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Portables Books Media Hardware Technology

Sony To Launch E Ink-based eBook In April 424

Posted by timothy from the small-in-japan dept.
Holly Gates writes "Sony will launch an ebook based on E Ink technology in Japan in late April. The screen is about as big as half a paperback book and has a spatial resolution of ~170ppi. The device includes various edictionaries and audio playback functionality. I am a hardware engineer for E Ink by the way, but I figured slashdotters might be interested." An anonymous reader notes that it is supposed to "display over 10,000 pages on a single set of batteries."
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Sony To Launch E Ink-based eBook In April More

Sony To Launch E Ink-based eBook In April

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  • E Ink? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Neil Blender ( 555885 ) <neilblender@gmail.com> on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @03:30PM (#8659378)
    That's a marketing department gone bad.

    • Re:E Ink? (Score:5, Informative)

      by l810c ( 551591 ) * on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @04:11PM (#8659886)
      I'm a fan of Ebooks and have read at least a 100 titles the past few years on my Franklin Ebookman. I'm anxiously awaiting the next generation.

      While not 'EInk', here's a couple of others that will hopefully make it to our market soon They also use energy only when turning pages:

      I emailed these people and was informed this Chinese Ebook [argosyusa.com] would be available on Amazon in Q2 of this year.

      This Panasonic Sigmabook [sigmabook.jp] ebook was just launched in Japan and hopefully will make it here soon.

    • Re:E Ink? (Score:3, Informative)

      by syphax ( 189065 )

      E-Ink was founded in 1997 by a few MIT geeks [eink.com]. I think they had the name before they had a marketing department. This was pre e- and i- nuttiness.

      I remember interviewing with E-Ink in 2000, I think with Barrett Comiskey, one of the founders, in the Toscanini's (ice cream store) at MIT. Wicked smart. Too bad I shanked on the interview!

  • 100.000000000 pages (Score:5, Funny)

    by Leffe ( 686621 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @03:30PM (#8659379)
    "display over 10,000 pages on a single set of batteries."

    I wonder how fast you have to read then ;)

    OK, I don't know what the hell E-Ink is :(

  • Great! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Bishop, Martin ( 695163 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @03:31PM (#8659384)
    "display over 10,000 pages on a single set of batteries."

    Great! Now I don't have to recharge my batteries in the middle of War and Peace!
  • It seems that no matter what I try, I have a time time absorbing and retaining information from e-books. Something about reading off a screen as opposed to paper just seems to shut off a part of my brain or something.

  • Battery life? (Score:2, Redundant)

    by bobthemuse ( 574400 )
    supposed to display over 10,000 pages on a single set of batteries.

    Hell, I can display trillions of pages on my 486 laptop.... unfortunately they're only on the screen for a microsecond each...

    • Re:Battery life? (Score:3, Informative)

      by BFaucet ( 635036 )
      IIRC E-Ink only uses energy when changing the page.

    • Re:Battery life? (Score:5, Funny)

      by zeux ( 129034 ) * on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @03:46PM (#8659603)
      Let's do the maths.

      Assuming what you call "trillions" means 1 trillion.

      That's 1 000 000 000 000 pages.

      One microsecond/page means 1 000 000 000 000 / 1 000 000 total seconds for the whole thing.

      That's 1 000 000 seconds or 277.8 hours or 11 days and a half.

      If your 486 laptop can stay on batteries for 11 days and half then I would like to know what kind of battery you use :)

      Ok, that was a nerdie post, you can mod me down now :)

  • Neat device, but the price had better be good.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by xwinter ( 632755 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @03:33PM (#8659410)
    Good viewing in direct sunlight (or so they claim) might make this the first ebook platform worthwhile. The only problem is, if it costs more than $200 it will probably be a tough sell. I can get a lot of books (especially used) for that, and not have to change to batteries. But for those who like to take their entire collection of books with them (sort of a book iPOD) this might a neat device. The biggest question in my mind, is just how much support are publishers going to give this thing? Judging from ebook platforms of the recent past, probably not much.

