side loading.
I don't use the kindle that much because it really is only useful for reading on the train and such, which I don't do that often.
I want a pony.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
The early adopters already have their Kindles, Nooks, and Sony e-Readers, and many are finding that they aren't using them as much as they expected.
The sales decline might not have anything to do with tablets.
At least, I hope not. Tablets and e-readers provide two wildly different reading experiences. I can't stand reading for very long on a tablet, but I'll read for hours on my e-ink device. The wife feels the same, she also has both (a kindle and a fire, she's an amazon fangirl) and uses them for very separate purposes.
If they'd come out with a less artifact-ey e-ink screen with even 8 bit color I wouldn't even want a tablet. I could totally live without video on a handheld device, but color magazines/comics would be nice.
A multimedia tablet with an eink capable covering would be the best of both worlds.
So "Yes" but "No"
As long as there are avid readers, I don't think tablets will kill off e-readers. However, I think both tablets AND e-readers may eventually kill off printed books. Back to the first argument...E-readers use e-ink which is easier on the eyes for extended periods of reading. E-readers also last much longer on a single battery charge...up to several weeks. Also, the multitude of apps and other functions in tablets and smartphones provide a plethora of distractions for even the casual reader. Most avid readers don't want those distractions. Whereas E-readers usually don't serve multiple purposes such as phone, email notification, calendar/appointment scheduler, web browser, weather app, etc.
Rather, they will merge. Once a color e-ink screen with an adequate refresh rate comes out, all previous tablets and e-readers will become horribly obsolete compared to the new, combined version. Until then, e-readers will continue to fill a niche market. They might not be as popular as they once were, but they aren't going to go away.
I don't own either type of device - e-reader or tablet - but imagine that e-readers offer a simpler experience for the user - no/fewer software and security updates, etc - and that will always appeal to various consumers. Tablets are more powerful and capable, but also more complex.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Speak for yourself.
I deliberately chose an ebook reader with an LCD, gleefully.
I've had it for a year now, and would not give it up willingly. Before I got the reader, I would download my ebooks in HTML format to read on my nice PC monitor.
And I'm not some young whippersnapper with good eyes....I'm 54, wearing tri-focals. I have never experienced the problems you allude to, and I am a voracious reader.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
It's not that tablets are "killing" e-reader sales - it's that, for the price of a feature-rich e-reader, I could just buy a damn tablet that does a lot more than display text.
Case in point: Amazon's Paperwhite Kindle is $130 (without warranty or any accessories), and only functions as an ebook reader. The Nexus 7, for $120 more, is a full-fledged Android powerhouse.
It's easy math.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
If e-readers like the kindle can be priced down low enough, say under $50, then you will see lots of them. I can see schools buying up huge lots to hand out to students.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
I love my Kindles. I'm admittedly bad at focusing. E-readers allow me to do that. When I'm on my iPad I'll read for a few, then check my email, then oh! what's Twitter up to? That link is hilarious, let's post it on Facebook. Another email! I know this is my problem. Kindles help me manage it. I'll still buy them while they are available.
Yes.
anyone who spends more than a few minutes/day reading will agree reading books on LCD is really tiring.
That is nonsense. Not do most readers on Slashdot spend a large majority of the day reading on LCD screens, but I personally have read for several hours at a stretch on an iPad.
I don't find it tiring at all. The reason I think some people do find LCD's tiring to read on is a lack of ambient light - with a book you need enough ambient light to read by, so your surroundings have some illumination enough to even out what your eyes adjust for. With an LCD screen if you have only a big glowing rectangle in front of you it's harder on your eyes, or at least it is on me - I find it very hard to use a tablet or laptop in the dark.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm so sick of these "Will technology X die because of technology Y?!?" stories, the answer is almost always the same.
NO.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
You can have my iRiver Story HD when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
Tablets will not kill off eReaders.
I have a 32 GB Nook Color HD+. Love it for looking things up when I running my bi-weekly Pathfinder game. I do not like to read books on it.
I have an old Kindle 2 with 90 or so books. Absolutely love it for reading any non-reference book for hours on end. 3G kills the battery and any network content renders slow as hell.
I like both of these devices, for my intended purposes for them. Like using a screwdriver to pound in a nail, cross-purpose usage is often painful.
high contrast displays (several ordered of magnitude)
Are you talking about e-ink? Because until the Kindle Paperwhite, I could not stand reading eInk screens because of the low contrast.
Battery life is better but when an iPad lasts for days of pretty heavy use it doesn't factor in as much.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I own both an iPad and the front-lit Kindle. For long reading sessions (novels, recreational reading), the iPad is horrible. It's heavy and the screen is overly bright, resulting in eye fatigue after a half hour or so. For the odd 'magazine' and reference reading, it's amazing. I like the ability to carry several texts in a small package with strong annotation tools that enable me to quickly and cleanly send off to co-workers. The Kindle can't hope to match this capability with reference texts, but the iPad can't hope to match the ease and experience that a light device like the Kindle offers. Both have their place, and I would bet that both will be around for a while to come. E-readers have a different problem to contend with: saturation. Everybody I know who wants one has one at this point. The only reason I upgraded was because I gifted my old one to a friend.
Not quite.
...depending on how much the public believes the lie that a color LCD screen is superior for a reading application to a greyscale e-Ink display, and if the public would rather have multifunctional tablets over a dedicated reading platform.
Me, I'll stick with e-Ink - I've been e-reading back to the days of the Apple Newton, Jornada PDA, Windows-XP slate tablets, and Sony Reader 500. But as long as they're available, and as long as I stay addicted to reading, I'll take an e-Ink display.
If ereader users are the hardcore traditionalists now, what do you call those of us who still like to read on paper?
I have an iPad2, which I use for all indoor reading with the Kindle and Bluefire apps. I also had, before the iPad2, a Sony PRS-300 and I still use it for outdoor reading. The iPad2 is already bordering obsolete, but the Sony still does what I want. It's only function is e-reading, and I just don't see how, except the battery being too expensive to replace, I would justify replacing it in the next couple years. When we get something like a piece of paper (a killer form factor) for e-readers, I will replace it.
I guess what I'm saying is that the market is declining because people already have them.
You can drop an e-reader on the floor without it breaking.
Im sure there will always be a market for them, but they probably will not last much longer as mass marketed items. Their share will fall rapidly and unless your selling 15 million of something anymore it's considered a failure.
I know its possible, albeit dubious to move move between devices, and Applications for the Kindle means you can be locked into their furry handcuffs even in an Apple Gaol, and I know you can switch between the numerous and confusing formats [ignoring the awful PDF]...but it all seems a little too technical, and not always leads to premium results, my personal experience is epubs [The DRM free not the crippled ones from Apple] are not appearing in Android Books. Considering how ebooks are so overpriced [and the market confusing as hell], are they simply being discarded for that other content that is cheaper [Apps], or not locked [Web]. Can ebooks be sold?
I have a couple of both.
You're right, an e-reader of the simple sort is better than a tablet for reading in a number of ways. Epaper (are we still calling it that?) is easier to read, assuming you have a light source in or near the reader. Managing the device is obviously simple... updates are pretty rare. Battery life far exceeds a tablet. They're usually much more compact. They're simple to operate and they're less expensive.
That said, I rarely use mine anymore. It's just simpler to carry around the tablet that will do whatever I want. And they've come down in price now so much that some are pretty competitively priced, compared to an ereader.
So yeah, I think tablets will all but kill the reader market. As with most tech the readers won't go away entirely. At least not for a good, long while.
We're hideously antiquated, old bean.
*adjusts monocle and top hat*
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
It has to be faster, thinner, longer battery life and cheaper. Initially these are the edges against laptop/tablet in the beginning but the gap has shrunk quite a bit.
Apple shares are took a beating because of a massive slump in ipods [Now they are just simply dropping], which are being replaced with modern smartphones, and I believe those usurped the cd-players, and tape players that were so universal.So the answer is often Yes
I just dont see people willing to carry around all those stones.
