Electronic Paper's Past and Future 154
Iddo Genuth sends us to TFOT for his extended series of interviews around the question of how electronic paper will change our lives in the next few years. The article leads off with the "father of e-paper," Nick Sheridon, who came up with the idea almost 35 years ago at Xerox PARC, and goes on to explore how e-paper may evolve past its current incarnations in the likes of the Sony Reader.
E-Readers (Score:2)
Re:E-Readers (Score:5, Insightful)
I owned a Newton Messagepad back in the day. I've read fiction, non-fiction, short stories, novels, news articles and heaps of other stuff on everything from a PDA to one a laptop connected to Second Life. The only place ebooks have a decent chance of success is to replace the two tons of textbooks most schools require their students to carry. Otherwise it's hard to beat the convenience of Dead Tree Format.
Re:E-Readers (Score:5, Informative)
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Not that it matters much, it will take a lot more before I start buying Sony again. For starters, I'm not going to spend a single cent on a company that calls me a thief [arstechnica.com] for making a legal copy of legally acquired music. That's just sponsering an upcoming lawsuit against myself, which to me seems really stupid.
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Anyway, Sony Music != Sony Electronics, but I understand your point.
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I was boycotting Sony long before that. I've thought their electronics were mostly junk since the mid 1990s.
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Eh, you can, but you're going to get the best results regarding display quality (because you can control font and size), as well as not waiting (feels like an eternity) for the reader to format the file itsel
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for the record, i own one of these, and i absolutely love it. my only real gripe is the lack of backlighting, but i think i might be able to hack something up to make a frontlight that wont send a glare back at me.
I own one as well and can't find anything bad to say about it. Backlighting is currently technically impossible. Since it's e-paper, trying to put a backlight in is like trying to put a backlight on a book. You want to/have to light it up from the front. I use a normal book light for mine.
One thing I want to point out here is that Sony isn't lying about the battery life. One charge lasts me about 10,000 page turns. I've used my reader nearly continuously for ~2 weeks without needing to recharge it.
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For many things, the dead tree format is obsolete. The obvious is simply missed. Newspapers and other formats for distributing the current events is old by the time it's printed. Get a newspaper if you want yesterday's news. Go online (a form of e-paper) and read Google News, Yahoo news, MSN news, API, etc. An offline publication in either a dead tree format or e-paper format is by defenition a record of history, sometimes as recent as a d
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Re:E-Readers (Score:4, Insightful)
I regularly read newspapers that are days old and never minded their lack of "freshness".
Apart from a few very specific things (maybe stock markets or the weather), freshness has no impact on the interest or validity of news.
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Too true. The one major disadvantage of electronic to deadtree is well, cost and disposability. Curl
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Re:E-Readers (Score:4, Interesting)
Depends on the subject. One of the most irritating things about being a law student is that by and large your books go out of date really fast. Almost every book from my undergraduate degree, which I only completed earlier this year, is now in a different edition. E-books would be really useful from our perspective. Not to mention the fact that libraries can only stock a limited number of journals and case-books.
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But who says you would pay 50% for the digital format? Lots of e-books on your favourite torrent site. I have just about every physics and math text I've ever heard of in pdf or djvu format. If a student doesn't have an ethical problem with that then surely paying nothing for something they get to keep is better than paying 30% for something the
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What, you can't sell your texts for 70% of cost? (Score:2)
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If I had the choice, I would go e-book all the way.
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Your average [insert topic here] for Dummies or Learn [insert programming language here] in 21 days book is usually just as expensive as an average college textbook. Colleges tend to get discounts for course books too (at least my University over here in the UK used to) - of course that raises i
sony is not the only option (Score:2, Informative)
I have two models, V8 - which doesn't have an OS and runs on Epson cpu and V3 - that runs LINUX and runs on ARM 200mhz processor.
Both are great. Both have MMC/SD card, no DRM. V3 can display PDF and DJVU files. Both have SDKs for you to tinker with. While V8 is very basic and you have to use ANSI C to code your things, V3 is somewhat more powerful.
Nevertheless, as
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See, for me, the exact opposite is true. I have precious little time for recreational reading these days... But back in college I was a voracious reader. I carried around a Palm PDA loaded up with literally dozens of eBooks. It was terrific to be able to carry around a dozen books in a form factor that
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How about lending them to a friend or selling them after you've finished with them? DRM is not just about copying, it's about total control. When you're dealing with industries that see sharing stuff with friends as lost sales, or considers it stealing to go to the toilet during the ads, I'd rather they didn't have control over the stuff I'm supposed
Other devices might be better (Score:4, Informative)
Bookeen is coming out with their own device any day now that's really similar to the Sony reader but will use different file formats. They all read RTF, TXT, etc... but if you want to buy a new book, it's likely to have DRM in the file. The DRM file format that the Sony uses is different from the DRM files that the Bookeen and Amazon Kindle will use.