    • Re:Neat device, but the price had better be good.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by RickHunter ( 103108 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @03:41PM (#8659549)

      Either the publishers won't give it much support, or it'll be so burdened by DRI software that consumers simply won't care about it. If they have to pay each time they read a book...

    • I haven't liked the concept of E-books because I don't want to lend my entire library out; I want to lend one book to someone and not be able to read that book, rather than have my entire library disabled when I let someone borrow a book - that hasn't been the case with e-books. Add the lack of additional functionality and I don't have a convincing reason to buy one.
    • But for those who like to take their entire collection of books with them (sort of a book iPOD) this might a neat device. Are you implying that I could somehow easily "rip" my books to a format this could read? If not I'd have to re-purchase all of my books in digital format. No thanks. Dead trees are cheaper and work just fine.
    • The trick would be, to have an open text format so that ANYONE can create an ebook that can be read on it. That way you can say, import all of the texts from Project Gutenberg. You'll never run out of reading material.

    • My Franklin "ebookman" has two great features that make it better than regular books:

      - I can hold it in one hand
      - I can read it in a dark room

      which means that when the little one refused to sleep at two in the morning, I can carry her around my (dark) house and read a book. Can't do THAT with any kind of regular book -- they don't have lights, and they can't be read in one hand.

      OTOH
    • I think the iPod is the right analogy. I think the combination of usability and capacity makes it a breakthrough- too many people are averse to reading from luminous, pixelated displays. But carrying around a *readable* library in your pocket is invaluable- think of grabbing your corner table at the local coffee joint, hacking away on your laptop and having a separate, readable screen that can show you any O'Reilly book ever. It would be especially great for students- not to mention the possibilities of mak
    • But for those who like to take their entire collection of books with them (sort of a book iPOD) this might a neat device.

      That is a big selling point for me. Not so much the ability to take my entire book collection wherever I go, but just being able to keep my enitre book collection in a small place. About 2 weeks ago I bought 2 big plastic tubs and filled them up with books so I could store them in my attic because they were taking up too much space.

      The biggest question in my mind, is just how much s
    • The only problem is, if it costs more than $200 it will probably be a tough sell.

      Are you kidding? If it is as easy to read as newspaper, than imagine the change for students, especially college age. Instead of constantly carrying heavy textbooks everywhere, you just have one appliance that holds all your information.

      Imagine the cost savings in buying textbooks if there is no more physical costs involved. If there is something like a 60% discount for e-books, you could pay for the thing in one semest
      • Imagine the cost savings in buying textbooks if there is no more physical costs involved. If there is something like a 60% discount for e-books, you could pay for the thing in one semester. Of course that would require the books be available on whatever format that is required, but this has killer app written all over it.

        I am perhaps a Troll or someone of little faith, but i think they will sell them the same price as the dead tree ones and take the magin profit for them. As an excuse, you know, everybody
      • The screen is too small for a textbook. You can't even fit a decent diagram on a screen that size. The technology is applicable, although one nice thing about textbooks is the ability to mark them up, and this device lacks that capability. Also they're only going to probably knock about ten bucks off the price of a textbook for edelivery and you're not going to be allowed to sell it - they won't sell them electronically unless they can DRM them. So it's probably not going to be useful for textbooks any time
        • The size of the screen could be mostly overcome by the e-book format not being physically limited in number of pages -- the extra content can just be shuffled into more pages in the book.

          This wouldn't be done in a traditional textbook for two reasons 1) the biggest reason IMO who wants a paperback book sized textbook that while small in width and height is 2000 pages long 3-4" thick (unless its machinery's handbook, but thats a reference anyway ;) 2) logical trains of thought in most textbooks generally se
    • The biggest question in my mind, is just how much support are publishers going to give this thing? Judging from ebook platforms of the recent past, probably not much.