I own both types of devices (gen 1 kindle and iPad 2) and I vastly prefer my iPad. I realize that I'm comparing old tech to ancient tech but the feature set in the Kindle software on the iPad still beats the newer e-ink kindles. My problems with e-ink is the slow refresh rate and lack of color. With the original kindle I had to learn to press the next page button when I was a couple of lines before the end of the page as by the time I had read those remaining lines then the display would transition. The newer kindles have drastically cut this time down but it is still slower then a tablet's change of page and for myself being a passive observer of changing the page, I find that wait frustrating (when I change the page of an actual book I'm an active participant so the time spent isn't annoying).
I will freely admit that e-readers look gorgeous (though that could simply be nostalgia for actual paper) and the effective battery life is magnitudes above tablets (my iPad's battery is constantly being depleted by other activities like browsing the web, playing games, and other CPU intensive apps).
I have a couple of e-readers a Kobo and a Sony and all in all I like them as devices to read but I don't think the software that is used on them is any good. For example why is Jane Austen after Bram Stoker in an alphabetical list? I find the software on the two systems variable but in need of a major rebuild
Heh. E-readers will increasingly become niche devices, but I don't think they will die anytime soon, or even be relegated to the "hardcore". For many that have an either or choice and don't do a ton of reading, the tablet is clearly better. But for someone that does a lot of reading or who can afford both, the E-reader will have a place for a long time to come.
Maybe the people who wanted an e-book reader (typically the technically minded with a great love for books) already have one?
Tablets have gone through significant upgrades, but e-book readers are very damn similar today than they were 2 years ago. They still have predominantly black and white e-ink screens of roughly the same size. They still are incredibly thin. They still have a battery life of about a month or so. There's no fast paced upgrade cycle like there is with tablets or phones.
Everyone I know with an original iPad has ditched it for the iPad 2 or the iPad !3. Yet everyone I know who bought an ebook reader more than a year ago still has that ebook reader and has no intention of upgrading.
Am I missing something? The 6th generation Kindle Wi-Fi looks very similar to the 4th gen models of yesteryear. It's hard to take the marketing of it being lighter than previous models seriously when they were already lighter than paperback novels to begin with. And as for the touch experiment, why the hell would you want touch on a Kindle? I actually know people who went out of their way not to get the Kindle touch.
In areas where people have limitless funds through taxes, schools, government, military etc very rarely buy anything because its good value, practice, fits a purpose.
Look at this recent selfish plan to roll out of iPads in a UK school, Where Teachers have been treated to free iPads, and the cost to them is nothing; they are spending taxpayers money, so don't choose the affordable, open solutions. I can't justify the expense of an iPad, expecting partents to is insane http://www.harrogate-news.co.uk/2012/12/11/backlash-after-school-asks-parents-to-buy-ipads-for-their-children/
I really want a large screen e-ink display for reading at work, led/lcd screens are really inferior to paper whereas e-ink screen is less so. This would be in additon to my exiting screen. The current crop of tablets really such for reading a novel or event short papers.
What we really need is a convergence of the two devices. Once we have fast-refresh and vivid colors for eInk you can have a device with all of the benefits of an eReader and all of the benefits of a tablet as well.
What happened with mirasol display? I for one would certainly prefer this to tablet light on my eyes.
Surprisingly recently I spend more time with kindle than with ipad.
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#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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Well, single function devices tend to do better at that single function. Unless we can get 30 day charge tablets, there will still be somewhat of a use for them. I don't see that happening yet - although I wouldn't say that it won't happen. That's not to say that it couldn't be a small enough dwindling demand to completely kill the e-readers margin off completely - it certainly could.
I have both (Kindle and Nexus 7) too. If I had bought the tablet first, I wouldn't haven't bought the Kindle. While reading text on the Kindle IS nicer than on the tablet, reading PDFs on the Kindle is a nightmare -- the page renders are slow and hard to make out, and moving around on a page isn't exactly a breeze. A PDF on the tablet is totally straightforward and renders perfectly.
What would be interesting however, would be a tablet with an Epaper touch display. Most of my beef with the Kindle is that for PDF applications, it is slow and clunky. Take that away by giving the device some processing power and a good resolution, plus the ability to run other apps, and the only downside to Epaper would be a lack of color. In other words, an Android tablet with an Epaper display might be interesting -- not for games -- but for reading the web, books, documents, emails, and stuff like that.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Leatherman killed the tool market when it came out. Why buy a single-purpose tool when you can get many more features for a little bit more money?
Sometimes having something that *doesn't* slice, dice, and julienne fries is the better choice. I mean, sure, I could do many small repairs using just a leatherman, but a nice set of wrenches and drivers makes working on my bike *much* nicer. Or how about crescent wrenches (or shifting spanners, as the case may be)? You can handle all variety of nuts, bolts, and fittings. SAE, metric, square, hex? All are open to you. Yet anyone who spends much time working on mechanical things knows that a crescent wrench, while convenient, is often vastly inferior to a good set of wrenches.
When I'm out on a ride, I carry a small multitool that *does* do a bunch of things in one small, inexpensive, unobtrusive package, just as when I'm out and about, I can get some reading done on my Nexus 7. The Nexus 7 is convenient, but if I ever broke my e-ink Kindle, I'd have a replacement ordered that very day. E-ink readers are basically designed to fill the niche of "electronic trade paperback for avid readers". They fill that niche exceedingly well, and avid readers are a renewable resource.
My local iFan ended up using an e-ink reader. She likes it a lot better. It is smaller, better suited to reading, and has killer battery life.
She started out with an iPad.
It's a bogus question probably written from the point of view from some fanboy ninny that things that "Apple is inevitable".
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Having both devices and planning another one LCD I can say it's a pain to read documentation on e-ink. While reading document or any technical book one has to jump quickly back and forth. If the original document was big you need to zoom and scroll. It's impossible to do on e-inc (only hardcore fans would). Besides that there are games and videos. On the other hand e-inc looks nice at day light, devices have long battery life, lite, very comfortable for slow reading. But, no matter what, it all depend on Amazon's decision which one to pick next. Without back end support they wouldn't sell well. iRex failure is a good lesson for all followers. They had great devices and nothing else.
Amazon has done something right with their Kindles. While there are others out there that work amazingly well, the Kindle 4 with the ad-supported option is the closest I've come to ever treating a fancy electronic gadget as a "consumble" - if it gets stolen, it's not going to make me *that* upset, since it's only $69 and does everything I expect it to. That's the price of a few hardback books, and it can hold gigabytes worth of literature; I don't know about you guys, but I can't read more than a few dozen megabytes worth of text in a month.
I already have enough trouble focusing and reading it with my other gadgets handy without the option for websurfing on my device. It's not a tablet, and I don't want it to be. It's all of my library that can be "turned on" with a button, charged up once a month or two, fits in a pocket, and can be taken on any sort of trip. If it's stolen, big deal - at that price, it won't ruin your day. It's easily hackable to remove the ads, but those ads aren't terribly intrusive to begin with. The format options leave a little to be desired, but 2 minutes with Calibre gives you any format you could want for all of your books. Is it as functional as a tablet? No. It's not trying to be though. It's a book alternative with a pretty damn cool technology they've cooked up, at a price where you don't have to choose between which device you want to own.
eReaders are dirt cheap. They can probably be considered a loss leader. They're there to enable the sale of content. They are the proverbial razor handle. They will likely never go away because of this.
They simply don't need to compete as an independent product.
So market forces likely won't cause them to go away.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
So maybe the right answer is a tablet... with an Epaper screen on the back.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Read on paper? Insane tree murderer!
Yeah -- I really wish they would go up a little bit on the size. That industry standard 6-inch screen is just too small, it needs to be more the size of a real paperback.
Amazon sure doesn't move as quickly as some other companies when it comes to innovation. Still the paperwhite is a good step forward.
And probably cameras, gps devices, and robot puppies too.
Next question.
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A tablet with an e-paper display on the back would be ideal. It could be used for notifications and to display art when not in use for reading text.