The Iliad is bigger and can render letter size PDF files without the hassle of the smaller devices. It has wifi and a writable screen that you can take notes with... but it's supposed to be slower and more than twice as much money.
I want one really bad, but I'm waiting to see what Bookeen and Amazon finally release before I throw down my cash. Sure they're all kind of expensive, but you can load up with free classic books from Project Gutenberg and you'll save money in the long run (if you read a lot and are too lazy/busy to make trips to the library).
http://www.mobileread.com/ [mobileread.com]
http://www.engadget.com/2006/09/11/amazon-kindle-meet-amazons-e-book-reader/ [engadget.com]
http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/03/kindle-edition-books-appear-on-amazon-reader-launch-imminent/ [engadget.com]
http://www.bookeen.com/ [bookeen.com]
http://www.irextechnologies.com/ [irextechnologies.com]
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Sure they're all kind of expensive, but you can load up with free classic books from Project Gutenberg and you'll save money in the long run (if you read a lot and are too lazy/busy to make trips to the library).
QFT, I'm a novels enthusiast but books costs, difficulty to take along and lazyness to go to the book stores makes me read one to two books a year tops, I don't read on a PC cause it really messes my eyes and I don't own a laptop.
I'm waiting for e-ink based devices to grow in popularity, include an optional back light for night reading as the ones I've seen don't come in such a flavor, and for virtual libraries becoming popular web 3.0 era e-businesses. Once all this happen (and we know the last one WILL
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Sure they're all kind of expensive, but you can load up with free classic books from Project Gutenberg and you'll save money in the long run (if you read a lot and are too lazy/busy to make trips to the library).
If you want a break from the classics, you can also get lots of sci-fi and fantasy from baen.com. Much of it is somewhat "pulpish", but I find it entertaining. They sell most all of their books for $4 each DRM-free and in various formats (HTML, RTF, Rocket e-Book, Mobipocket and MS e-book), and they also have a "free library" designed to get you hooked. The free library features books from almost all of their authors, so you can get a good idea about whether or not you like their stuff without spending
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Several years ago I was lucky enough to meet the MIT team that developed eInk. At that time, I saw their little proof of concept device. It was a thin copper strip about four inches long and half an inch wide. Mounted on the strip were four or five square plastic covered blobs that enclosed the eInk ping pong type balls. The balls were half white and half black. There was soldering here and there around the coppe
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Sony's e-paper reader is a disaster, I looked at it at Fry's and couldn't force myself to like it. Ghosting, low contrast, and most unpleasant is the low speed of updates (about 1 second to flip the page, with awful flickering all the way.) It is also a single purpose reader, nothing more. I ended up buying a Sansung Q1 Ultra, it is not perfect but at least it is a usable tablet with a Windows OS so you can load stuff onto it, run Mozilla, do things (802.11 + Bluetooth) and in general I like it.
I prefer a single-purpose reader. In fact, I find a good e-book reader to be a better reading experience than paper. The problem with tablets is battery life. I own a couple of Gemstar e-Book readers, and I really like them. They're light and compact enough that I can carry one in the place of a paperback, backlit so I can read in the dark, have an adjustable font size so I can read at arm's length when that's convenient (for example, while on a treadmill), and only need to be recharged once every wee
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I don't know how the tablet would do, but I would be really wasted after traveling for 12+ hours regardless of access to an AC or DC outlet. I definitely would not want to read for all this time. On a few occasions when I had to cross the Atlantic I read for a while, then slept as much as I could, then it was dinner time, then some work (on a laptop) then some more slumber, then landing. You'd be hit wit
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If you believe there is some other interest group that would favor e-books over paper, I can't find one. Every "normal" book reader would pick a paper book without thinking. That's what libraries have, right? Only a geek would choose an obsc
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Re:E-Readers (Score:5, Informative)
They're actually quite nice.
The e-paper screen is *beautiful*. The only thing you'll miss is a book light. It's very nice and contrasty (but more like black on a dull grey background), and the text isn't buried under glass, but appears on the surface, like real paper. It's a nice matte surface, so glare is a non-issue, and is extremely readable in all lighting conditions except pitch black (like a regular book).