      There are lots of .txt books floating around the p2p scene. Even if it is difficult to "rip" a book, the collective ation of the internet says that only one person has to do the work for the efforts to be availible to all. If the book-reader is so much better than the dead-tree paradigm, then the readers will make it standard. It's just
    • If it will hold my entire O'Reilly library and have a good viewing, bookmarking and search interface I'd be interested.
  • "display over 10,000 pages on a single set of batteries." That won't survive a slashdotting.

    BTW, The site is /.ed badly. Can't fidn the google cache either.

    • Re:10,000 Pages (Score:2, Informative)

      by igrp ( 732252 )
      Here ya go...

      PRESS RELEASE

      FIRST-GENERATION ELECTRONIC PAPER DISPLAY FROM PHILIPS, SONY AND E INK TO BE USED IN NEW ELECTRONIC READING DEVICE

      [Picture]

      Sony LIBRIe e-Book Reader utilizing Philips Electronic Paper Display featuring E Ink's electronic ink technology

      Tokyo, Japan , Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Cambridge, MA, USA, March 24, 2004 - Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHI), Sony Corporation(NYSE: SNE) and E Ink Corporation announced today the world's first consumer application of an electr

  • light (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AnonymousCowheart ( 646429 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @03:34PM (#8659436)
    "The Electronic Paper Display is reflective and can be easily read in bright sunlight or dimly lit environments while being able to be seen at virtually any angle - just like paper."
    by far, thats my biggest complaint with handhelds (palms, etc). The screens are so hard to read in the daylight. Infact, the black and white palms seem easier to read in the day light than the color screens.
    Also, phillips rollable display [philips.com] Amazing!

    • Re:light (Score:3, Insightful)

      by mystery_bowler ( 472698 )
      Agreed.

      I have a palm OS-based color screen phone and I can't use the darned thing in daylight because the screen isn't visible. The non-color screen palm devices are much more readable in direct sunlight.

      Bring on something readable.

      And how long before we have the pda/camera/phone/e-book combo device?

  • Can it display PDF's? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DAldredge ( 2353 ) <SlashdotEmail@GMail.Com> on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @03:37PM (#8659474) Journal
    Can it display PDF's? Lack of PDF support is the only thing that stopped me from buying one of the current Ebook readers.

  • Anonymous to avoid karma whoring - full text (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Tokyo, Japan , Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Cambridge, MA, USA, March 24, 2004 - Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHI), Sony Corporation(NYSE: SNE) and E Ink Corporation announced today the world's first consumer application of an electronic paper display module in Sony's new e-Book reader, LIBRIe, scheduled to go on sale in Japan in late April. This "first ever" Philips' display utilizes E Ink's revolutionary electronic ink technology which offers a truly paper-like reading experience with contras

  • Awesome (Score:3, Insightful)

    by altaic ( 559466 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @03:37PM (#8659483)
    Since the last deploymenty of e-ink (the billboards), I eagerly awaited smaller implementations. It seemed like the billboards were just a proof of concept, since each pixel was quite large-- not suitable for computer diplays. However this looks like it will be really big (backwards pun not intended).

    I hope I'm not being hasty in saying so long to luminescent displays. It certainly will be strange reading from a moving, reflective display, but I think it'll be much easier on the eyes, and well excepted. Kudos to Sony, and I hope other OEMs adopt quickly.

  • Personal vendeta? (Score:5, Funny)

    by MyFourthAccount ( 719363 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @03:38PM (#8659494)
    I am a hardware engineer for E Ink by the way

    And the sysadmin just blocked all P2P ports, so I'll get him back this way.

    "See how you like a good ole slashdotting, bastard!!"
  • I've been noticing Amazon carrying many more ebooks lately. The prices for the books are pretty nice too.

    I've tried reading off a Palm or laptop and it just doesn't work. A nice high contrast device would be perfect.