...they can invent a full-color passive display that can match the screen update speeds of existing active color displays, and is perfectly scalable to at least tablet screen sizes.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
No, thanks. Don't rush yourself.
I have an iPad2
I'm not sure that really justifies you to have an opinion. The oversized iPad is very much an "at home" device...its cumbersome.It not a [as] mobile device. The really threat is from better value 7" tablets that are price competitive to e-ink readers with out the trade-offs, of price and portability, while still keeping most of the advantages of a multi-function smart device.
The problem with E-readers is that there seems to be very little MUST-UPGRADE-NOW mentality in the users. There is no real reason for me to buy the latest-and-greatest E-ink reader when my current device works just fine.
Compare this to a smartphone/computer/tablet. Most people I know wait for their contract to expire and get a new "free" phone immediately. I know people who get new laptops every 3-4 years. Both from a hardware and software point of view, upgrading offers significant benefits for these devices (I can't personally speak about tablets, having never owned one). For some devices, the software upgrades aren't available on older devices (either due to a hardware limitation, or to get people to upgrade their devices).
I bought a Kindle DX soon after it was launched, and I have a smartphone. The collections "feature" was the latest good update I recollect for my Kindle. Sure, it might be nice to have lighting on the device, but I can just get a clip on light if I really want to. My Kindle DX is a device I use regularly, but unless they make great software improvements in handling PDF documents/improved page refresh, I don't see any reason to upgrade (especially since I don't really care for a smaller E-reader).
My phone on the other hand runs Gingerbread (flashed my own ROM), and I don't think it can support the latest Android OS. It doesn't have two cameras, or the best sound, or the fastest hardware. So I clearly see the benefit of upgrading to a new phone.
E-readers seem to be like toasters/microwaves - if it works, I'm not going to buy a new one. They are, in a way, dull devices. A tablet/smartphone is like a car. Sure, last year's model might be sufficient, but this year's model gives some improvements that (while not central to what I want a phone for) make it feel that upgrading is worth it.
Try the sony e-reader I believe they utilize a similar if not same screen as the kindle, they have a touch screen, lighter than an ipad3, utilize epub.
Though I prefer the kindle the Sony e-reader my sister-in-law has is quite nice.
Not everyone will get a tablet or even want one. An ereader is not the same thing, they're typically smaller, cheaper, and designed to be easier to read. If someone already has a computer or laptop there's not much need for a tablet. Now certainly the size of the ereader market will shrink (as well size of the market for actual books, the market for laptops, the market for televisions, the market for paperweights, etc). But it won't necessarily "kill" the market.
Ultimately the market for both types of devices will shrink tremendously.
But why a tablet in the first place? I don't honestly know many people who have them, and those that do have them are the sort of people who always buy something new merely because it's new (they have desktop computer, laptop(s), tablet, ereader, and more than one smartphone).
I think tablets will also dwindle quite a lot once the shiny has worn off and people realize they can just use their phone or laptop or computer instead.
They are the proverbial razor handle.
Not mine. I have >2,000 books on it, and the only ones I purchased are the PDFs of Martin Gardner's math books that I bought on CD-ROM.
No, I'm not a pirate. There are a couple of LOCs of free ebooks out there.
Just convert epub to mobi. I prefer kindlegen (free CLI tool by Amazon) for that but Calibre handles more weird stuff.
Check eBay as I did for the Sony Reader PRS-950 - 7-inch 1024x600 Pearl E Ink touch screen. Substantially more screen real estate than the PRS-6x0 and others 6-inchers, but still compact and very light. It is still slow at PDF rendering, but can at least show more at a time. It also plays music (it is a Sony after all, but not much control over it aside from volume), and has wifi to run a browser (along with original purpose to connect to the Sony Reader Store to buy more ebooks), and AT&T 3g access for the same purpose, but none other - the browser will not use the 3G connection. It reads both Adobe DRM and non-DRM epubs, PDF, text, RTF, MS word, and some other obscure formats (but not, alas, local HTML files directly - only on web pages downloaded by the browser - LAME!). It will let you make hand-written on-screen notes related to pages you have read, or notes typed on-screen.
I mostly sideload epub's I have decrypted from my B&N ebooks (love those cabbages ;-). I put them on an SD card, and mp3 files on a Memory Stick - it has a slot for each.
It probably was about the nicest E Ink reader out there for some time, and the most expensive. I thought I was doing well to get one for $180 a couple years ago (lower price due to a small scratch across 1 corner of the screen - no problem with viewing). I don't use it all that much since my Dell Streak 5 is a bit lighter, and with me all the time, but for serious read-fests, and my annual week at the beach (for outside reading), it is the best.
There is a very active hacker group that has added a lot of functions to it from fonts and dictionaries for many non-Latin languages to a calendar, Soduku and other games.
I think of it as an elegant, and still highly functional antique, like a classic car (there's the car analogy ;-)
YMMV
Now available for those who have money.
Because they can be got for $90-150 plus tax, delivered? And hold thousands of books, magazines, reference documents, play games, browse the Internet, provide video chat, play Netflix, work with Office documents and such, have an accessible library of 600,000 apps - most free? For $90?
It's not like the price is a huge barrier to entry. You can get a pretty decent Android tablet for under $150 now. Go ahead: treat yourself.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Maybe, but only once I can actually buy a device with a damn PixelQi screen!
E-ink display manufacturers are closing their factories already
And such a shame.
Maybe a tablet with e-ink display on the back could be a good idea, like the recent Russian phone.
I don't use either tablets or e-readers.
I thought the point of ereaders is that they have non-computer -like, non-bright, non-glaring screens.
I also thought e-readers are lighter and consume less power.
Both important things for someone who reads a lot of books.
The trend has already started to "Phablets", phones with a screen large enough to be a tablet. The rationale is to only have to carry around one device when you are moving around. So you may as well pack in all the features you can.
No. I have both, iPad and Kindle. I've used multiple tablets and eReaders. Tablets are hooooooorible for reading novels. The one advantage that tablets have is the PDF. And PDFs are a terrible format for novels anyways (though not so much for technical manuals, cook books, etc. Anything with tables.)
You need to reread my post. You point simply proves it; Your solution to your $5000 is Baenebooks.com and Calibre [Which is excellent, but read my post]. You might find natural a serious tool, like calibre, or be able to understand the vast array of formats, or be able to buy from one of the smaller bookstores, but none of that distract from any of my points. Its another you can "jailbreak" argument or you can "sideload Windows Apps on Windows rt", or you can can remove DRM its not effective.
I am personally am astonished nobody has come forward to protect the consumer where cross platform open formats are not available on the main three platforms. The fact that the three main stores of books, Amazon, Apple and Google, are all incompatible and DRM encumbered seems to have been lost on you, but its a reality for everyone else.
This, i whanted the same
but amazon wasnt ready
so just qent and buyed the
Onyx Boox M92, open source,
standar format, touch, big
at around 350$
kindle its lame
eReaders offer -as stated before- the ability of doing a single task, and doing it very good.
But for the computer-saavy tipical slashdotter, having a tablet when you want to read might be an invitation to lose time and disperse.
Reading a book, as has been said by many, many learned persons (ie Mortimer Adler's How to read a book) is a very active issue. If your mind is not set on what you read then it probably is not much worth reading. If you get distracted by your tablet's miriad functions, your reading quality drops.
I've churned through thousands of pages in my Kindle this year. Just accounting for the possibilities a tablet offers, I'm sure I wouldn't have studied, relaxed, traveled, learned and experienced so much in a single year by JUST READING, if I had used a tablet.
Sometimes the most worthy feature can be the absent one.
I think you misunderstand my post. I believe wholeheartedly in buying a tablet/laptop That is great value; locally manufactured; has open hardware; and more importantly open software, bought with national bulk buy savings, and development of shared resources for both children and teachers...Apple do not have such a product, and I find it offensive that money is not invested in additional supply teachers/support staff or that parents are forced to pay for products with 60% mark-up for a short shelf life product, when better value products are everywhere. When bringing up a child is expensive enough on its own. I think its offensive, but supporting learning with tablets and laptops I think is wonderful.