    The bottom line is this device needs to be cheap.

  • I've been waiting for something like this. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kabocox ( 199019 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @03:38PM (#8659498)
    I've been waiting for a device that I could use just to read information off of. My big complaint is that it will most likely be sold for $200-$400 instead of $50-$150. For $200-$400, I'd rather get a PDA. But if they could get these things under $150, then they'd sell like crazy. Actually, this tech could help PDA's increase battery life.
  • I would be the first to say that I would rather hold a book than one of these.. but with the ability to search entire books you've read, I don't care how weird, or uncomfortable it may be, I would buy one of these to just load up old books I have already read and have them available for search. Amazon.com's [amazon.com] search inside a book implimentation is rather weak, and doesn't cover all their books, maybe in the future when you buy any book it can come with a password to download its contents to your E-Ink reader.

  • DRM Enabled? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Blorgo ( 19032 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @03:40PM (#8659532) Homepage
    The article is more about the display hardware - which could be neat. Its success depends on the operating system, and how books are sold and stored.

    All the DRM-enabled e-book devices (Rocket) and formats (Palm reader) introduced so far have failed. No one wants to buy an e-book that is tied to a specific bit of hardware, or one who's access disappears if you lose your Passport account (MS Reader). Some devices won't even *permit* unencrypted data.

    I hope that the designers realise that. Actually, the designers probably do, but the marketing guys or the managers will insist on it.

    "...this novel e-Book reader offers users an enjoyable experience and the freedom to access material at their convenience."

    My convienence does not include intrusive DRM, thank you.

    Not that I will get my hopes up...

    • Amen (Score:3, Insightful)

      by pherris ( 314792 )
      My convienence does not include intrusive DRM, thank you.

      I don't mind the device having DRM. Like you, I too have a problem if that's all it allows. IMO if it allows anyone to create their own "books" then it should do well. Being able to send a book directly to another one would be very useful and cool.

      They need to take a lesson from the iPod: DRM and non DRM audio files allowed. Although I suspect Sony has already figured the profit on the exclusive sale of books for this device.

  • Man, now you've got tons of people who can't pronounce CLI, you want to have them mangling the pronunciation of the LIBRI too?

    As a side note - why in the world are e-books so damn expensive? I'm sorry, but if I can get a paperback for 10 bucks, I'm not going to shell out $25 for an e-book. Kazaa, here I come!

  • Big Picture (Score:3, Informative)

    by panthro ( 552708 ) <mavrinacNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @03:44PM (#8659580) Homepage
    The /. effect was making it hard for me to see the big picture, so get it here [mavrinac.com].
  • If I could get one of these with wifi and a browser / rss reader. I'd probably stop using my PC to a large extent. Much of my time online is spent reading blogs and various online publications (salon, the economist, daily kos, etc) which have very few images. Eyestrain is a problem however and as far as text only viewing goes, paper as a medium would be a godsend.
  • The resolution is decent, but the size is too small. Why not something the full size of a paperback book? At least as another option. Its a normal, familiar medium for reading, and would allow for actual pages that would match the conventional pages. This also encourages faster reading, skimming, et cetera. I would be a lot more comfortable purchasing something with a larger surface area. But then again, that may just be me.

    Great tech, though.

  • several points - probably already mentioned but... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    it's gotta be reasonably inexpensive...

    it's gotta NOT have a closed proprietory file format

    it should be able to (or be upgradable to) display the standard formats out there - basic text files, html based files with gif/jpg/png, acrobat pdf files that support search...

    have or allow viewers for regular MS file formats (ppt, word, excel, visio, etc)

    E-ink should be nice and easy to read and nothing like looking at a crt or lcd screen. Would be nice to have higher dpi however it is being called "first genera
  • I saw a prototype on display at the science museum in Boston. They aren't kidding about the resolution or the contrast--it was almost like looking at paper. Plus, the display thing was probably no more than 3 pages thick. Just toss it in your backpack and you're set! And think of the money making opportunity:

    1. Save up cash
    2. Wait for E Ink IPO ...
    3. Profit!

  • When I think of electronic paper, I think of a 8.5 x 11 sheet or a newspaper. Something I can roll up, bend, fold, whatever. This thing is just electronic paper in a frame. What's the big advantage over black and white LED screens? This is not the revolution.

    • It has a (relatively) high resolution, does only need power to change the display content (so you can use it for weeks in a row) and because its reflection properties you could even read it on a a glacier or at the beach.

  • Not for any amount of money on earth. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by pair-a-noyd ( 594371 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @03:53PM (#8659681)
    I will not ever use this technology.
    It's a BAD idea. My books are my books and the information that's printed in them will always be there no matter what, as long as I take proper care of them.

    No matter what happens in the world, say some political wind blows and they decide that certain things are politicaly incorrect, with a few clicks of a mouse e-books planet wide will be "revised" to reflect the new "acceptable and correct" line of thought.

    History will be rewritten to suit those that have the power and need to rewrite history.

    I have many sets of encylopedias from the 20's through the 80's and I can see with my own eyes how history is being rewritten. LOTS of "facts" are revised on a regular basis. If you think it's not, you're living in a dream world...
    • LOTS of "facts" are revised on a regular basis.

      No doubt. But isn't it at least possible that some of these revisions could result from, you know, people discovering new stuff? It's not as if the encyclopaedias in 1920 were the Platonic ideals of omniscient, infallible historical truth.

      Being a bit hasty in reaching for the tinfoil hat there, I'd say.

    • Save copies of the data, then. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by billstewart ( 78916 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @04:15PM (#8659923) Journal
      So if you're concerned about electronically stored history being rewritten, keep electronic copies of the books you care about.
      Burn them to CD-ROM if you want.

      And if you think paper doesn't get revised, go to a bookstore and buy a new edition of a book you read long ago. You'd be surprised how often things get revised. It's not just that the cover art gets revised to show the actors from the current movie version instead of the original cover art, or the blurbs on the back get revised for more current advertising value, or the books get subtitled (e.g. "Farenheit 451 - The Temperature at which Books Burn".) They don't get revised as fast as Whitehouse.gov speech transcripts, but they do get revised.

    • You know, books are far easier to burn than the encrypted 512MB flash drive I keep in my pocket. For whitewashing data, monthly publications do keep revising their view of history to an annoying degree. This is true both online and off. But for data stored locally, the truth is archived and protected. It's theoretically possible that Windows XP has hooks that will allow the Secret Service to remove the video of campaign promises Bush made on my drive, but it's not bloody likely to make it through two f

    • Library of Congress (Score:3, Insightful)

      by joggle ( 594025 )
      Well, at least there's the Library of Congress, who's whole point is to archive all books published in the US to keep for all time. Hopefully it won't meet the same fate as the Library of Alexanderia. So long as the library isn't destroyed, there's really no way that all of those millions of books could possibly be replaced with revized editions or mysteriously dissapear.

    • Wait (Score:3, Insightful)

      by KalvinB ( 205500 )
      so your complaining that the e-book can be changed so you prefer the hardcopy but you also claim that hardcopies are being changed.

      I'm failing to see how your reasoning fits your conclusion as both mediums are equally subceptible to revisions.

      The advantage of electronic books is that a simple program can be written to compare previous versions to new versions to see what exactly has been changed in seconds.

      Try that with a hard copy of an encyclopedia.

      You're also making the faulty assumption that all cha

  • Man. There's a business model. (Score:3, Funny)

    by blair1q ( 305137 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @03:53PM (#8659685) Journal

    A book that needs batteries.

    Where's my broker?
  • "display over 10,000 pages on a single set of batteries."

    But how many Libraries of Congress is that?