And my E-book reader can go two weeks (of heavy usage) on a charge (you don't even need to turn it off!
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
if only such a thing existed
But I can do all of that on my computer and/or phone already. As for 600,000 apps, all but about 100 are probably useless chaff.
Shining that nasty light right up into your retinas will give you eye cancer.
In reality the two will merge. Paper-like displays capable of color and video will come to tablets such as the Mirasol display screen that has been available in Korea for a few years now.
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Has smartphones killed off mp3 players? No there still around. Why because there cheap and do there one function reasonable to great depending on the product. eReaders do there one thing great which is to display text like its paper. No matter how much i like my tablet it has less battery time, is bigger, is backlit all the time and is expensive compared to my eReader so I would not take it places that where I could brake or lose it compared to my cheap eReader. So no it will not kill them off. In fact if eReaders get a bit more cheaper they will become my main friend gift(gift you default give to friends) and I suspect the same for other people as well.
You have it backwards. Ereaders are going to kill the tablet market. There's no way in hell that I'd use an LCD if the eink had sufficient color and response time for doing much beyond just books.
The idiot that wrote the summary and article have clearly never actually used an ebook reader before.
EBook readers are much simpler than tablets. ... have it now.
I expect much of what we are seeing is that most of the people who want(ed) one
Battery life is soo good and processor usage is low, that you don't need to update them every year or two.
I have two Kindles ... the first is >5 yrs old now and still works great.
Ouch
Ebook readers aren't like tablets, smart phones or computers. The second generation of them, out of the gate, were quite capable...and it's not like you need a faster processor or bigger storage. I still have my 2nd gen Kindle, and love it...it's loaded with books and still at half capacity. The Paperwhite appeals somewhat because of the better display, but it's not like it's a huge deal. Meanwhile, they've been shipping tens of millions of units...sooner or later, the market was due to become more saturated. But so what? That's just fine; the real money isn't in the readers, it's in the profit margins of books that take less pennies to deliver and nothing to print or store.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
...if the sells of e-readers are down, as long as the purchasing of e-books is up. There is a missing factor here. Are people buying more e-books on tablets than they are on e-readers? For the producer, it's just a device to get people to buy more books, not to buy more of the devices. And since it's more convenient, I imagine more people are buying books on e-readers as opposed to in-store. And if that's the case, I can't see the decline of e-readers. We need actual figures from Barnes & Noble and Amazon on book and e-book sells, not statistics on devices.
The G
I have a pretty good experience with PDFs on my Kindle. I'm reading a book in PDF right now and I didn't notice any problems with rendering speed. The text is easy to read, as usual.
May Peace Prevail On Earth
Wow, our circles are different. I was the last household that I know without a tablet - even my mother has one. I don't find them useful, and I already have an e-reader, but my wife wanted a Kindle Fire so now we are in the club. I have to admit it is fine for checking IMDB while watching TV and some of the games are fun.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
There doesn't have to be a lack of color. There are color e-ink screens. Google for e-ink Triton.
I'm personally waiting for a color e-ink Kindle, then I'll upgrade, but it's true that's there's no real necessity to upgrade to every single version.
No meanwhile we have a huge market of Chinese tablets that die with an update and none knows how to fix them. People may prefer an "underpowered" product rather to worry if the next version of the reader can break "Android 2.3.6.1aBAMBOOBLOSSOM-HUANG-5" version
If I found a good reader that supported Google Play Books, I'd buy it. I don't like splitting myself across different digital ecosystems, so I try to keep my whole life on Google instead of using Amazon. I'd rather use e-ink, but I'd rather use my Nexus 7 to read than a Kindle or Nook. Cue the posts about Google being evil...
There, I fixed the title for the article. I mean why read when I can play Angry Chipmunks or whatever on the same device?
And my E-book reader can go two weeks (of heavy usage) on a charge (you don't even need to turn it off!
It's not a useful metric. A paper book can go even longer without a charge. What does that prove? If a tablet lasts whole day of regular use, who would lose sleep over the need to drop it into the cradle for the night? Most tablets, as designed and as used, last several days.
I have a pretty good experience with PDFs on my Kindle. I'm reading a book in PDF right now and I didn't notice any problems with rendering speed. The text is easy to read, as usual.
Some PDF's are just images (usually jpegs) of pages, those are slow as hell on Kindles. PDF's that are text, not images are a lot faster.
Be seeing you...
I have a Kindle Paperwhite. Before that, I had a Nook and a Kindle Touch. Before that, I had a first-gen iPad. Way before that, I had a Compaq iPAQ on which I once read Dracula, so I'm counting it here.
Reading ebooks on the dedicated eReaders is superior to a first-gen iPad (and the iPAQ, natch). However, I recently got a new (retina) iPad, and, well...in some ways it's better than the Kindle. Despite the lighting and battery issues, the iPad has clearer text. This is a combination of vastly superior contrast, perfect screen refreshes, higher DPI, and a more even backlight. It also switches pages faster than a Kindle, and thanks to the perfect refresh, it never has text artifacts (you can enable this in the Kindle, too, but the screen flickers black every page turn and it eats up battery faster).
The Kindle, though, still has some advantages. You don't need to look at it straight-on; it's clear from any angle. Its battery lasts longer, though I find I still need to recharge every 7-10 days. There's less eyestrain--but I think a better way to describe that is it's slightly easier for me to focus on the text than it is on an LCD. The device weighs less, and I can easily hold it in my hand (I could probably do this with an iPad mini or a 7" tablet). You can read it in direct sunlight--in fact, it looks better this way!
The point to all this is that tablets have made strides in the eReader field. They used to suck, but they've gotten quite a bit better. I wouldn't be surprised if they supplant the dedicated readers altogether at some point. They're good enough for most people. I think the ideal situation would be an LCD/eInk hybrid screen, an idea that has seen something of a resurgence of late.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
I have an IPad 1 and a Kindle Fire and I still prefer to read on my Motorola Atrix Phone because of the weight. I've dropped a hint to my wife that I'd like a Kindle Paperwhite in 11 days.
The backlight(I like to read in bed) and weight are killer features for me.
Perhaps in a few years we'll have a tablet as thin and light as a Kindle reader with quadruple the power of today's best tablets and a Hybrid display.
That's a good example as to how eink is pricing itself out of a market. It's taken years of being difficult to get hold of a non-kindle eink device and now LCD tablets have taken the niche that could have been filled with cheap eink devices four or five years ago.
You just described an Onyx Boox M92 now that they've been marked down in price, or an M90 for the low end of your price range. Touch is a stylus which may not fit your definition, but since it can be used to select two points and then zoom in on part of a PDF that does the job IMHO. Pearl screens are still pretty high contrast in my opinion as well since I read the thing in direct midday subtropical sunlight (though I've had a M92 for less than a week and haven't compared it to the most recent Kindle screen).
Can I ask what feature of the Kindle software beats makes it better than the Kindle? My experience is somewhat opposite that (although the Windows desktop app is admittedly very nice, and I have used that to read a few books) although I am coming from using the software on an iPhone 3g.
you can hold a laptop computer in the palm of your hand, and read a book on your phone's 4" screen?
Until tablets come out with a display that can be as easy on the eyes and a battery that lasts 2 months, I don't think I'll be ditching my e-reader.
If you travel a lot, tablets and e-readers make a lot of sense. Unlike laptops, they don't need to be dragged out for the TSA to inspect at the airport, are lightweight, and the battery in a tablet will last an entire cross-USA flight. An e-reader's battery could make it through a weeklong trip. For myself, it is a lot easier to put a bunch of books on my Kindle than to drag the physical ones around in luggage.
If you travel though, it's one less charger to bring.
Really: yes.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323339704578173173413977046.html Its a phone with two screens one with e-ink the other lcd. Its...interesting.
Yes.
Next story....