  • Price, more pictures (Score:5, Informative)

    by zmcnulty ( 548454 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @03:55PM (#8659713) Homepage
    None of the press releases are saying it, but:
    All three of the Impress Watch articles say it will cost around 40,000 yen - approximately $400 USD. And this is just for the reader, subscribing to the e-book service costs $5-10/month. They do, however, have the option of just purchasing single books for 350 yen, about $3.25.

    PC Watch article [impress.co.jp]

    K-Tai Watch article [impress.co.jp]

    Internet Watch article [impress.co.jp]

    There are also MANY more pictures of the device available at the above URLs. There's even some showing a manga on the screen of the thing, for those of you interested in that sort of thing.

    I do have a few pictures posted in my article [techjapan.com] as well, but it's really nothing you couldn't have found yourself.
    • ZMcNulty or Holly Gates, or anyone who's actually gotten to play with one of these things for a minute:

      I'm curious (and I'm sure a lot of people on slashdot are): how long does it take the book to refresh the screen when you turn the page?

      This seems important for two reasons: if it's really slow, like to the point of being a visible lag time, it would be sort of annoying to read a book on it. I used to read ebooks on my PDA, and there were lots of annoying things about that (tft screens suck in bright lig

  • bundle some nice books (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    it would be great if they can bundle good collection of books free with this device, specially the free ones like from project gutenberg. true, people can download their own books too, but it won't cost them a dime if they ship pre-installed or privide removable media with copied books. that would allow them to test the device in the store or during the trial without wasting too much time and money (buying e-books).

    my biggest problem with e-book was that there was no way to try the device without getting l

  • eInk design (Score:3, Interesting)

    by OmniVector ( 569062 ) <see my homepage> on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @04:09PM (#8659858) Homepage
    The way these thing work is pretty cool. You basically have to thin sheets like a sandwitch, and in the middle are tiny little balls that make up the pixels. Each ball contains smaller magnetic material that can cause the ball to display either black or white (depending on which orientation the magnetif field is). Multiply that single ball times a several thousand and you have a very simple low power display device. Most of the other solutions for eInk are the same, and i believe this version was made by MIT.

  • Childrens' spines (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AllenChristopher ( 679129 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @04:12PM (#8659889)
    On of the great health threats facing North Americans today is that we overload our childrens' backpacks. They fardles bear, to grunt and sweat under a weary life.

    That is, the enormous weight of all their books is too much for their tiny frames. With more and more other crap being shoved in there, kids can barely take it. There was once a time that kids could leave their textbooks either at home or school. The kid could take one book home for the homework that night.

    Now, every class assigns twenty minutes of homework every day, even for elementary school kids, and most of the teaching is done directly out of textbooks. That means having all the books in both places. Insanity.

    This sort of thing could change all that. Instead of four thick textbooks, the kid would have a single nice little device... textbook manufacturers won't want to make their books available electronically, but at least the assignments can be sent home this way. All those photocopied sheets and such.

    Many copyright barriers, but luckily, one of the few things that can break through even the most entrenched laws is a serious threat to the health of children.

    • ...the enormous weight of all their books is too much...

      Great. Obese American kids won't have to carry so much. Maybe we can set a world record for the fattest kid(but we probably already have it).

      Hey, we also won't have to burden our "yank-tank" SUVs so much with all the weight of the extra books.

      God bless you, Sony!

  • Any DRM used can be easily broken (Score:3, Funny)

    by pherris ( 314792 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @04:43PM (#8660260) Homepage Journal
    1. Load a page up.
    2. Place face down in scanner.
    3. Scan
    4. OCR
    5. Repeat as needed.

    With that said I hope they don't expend a lot of effort on DRM. BTW, I think I just violated the DMCA.

  • Before you buy any eBook device... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dpbsmith ( 263124 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @04:46PM (#8660298) Homepage
    hear my tale of woe.

    I bought a Nuvomedia Rocket eBook in the year 2000. This is essentially the same device (and is content-compatible with) the Gemstar REB1100. I have bought approximately $400 worth of content for it.