Pros:
- Battery life of e book readers is hugely better (weeks long of reading?) and that's a huge parameter for me. I have a cheap tablet which lasts 6 hours of reading but almost always when reading books something is bothering my mind. I am always worried that the battery will finish soon and i must read or attach it to the power abruptly. When reading with one of those readers, the battery life does not bother you.
- The screen of the new e readers (true white) has a better contrast and more similar to book experience.
- E book reader are lighter of course.
Cons:
- Horrible user interface (due to the limitations of e paper?)
- Horrible PDF readers which do not offer an experience comparable to good pdf readers on Android or a PC.
- Small screen size forces you to pan, zoom in and out...
- Reading penthouse, play boy etc. does not work on them :)
But why would you want to do that, you're giving no reasons. You may as well say "but can you hold an automobile in your hand, and can you read a book on your wristwatch?" Nonsensical things. I can hold some laptops in my hand, and even if I can't they are all vastly more productive than a tablet. I have read a book on an old palm pilot, and I have actual books that I can read as well.
This is why I think E-Readers are doomed. My family and friends that like books like more than the LOOK of the book, they like the feel, they like the smell, they like being able to just chunk it around, dog ear a page, etc. Whereas those that like digital devices will naturally like something that can read AND surf AND check their email AND watch videos.
If the price of E-Ink had dropped a LOT faster, if they would have come up with even 16 bit color, then maybe E-Readers would have some life left, but when you can get a 1.2Ghz Cortex A8 tablet with ICS for $80-$100? Well its obvious to me which one is gonna be the winner. Mark my words, tablets with dual core CPUs for less than $60 this time next year for a 7 inch, which will be the final nail in the coffin.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
But you can't do anything useful on a tablet that I know of. You need a keyboard or something other than finger poking. An ereader though is useful, although so is an actual book.
Tablets and ereaders are both a niche product. Neither one can replace the other. Neither one will be going away anytime soon. The only way that tablets could replace ereaders is a color display that can be easily read in all lighting conditions (total darkness to bright direct sunlight) that requires no more power than e-ink, and is fast enough and high resolution enough to display video in HD, and cost less than today's LCD displays.
So far, there is no hint of such display technology on the horizon.
BTW, I have a Kindle, and a 7 inch tablet. I carry them together in a small carry bag, and use both quite a bit. I read a lot and only have to charge my ereader once a week or so. My tablet must be charged daily, every other day at most. For many, e-ink displays are far more comfortable to read on for any significant length of time. At the same time, ereaders are not able to display video, and are too slow to play most games on (lack of color is also a factor here).
Its possible a hybrid device with both types of screen could be built, but it would be rather expensive at this point. My tablet and my Kindle together cost less than any iPad. I really cannot see phones getting much bigger. Many of us think that current smartphones are getting too big now (and way, way too expensive!) to carry in a pocket. Also 4g coverage, even 3g coverage are vert spotty to say the least! And both are extremely slow compaired to a Wi-Fi connection.
So no, the phone will not replace the tablet, which will not replace the ereader.
The headline was wrong.
It should have read, "Will e-Readers survive tablets?" for Betteridge compliance.
I love my Kindle Paperwhite and the insane battery life it has. /shrug
That's the thing that kills me about the tablets, or even my smart phone. I like being able to read my books on the go, but the fact is if I spend a couple hours reading a book on a non dedicated platform, the battery is getting low. Many e readers are still able to run for days of reading without having to be tethered to something.
Turn off the wireless on the Kindle, and you'll be able to probably go at least a month. It eats the battery, even when you're not using it.
#1 market for e-Ink readers: beach books. iPads are barely usable at max brightness in the shade - no chance against the sun. Tropical noon makes an e-Ink device look better
1993 called and they want their magazines back.
Chances are you would bring your tablet anyways (you didn't mention not bringing the iPad, just not bringing the charger).... so you would still need the charger.... so the ereader would be one more device to bring.
I own an iPad and an eInk Kobo, and I love my Kobo, but still, your argument makes zero sense.
But it IS a good metric. The main reason I bought an kindle is because of its battery life. When I travel, I don't always get a chance to "drop it into the cradle for the night" Besides, how many times have you forgot to do that? And then you had nothing the next day?
E-Readers suffer the same fate as MP3 players, new user experience from maker to maker and model to model. The iPod changed that by selling millions of devices that all worked the same. Well, more so then previous MP3 players.
There are two tablet OS'es and they are remarkably similar. Not so with E-Readers. They offer a different UI, many designs never used before for very good reasons, and that makes each one a learning experience. A learning experience to read a book is not what most people look for. Especially when experimenting with your new device is dreadfully slow. PC's are lightening fast nowadays... well except until you ask Windows to deal with a directory with a 10k files in it but hey, that is like REALLY difficult you know so don't bitch. Anyway, searching through a text, or even several is pretty fast on a modern PC. On a tablet... not so much. Oh it is workable but if you got a choice, you do it on a PC. On an E-reader: FORGET ABOUT IT. Entering text is slow and akward and searching takes forever. Flipping back and forth through a text to collect information is only achievable by those with the patience you need to train a cat (which involves waiting for the cat to do something and then give it a treat while claiming that is what you wanted it to do).
E-readers are designed by people who wish they were designing tablets, a browser has no place on a E-ink device, it is just to slow and wifi drains the battery ruining one advantage E-Readers have. But worse, all the effort spend on adding features that don't fit on the device take away from effort that could be spend on making the device REALLY REALLY good at the few simple tasks where it does excel.
E-readers are good at one thing and one thing only. Reading novels. I say novel instead of books because books could include color photobooks or manuals were information spreads across two pages.
Right there, you have the biggest limitation of E-Readers vs books of all sorts. 1 page vs 2 pages side by side. While manga sounds ideal for an E-Reader (black and white mostly) many manga's feature art that spreads across 2 pages and that is hard to display easily on an E-reader. Or rather, you can display a wide image but the resolution takes a nose dive, or you have to flip the image.
It is not a disaster but it does show the limits. Tablets have the same limitation of course BUT they allow you to quickly flip between pages, or go into settings and change display for just this page and then switch back. E-Readers don't.
E-Readers are best for simple novels you read from cover to cover. Then their long battery life, easy viewing in outside lighting (and newer models have internal lights to allow reading in the dark) and calmer image help.
Help. But if you already got a tablet anyway and are not a really heavy reader and recharge your tablet constantly anyway, then the advantages of an E-reader are rather trivial.
If your book reading includes color, 2 page layout, searching, flipping back and forth, multiple books at the same time a tablet is the better tool.
In fact, books are the better tool over E-Readers except on the issue of weight.
I got two E-readers, one big and one small and tablet and use them all but I am a gadget freak. The E-readers work for me but they have a very narrow usability range.
What E-Readers need is greater speed, faster page loads (and I really mean it should be possible to scroll, that fast), faster processing speed (it shouldn't take seconds to open a book) and better ways for dealing with odd layouts (2 page layouts). A higher resolution also wouldn't hurt, the simple fact is that the iPad3 displays text with more detail then most E-readers.
I still see people using E-Readers on my train commute in fact more then tablets BUT most are using their mobile phones to entertain themselves. But I also see that the E-Readers are often old models. For simple reading, they suffice and for complex reading tasks, the new ones ain't much better anyway.
THA
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I've managed to deplete mine in 5 days.
But, otoh, I read 30 books those five days.
The existence of a niche doesn't mean a product isn't effectively dead.
I can see the appeal of E-Ink, but the benefits (long battery life, high contrast, little eye strain) don't really outweigh the negatives for me (mainly that you can't use it for anything else and therefore have to carry yet another device). And to me, AMOLED or a good IPS LCD set to less than retina-searing brightness levels is close enough (I'm currently reading my eBooks on a Galaxy Nexus).
Why? Is she going jogging? I would be surprised if she could use it plugged in... Cheap tablets can do far more than just read books too. Even the not absolutely cheapest ones ie $100 can do skype, Hi Mom!
If it does much beyond reading books, it's no longer an e-reader; it's a tablet with an e-ink display.