    All of its technical and usability characteristics are quite good. I can read for pleasure on it for extended periods of time and get lost in an immersive reading experience.

    Gemstar has folded their eBook operation and pulled the plug on their servers. The DRM-protected content is keyed to a hardware serial number. When the device finally fails (and its battery life is now down to about half what it was originally), I believe that to all intents and purposes I will lose all access to that paid content.

    Meanwhile, I have 25-year-old paperbacks that continue to be perfectly accessible.

    What is needed to make eBooks popular is not any technology breakthroughs, but something that will hit greedy publishers over the head with a clue-by-four. When strangers see me reading on this thing it is often a conversation-starter. The conversation usually ends when they ask me what eBooks cost. I say "About the same as a hardbound for books that are only out in hardbound, and about the same as a paperback for books that in paper," they stare at me in disbelieve and the conservation ends right there.

    And that doesn't even speak to the issue that I can't lend these books to my wife or my son, and couldn't even if they owned compatible eBook readers.

    • Re:Before you buy any eBook device... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Jason Earl ( 1894 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @05:13PM (#8660633) Homepage Journal

      This is precisely why I am not interested in eBook readers. Not only do you end up with a single purpose device, but you probably get stuck with DRM and Windows-only software as well.

      Personally, I have switched almost 100% to reading on my Visor Handspring (the B&W Clie my last job provided was better, but the Visor is good enough). I only purchase material that is available in open formats (fictionwise.com and baen.com are good sources). Throw in stuff from Project Gutenberg and I have read nearly 100 ebooks to date (and for less than $100 too).

      The benefits of using a PDA are various. I can read in the dark, I always have my reading material with me, and I can read "discreetly." More importantly, 10 years from now I will still have access to all of these books in electronic format. I like reading on my Visor so much that I won't read a new author unless I can get his or her work in an open ebook format first.

  • Butterfly Design? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Akai ( 11434 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @04:52PM (#8660376) Homepage Journal
    First off, this is obviously made for Japanese readers expect the "screen" to be on the right hand side for a US release if it happens.

    That said, the main fault I see with this (aside from aforementioned political ramifications of the maleability of electronic content) is that I'm used to reading books in a "butterfly" style, that is across two pages of an open book.

    If someone were to make one of these with two reading surfaces and a simple "next page" button on the lower right corner (and a previous page on the lower left) and bind it like a book, I would be all over it.

  • Can't thumb through an eBook (Score:3, Interesting)

    by drewhearle ( 753120 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @05:10PM (#8660601) Homepage Journal
    While e-ink is amazing, it'll never (never say never) replace a paper book. It has lots of wonderful uses, and I have nothing against it. It'll just never quite replace paper.

    Take catalogs for example. Sure, you could look up what you want online. I do that almost all the time, and I'd be one of the first to buy a Web-connected e-ink catalog. But when you just want to browse, I can't stand having to click-tap-scroll-push-wheel through the pages. I need to be able to put my thumb on the side of a book, flip through and feel the breeze in my face while watching the pages go by...

    Seriously though, until they can think of a better input device to navigate an eBook, they'll never replace paper. I'll get an eBook. You'll get an eBook. We'll all accept whatever's out there, eventually (we'll probably even begin to like DRM!). But IMHO, paper is here to stay.

  • Still not good enough for Japanese... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by torokun ( 148213 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @05:32PM (#8660876) Homepage
    I might read English on this thing, but if you know Japanese, you can see from the pictures that the resolution is still crap compared to paper. I read almost all my news online, but almost never read sites in Japanese, unless they use flash, because the resolution is just too horrible. You can see from the photos that even a not-so-complex kanji like 'yami' starts to become jumbled together on this thing. Japanese paper printing technology is second to none on the planet. I'm still going to prefer printed Japanese for a long long time (at least 5 years ;).

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