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I need an ebook on wich I can make notes as easily as on paper and on which I can flip pages as fast as with a paper book. Until that time i'll stick to the slow cumbersome big Kindle for reading mostly study, technical and reference books.
Yeah, but I can read 5 books in that time, I never need to lug them on flights or holidays and I can select from a couple of hundred for the same weight. Can't do that with paper.
Touch feature on eReader is mostly unnecessary, I agree. Apart from dictionary/translation. If you read a lot in a foreign language, having words translation just a tap away is incredibly useful.
eReaders need to get bigger and cheaper to stay competitive. If I could have a few of them to display different things and they were larger so I could view A4 on them, and crucially they were really cheap I think I could replace a lot of printed paper with them.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
And if you think the distinction matters, you're not getting what's happening.
I think you're on to something but I'd say what might eventually doom the E-reader is first of all that not a lot of people have actually seen one in real life, at least not compared to the exposure they get to tablets and manufacturer greed.
That means, what it ultimately comes down to, is that they either don't realize what their choices are (E-readers are not known, or seen as something nerdy), don't know what they sacrifice by choosing a tablet (their eyesight thanks to the bloody back lightning).
Obviously it doesn't help that manufacturers of E-readers doesn't even really try to make their devices reasonably network capable. If we look at your use-cases, the only thing you really can't do on an e-reader is watch videos, a job most mobiles can do more than adequately anyway.
Pretending you can't do stuff like browsing or email, which both are fundamentally about reading is absurd. It's all just about manufacturer laziness, possibly a consequence of the e-reader for many of them being more of a vehicle to capture an audience for their proprietary services, rather than trying to produce a genuinely useful device.
The e-paper readers have one huge advantage over tablets: Battery time. Add to that the better readability of the e-paper display, and you have a winner.
Note that the ease or hardness of reading PDFs is not inherent to a reader or tablet, but fully depends on the software.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(oops, that comment went to the wrong parent ...)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
If you want to read epub, you just could have chosen a different reader. Any different reader, actually. Nobody forced you to go with a Kindle.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Now you're just showing off.
I am preferring the current paperback format of e-readers. They have exactly the right size to fit into the pocket and to be read while travelling. I will probably cling to my e-reader for a long time too, until it finally breaks. The PDFs I have thrown at it so far rendered fine, but they are mostly technical documents I had to read and didn't want to print out due to their huge page numbers (often exceeding 1000 pages), and you never know which of those you actually need.
One big advantage e-readers have today, which plays well with the current e-ink displays is us being used to pagewise reading. Thus the event of refreshing the display (which is what actually eats the power while using e-ink) is a seldom event, happening a few times per minute, while refreshing a LED display has to happen 60 times every second to allow for a stable picture.
Yes, e-readers fill a special niche. Yes, tablets make inroads into the same niche. I would rather think that we will end up with tablets which have an e-ink like display, using less power than current LED displays, but reacting much faster than current e-inks and allowing for colors, tablets, whose backlights are very good at automatically adjusting to ambient light.
But how many will buy them when the price is $200 versus $60 for a 7 inch dual core with ICS? The problem is for these things to stay at a price people will pay you have to have massive economies of scale and the E-Ink just isn't getting that, the screens cost too much and too few devices use them. compare this to the 7 inch tablets which was reported just last month you could buy dual cores in Hong Kong for $60 each in lots of 1000 and you can easily see where the market is going, price trumps all.
I mean put yourself in the customers shoes...You are Joe average, you don't know squat about these things. There is a B&W unit sitting there for $160+ that people say is good at daylight reading, and right next to it is a full color unit for $70 playing a movie...which would YOU choose? I can tell you what most would choose and it ain't the B&W at more than double the price.
E-Ink was a nice idea but they were too greedy on the royalties and didn't get enough people behind the format to get the price down, whereas 7 inch color displays are a dime a dozen and they are cranking the single core and soon dual core ARM chips out so much that the price is gonna be literally a couple of bucks for a dual core that has an HD decoder chip, its a no brainer which the OEMs are gonna choose.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
The fact is, this could be doable right now for about $100-200 from a Chinese android manufacturer. I have no idea why a Chinese company hasn't tried to find a market for the $150 dual core A9 10" eink android tablet. I suspect it is there as I would buy two of them.
I prefer an e-ink reader, but when I already have a tablet, I can't really justify carrying around yet another device dedicated to just reading primarily proprietary formatted books. It sucks, but at a certain point, it gets to be too many things.
I remain astounded no Chinese manufacturer has tried the 9.7" eink screen in the Kindle DX married to a dual core A9 CPU and sold it as an android eink tablet for around $150. I've seen these devices with LCD screens for about $100 so I imagine it's doable for $200. I would buy two of these the moment I found it.
Instead, they just churn out largely the same 7" and 10" tablets that have no differentiation for $100.
My counterpoint to this is simply the bulk; I love my Kindle Keyboard that I've had for about two years now because I travel a lot... both personally and business. Carrying books around in a carry-on is a pain and as my girlfriend discovered when we returned from Ireland two years ago having a large number of books really confuses TSA agents. I wish I were kidding!
Now having said that, there is an argument here that a tablet would be even better still since it can do so much and is really small. I would agree with that except that I have an iPad and have had a few Android tablets. Honestly; the form factor sucks for reading anything but magazine-style stuff. Actual books; the Kindle is FAR superior. The iPad I have to hold in both hands and because of its weight have to hold it with something supporting my arm to be comfortable. The Kindle is so light and compact that I can hold it in one hand and still turn pages back and forth with my thumb. It's also dead-easy to bookmark ("dog-ear") a page at any point and even sync those bookmarks and your current read page to the "cloud" so when (if) you do fire up the Kindle app on your phone, iPad or whatever you can continue where you left off, or open a specific bookmark.
The Nexus 7 and iPad Mini are better form factors for reading, but you still have the issue of weight. Also, you can't turn the page with one hand... you have to use the rather retarded "page swipe" or call up an onscreen menu and click a button. This puts you back in a two-handed mode which is rather uncomfortable for long periods of time.
This year my vacation for myself and my son was to a beach. Having the Kindle to kick back on the sand and read a book while my son had a blast in the sand and sea was a godsend. I did try the iPad briefly on the first day and hated trying to ignore reflections, peer at the relatively dimly lit screen etc.
Have tablets impacted sales of eReaders? Yes... and they will continue to do so. Will they supplant them? Of that I am far less sure; my Kindle is also incredibly handy for technical documentation and a friend of mine uses his for carrying around maintenance documents for some of the steel cutting and bending machinery as well as CNC machines he works on. He tried an Android tablet and in that manufacturing environment the screen was broken in about three days. The Kindle... OK he's on his third because of breakage but with a good case they last one hell of a lot longer than the tablet. That and the battery life; you use an iPad as an eReader and the battery life is not great... the Kindle he just throws it on a charger occasionally. For him it's a huge improvement on the old way of going to find the maintenance books (which are huge!) before working on one of them. Maybe eReaders are a bit of a niche product... but they always were. But I don't think it's a niche that's going away.
I for one will buy another similar Kindle if/when I kill or lose the one I have.
+1
Last year I had my Kindle with me when I spent two weeks in Bavaria. I completely forgot to bring the charger with me for my Kindle so I just turned off wireless unless I really needed it (like twice during the entire trip) and still had enough battery left to read "Freedom, tm" by Daniel Suarez during the flight home.
With all of the "Down with the man" women and the related "I can get those women if I'm interested in the same thing they are" guys, the answer is this:
Asking this question is like asking, "Will the PC kill off the Mac?"
The answer is already clear.
That's very true... but as a general rule I'd say you're an exception. The vast majority of people who buy an eReader also use the store that it's tied to. Same with tablets; particularly with Android tablets it's relatively trivial to side-load free apps but the majority of people who buy them use the apps they can buy.
I have a lot of free content on my Kindle as well, but I also spend a decent amount at Amazon every month (including an Audible subscription) because sometimes I just get a hankering to read something specific while sitting at the gate at an airport.
No - it's better than "days". With the wifi turned off, most of them are good for weeks
A paper book can go even longer without a charge. What does that prove?
That's it's better than a tablet for reading, obviously.
on which you can play games, read your email on or get lost with the help of GPS
The Kindle may be book-sized, but the size of a Kindle screen is smaller than a standard (A5?) book page, even that of the touchscreen Kindle. Instead of giving it more screen space and keeping it book-sized, they basically cut off the keyboard and made it a smaller-than-book-page size.
I had a Kindle with a keyboard bought for me as a gift. I would never have bought a Kindle for myself because the screen is irritatingly small. Hopefully now that the 10-inch tablet market is taking off they'll get a clue and release a touch version of the DX (and in the UK) or even better, a book-sized Kindle that's all screen, not the poxy 6-inch piece of crap consumers are subjected to at the moment.
Almost all the books I read are only available on paper. I guess I'm called passed by.
So "Yes" but "No" earns a +5.
Not having to charge my kindle for up to 2 weeks worked perfectly for being in the field in Afghanistan. A tablet never would have allowed it, nor would have paper books been practical. However, now that I'm home, I could see a tablet being the way to go.
Joe Blow isn't going to buy it because he isn't the target market. Apple has made an enormous amount of money by targeting the top 5% of consumers, and Amazon or B&N can do the same. The Kindle, after all, is just a vehicle for book sales, and Amazon wants people who like to read to have a perfect device for each situation. Someone like my wife is the target market - she buys a book almost every other day (fastest reader I've ever met, reads basic fiction at about 200-250 pages an hour). When you drop thousands a year on your reading habit, what's an extra $200 for the right device?
The obvious solution is a tablet with an e-ink display on one side and a color IPS or AMOLED screen on the other.
6 books a day. How do you have this much time? Speed reading? I'm not doubting you, just thinking you are not the average, median, mean or norm.
dig deeper, you'll see it is a bit more complicated than that.
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
...also don't forget: try taking your shiny color LCD device outside on a nice bright sunny day(or any equivalently brightly lit location), and then try to read whats on the screen...
I've yet to see what I consider to be comfortably readable color screen under such conditions.
Also I don't replace my ereaders nearly as often as I change tablets. eReaders simply don't need a helluvalot of CPU power, and screen improvements just aren't enough to make me want to run out and buy the latest. They ONLY get replaced when they die, e.g. kobo touch bricked itself, so it got replaced that very day by a Nook simple touch(firmware is MUCH better too as the kobo's was pretty crap anyways don't miss having to double tap to turn a page).
OTOH with tablets(Android only, Apple is ebil, and embedded windows/metro is just fugly stupid) at the rate that the feature sets of SoCs are being expanded, and prices falling I'm MUCH more willing to replace those more frequently.
to the extent that some of us read (as the only person in a restaurant reading a book while eating dinner), there will be devices which allow you to carry your library around while travelling. The others in the world will be watching video, looking up things, etc in a more general purpose device. I wonder if there is a co-relation between those who are content to read (and form their own images) and those who are content to have silences in their life (to contemplate, to think) ?
In NSA America social networks join you!
Anybody got an existing process for converting my 7" Android 4 tablet into a phone?
Does it work if you install VoIP software and buy a headset?
In other words, an Android tablet with an Epaper display might be interesting -- not for games -- but for reading the web, books, documents, emails, and stuff like that.
I have one. I rooted the Android on my B&N Nook, and I love this device more than any handheld computer, laptop, or phone that I've ever had (and I've had quite a few of each). The only problem is that Android 2.1 on the device absolutely cannot be updated and many otherwise fine applications are being written for API Level 9 (Android 2.3). Even applications that think that they are coding to a lower API level usually aren't.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
I think tablets will also dwindle quite a lot once the shiny has worn off and people realize they can just use their phone
Only if it's a smartphone. Worse, there are several United States carriers that offer a occasional-use voice-only plan but won't activate an Android phone on such a plan. Instead, they require Android phone users to sign up for a far more expensive land-line-replacement plan. For example, Virgin Mobile USA charges seven times as much for service for an Android phone (starting at $35 per month) as it does for a flip phone (starting at $15 per three months). So an occasional user such as myself would have to buy, carry, and charge two phones, namely a dumbphone and a smartphone, and never actually buy minutes for the smartphone, instead treating it as a 4" Wi-Fi-only tablet like the iPod touch or Archos 43 or Galaxy Player.
or laptop or computer
Not once manufacturers stop making small laptops in favor of tablets with a higher profit margin. A lot of companies have dropped their 10" laptop lines.
If I want to watch funny videos, that's what my smart phone is for. Games? Same. Reading? Kindle.
What about letting your child read illustrated books in color? Or watching funny videos without having to pay $50 per month for cellular voice and data service? I currently pay $5 per month because dumbphones qualify for a deep discount at Virgin Mobile.
Apple shares are took a beating because of a massive slump in ipods [Now they are just simply dropping], which are being replaced with modern smartphones
Is it possible to activate a dumbphone plan (less than 100 minutes per month, no cellular data) on an iPhone yet? Or does an iPhone's cost of ownership still run on the order of $600 per year?
The EReader will keep displaying files as longs as I keep putting them in there.
Provided that publishers still make their books compatible with your reader. Do you remember PlaysForSure?
The fact that the three main stores of books, Amazon, Apple and Google, are all incompatible and DRM encumbered seems to have been lost on you, but its a reality for everyone else.
Do Amazon, Apple, and Google require book publishers to use DRM even if the publisher would prefer not to use DRM? If not, then you can blame the major publishers for preferring DRM.
It's just another regular ebook reader but I love it. What I want is a smart phone with only e-ink in the display - no flash apps etc. just books, sms, chat and calls. If sush a phone were available on the market, I'd buy it, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. I don't need AMOLED or IPS, e-ink would do nicely.
30 books? What were you reading, the Mr Men collection? ;)
Let's see, today we have basically two sorts of tablet computers - iPad and Android.
The Apple tablet is ad-supported to its core and you have a continuing relationship with Apple in the way you are monitored, tracked and have ads shoved at you, famously making Siri useless, as well as having lock-in of hardware and software, and a device costing 5-10 times as much as the opposition. Please don't piss on my back and call it rain.
I'm so pleased you have so much disposable income to throw around, but its selfish of you to expect others to do so to support your expensive ecosystem.
Here is why many prefer ereaders to tablets, reading outdoors:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIrvamOXqxs
Can't see tablets killing off e-readers. I've got both and would personally read off my Kindle. Sales of e-readers have simply hit the shoulder of the growth curve. Now, once someone develops a full-color screen that is a easy to read from as an e-reader screen, and that has the refresh rate of a tablet, then the two devices will merge.
It's a false question.
Once you have your e-Reader do more than just display text, you naturally want them to do more and more. This leads to graphics @ music, leading to games, leading to ebook stores, leading to internet access, leading to web browsing, leading to text editors, leading to instant messaging, leading to video chat and VOIP, leading to more powerful apps, leading to working and emailing, leading to office apps, leading to.... tablets.
So, as you can see, it's not an either/or question. Ereaders will become more powerful, and tablets will become smaller and easier to read, until the only difference between them is the name. If that.
Actually, in all likelyhood is that the real difference between ereaders and tablets is that ereaders are more likely to push most of it's heavy CPU work, and the bulk of it's storage off into the net, like with Dropbox, Google Docs, etc. And make those services more intagrated.
Posted from my Nook. ;)
THINK! It's patriotic
However, I don't think that e-readers will die completely. Those hardcore people who prefer reflected light for reading books will likely cling to their devices (I'm one of them).
If we examine the pace of technology improvement, we could see the development of led displays based on leds that are half the diameter of today's technology. Put these together and you could expect displays with quadruple density (2x)*(2x). The tablet technology will adopt that to provide sharper images than today's E-book readers. The E-Book readers will also improve, but why would you want to limit yourself to a single function device, unless it does it so extremely well.
I still have my original Mr. Men collection. The Mr. Rush book is signed by Neil Peart, Geddy Lee, and Alex Lifeson... :-)
I don't care if e-readers get junked as the decade's version of a lava lamp or bean bag chair. What interests me is the beautiful and classic e-ink format. What I'd love to see is a tablet that can switch into that mode. Ok Tech geniuses, get to work! And thanks!
Myabe i just want to read without facebook updates and pandora in the background. And a friggin' power cord so the thing won't shut down every 8 hours.
People that push media overconsumption suggest devices that avoid their reach are obsolete. Huge surprise there!
I agree. I have an e-reader simply because it uses e-paper. I don't enjoy reading books on an LCD.
This is why I think E-Readers are doomed. My family and friends that like books like more than the LOOK of the book, they like the feel, they like the smell, they like being able to just chunk it around, dog ear a page, etc. Whereas those that like digital devices will naturally like something that can read AND surf AND check their email AND watch videos.
Yeah, and some people like LPs for the same reasons, even though they are arguably less practical. I certainly see the appeal. For those of us who care more about the content than the packaging, though, e-ink readers are perfect. I have a phone for multimedia/interactive stuff, and even a tablet which sees very little use, but I sincerely hope e-ink (or similar) readers can be bought for the remainder of my life. A tablet is a huge downgrade when it comes to straight reading, if you say otherwise I suspect that you're not actually doing a lot of reading :)
And colours, seriously? What for? Of the ~600 books on my reader I would guess that about 15 have illustrations, mostly classics. No colours needed. For comics, childrens books, or technical PDFs a tablet is indeed better.
Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!
If ereader users are the hardcore traditionalists now, what do you call those of us who still like to read on paper?
Go stand with the LP crowd over there :)
But seriously, I practically grew up in a library (my mother was a librarian, went there every day after school), and have always read a lot. Books were important in my family. I jumped on the e-ink bandwagon as soon as I could, there is *nothing* I miss from paper books, and a lot that I like better with my reader. The content is what I care about.
Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!
Then they are gonna have to upmarket it as Apple does and so far we have seen zero indication that either B&N or Amazon is gonna try upmarketing. In fact I would argue just the opposite, I go to Amazon I see fifty ads for the Fire and the E-Ink Kindle is a little mention in the corner.
I stand by my statement, E-Ink dead in 2. in the mobile business its all about economy of scale, and Amazon simply isn't marketing the E-Ink Kindle well. B&N may be but they are an also ran, not likely to gain any real share compared to Amazon who is now an 800 pound gorilla.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
One less micro USB cable, you mean.
I travel with one charger: My laptop charger. I also carry two micro USB cables, for charging my phone and my tablet. Honestly, I could probably get by with just one micro USB. I'd charge the phone at night and the tablet during the day. But it's more convenient to just plug both of them in at night.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
The newest plain vanilla e-ink devices from amazon and b&n are inthe $70 range with sales taking them to $50ish now and then.
It's a niche product. It's niche marketed. Since e-Ink devices are under $100 these days, we can safely assume that nearly everyone who really wants one has had at least one of them. However, the core market for a Kindle is - as I said - the kind of person who spends well over a thousand dollars a year on books, already has an iPad, and wants something to read books on while at the beach. Such people do not care if it's $200 instead of $100. What's the cost of being bored out of your mind for a week on vacation?
Already modded some posts so posting anon, but while the stores are incompatible, they (except apple) make reader software for other devices. If you own just about any tablet device you can run the kindle, nook, kobo, google, and overdrive apps on it. I don't think apple has an iBooks app yet for android, because they still really are a hardware company. The way they run the iBookstore store is somewhat consistent with that-- they're slow (it can take weeks to get a book to show up) and picky (stuff that passes the other stores' validators can hang on theirs, adding to the approval time), but it doesn't really matter, because you can run the Kindle (or nook, or Google) app on your iDevice and read the same content on the third party app. And Apple still got the money for the hardware, which is what they wanted anyway.
And beyond that, DRM will probably go the same way it did on music, it will just take the publishers starting to feel more threatened by Amazon than they are by pirates.
I've got the third-generation Kindle. The price was right because it was a trade-show raffle gimme. I still haven't registered it with Amazon, after two years, because there are so many other sources of books that I'm interested in. It's a bit thinner than the earlier Kindle, which makes it fit better in my pockets (about half my shirt pockets are big enough if I'm not carrying anything else.) If the DX had been the same price, I'd have preferred that, since it has more reading area, but pocket sized is really convenient. At home I generally prefer paperback books - I don't trust reading the Kindle in the bathtub, for instance, even in a baggie. But for travelling, the Kindle absolutely rocks, a bit lighter than a paperback, and it holds hundreds of books.
The page turning speed is fast enough - comparable to turning pages in an actual book. Unlike tablets, it's easy to read in bright sunlight, and much more comfortable to look at than a glowing backlit device. On the other hand, you can't read it in the dark, but I have a clip-on light for that. The biggest problem with the Kindle is reading PDFs - it works, but if they're laid out for letter-sized paper, shrinking them down to Kindle size makes the print too small, and if they're two-column material, reading them with the Kindle in sideways mode means a lot of annoying scrolling up and down. But for books that are distributed in bookreader formats, it's really flexible, and I can crank the font size up a reasonable amount.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
You can have my e-reader when you pry it from my cold dead hands.
I've tried them both, and phones, and even reading on a computer... I'll keep the e-reader for reading a book during my hour and a half long commute.
1) Battery life (I actually carry a spare battery because my e-reader goes flat so rarely that I just forget to charge it)
2) Matt finish
3) It is just easier on my eyes.
A good suggestion; however, I'm often reading on my phone or tablet, and the syncing functionality is invaluable to me. It would be a bit of a hassle to constantly turn WiFi on and off. Charging it every 10 days or so isn't so bad.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
eReaders aren't designed for PDFs. In theory, the DX was, but it hasn't been updated in years. I do think that 6" is a bit small for a paperback--an "A" format paperback (mass-market) is about 8" diagonal. I think a good compromise would be a 7" screen, as this would still give room for a bezel around it without it being too much bigger than a paperback. The benefit of this is more words on the screen at a time, meaning less page turns and (probably) longer battery life. The disadvantage would be higher cost and increased size/weight. I find it interesting that Kobo has the Mini. That seems way too small, but maybe there's a market for it.
Speaking of the Kobo...for all that I love my Kindle, Amazon has serious problems in the ergonomics/aesthetics department. I get that it's a cheap device that probably has razor-thin margins (or break-even), but when you compare it with the Kobo or the Nook, it just doesn't look very good, and the other devices are more comfortable to hold (particularly the Kobo). This is true both for eReaders and tablets (the new Kindle Fire HD7 is possibly the ugliest tablet out there, even if it's a nice device). I also think Amazon's insistence on removing physical buttons is misguided.
I tried switching to the Nook. I liked it a lot at first, but it left a lot to be desired in the area of syncing. It would often take the device a long time to sync reading positions, and sometimes it would not even sync at all. This, combined with a lack of syncing of non-B&N stuff, led me to come back to the Kindle. I would have tried a Kobo, but their eBook market seemed lacking at the time.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
Apparently somebody is on it - but not on a tablet; a phone.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I love "real" books, but I also have a Kobo Touch.....the Kobo whilst it requires charging can hold 100's of books while the paper one is just one book. That is the advantage.
If you read more than an hour or two at a time it greatly reduces eye strain, plus batter life is a lot better on the dedicated devices.
You should maybe try one. You'll find it different from your expectation.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
OTOH, a tablet can carry 50,000 books. A good sized library. Good luck fitting that many paper books into your pocket.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
My eBook reader has an SDHC slot that can hold thousands of books per card!
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
Will cars kill off motorcycles? Motorcycles are cheaper and faster, yet cars are preferred.
Oh wait, people like different things, so any niche will survive, even if not optimal for many (or, more often, the vocal minority).
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