The bad thing - if you want to use its internal memory, you need to use Sony's software (a poor imitation of iTunes). But luckily, it accepts Memory Stick and SD cards. Just plop in it text files, RTF, or PDF files onto your SD card and away you go (making this the OS agnostic way of using it - just need a card reader and external card). The other issue is ghosting - when the screen updates, the parts that were black don't return all the way to background color, but leaves an imprint. Not to worry - another refresh will fix it. Might be slightly irritating if the book lines alternate.
The other bad thing is when it needs to refresh the area - what happens is it inverts the entire screen, then writes the new image to it (in an effort to alleviate the ghosting).
But the screen is really nice, you can easily forget about such issues. Just remember the flashlight if reading beneath the covers.
Re:E-Readers (Score:4, Informative)
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Look for a reb1100 (Score:2)
Mine has been a trooper (Score:2, Interesting)
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I actually prefer my PDFs on the Sony to the native LRF. Yeah, you can resize and reflow the LRF files, but the ebooks I've tried that were LRF based had so much white space that
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The sweetest thing though, is that it runs Linux and has an increasi
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On DRM, the reader's best supported format is the sony one (.lrf files), which provides the best rendering, and which *can* support a DRM laye
it's really one word, (Score:2, Funny)
Two words: porn.
One Question (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:One Question (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, (Score:5, Funny)
Q: When do you predict we will see the real e-paper revolution?
A: It has already started but will become a real mass market in about 2012.
So that 's what the Mayans were worried about!
Can't be had by mortals. (Score:2)
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Not quite as pervasive as paper just yet...
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http://www.irextechnologies.com/products/wheretobuy [irextechnologies.com]
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An electrical engineer should be able to do that for you.
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at least 5 years away (Score:2, Insightful)
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Fragility (Score:2)
People are rough with things. Especially students, one of the ideal user groups for this kind of thing.
The low-power portion is desirable, but my guess is that most of these things will end up in frames.
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But I still like to brag my game manuals or books around though. You see books are not only meant for reading. If one thinks of it as only a reading material, I believe that person had never owned a book. (Cue: Internation Space Station moisture problem
Giveaways (Score:2)
They'll stop giving them away when a "hack" appears online to add battery life, memory, rewrite the OS, etc.
I don't know... (Score:5, Interesting)
I came to this realization when I looked at the new 505 revision of the Sony Reader's marketing, and it occurred to me that I'd rather get an iPod touch. Recharging every few days instead of every few months is a sacrifice I'd be willing to make for real web content and video (while Sony could probably put some sort of basic very-static web browser on it's reader despite the display's low refresh rate if they wanted to support HTML, video and quick interactivity are going to be out of the question until there are fairly major changes in the display technology). And, as more and more content moves online, from static paper to dynamic computer screens, moving content is only getting more prevalent (rollovers, pull-down menus, AJAX widgets of all sorts, and even content in flash and other plug-ins)...
I kind of suspect that e-paper has missed the window where it could have widely succeeded with a refresh rate measured in seconds rather than milliseconds. Stable-image type displays may have to get their refresh rates down into the low-double-digit milliseconds (and coincidentally gain high bit depth color and decent contrast) before they can take on to the mainstream.
Re:I don't know... (Score:5, Informative)
The Sony screen is 6.9" x 3.9", whereas the iPod Touch's is like 3.5" x 2.2" -- not even close. Add to that it is usable in full, direct sunlight and has an almost 180 degree viewing angle and much higher contrast ratio and for READING, not browsing, ePaper blows the iPod (and iPhone) out of the water.
Screw web content. Believe it or not there are people with attention spans not defined by MTV. Try a few of these [literature.org] on the iPod Touch and then the Sony, then get back to me.
Totally different targets.
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In fact, what matters most for reading is that the device is pocketable, and a small screen device is far superior to imitation books.
Re:I don't know... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Talk about stating the obvious.
There's nothing more annoying than trying to read a novel while pressing a button each time one has read 5 or 10 lines of text.
I can think of plenty of things more annoying, like not having the book on me in the first place, having to deal with slow refresh, carrying multiple devices, etc.
It's an optimization between portability factor and annoyance.
Given that pushing a
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There are advantages to the Palm, primarily the fact that it *is* in my pocket, so it's nearly always available. If I find myself somewhere with a little time to kill, I can always reach in and read on the Palm -- I generally have two or three books residing on it.
On the other hand, the Sony is a bit large to carry in a normal pocket. In the winter, if I'm wearing a coat, it will fit in an inside jacket pocket (if a mass market paperback
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And, having played with a Sony Reader (the 500 model) for a while, I can definitely say that it does not have a "much higher
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It's called e-paper for a reason. (Score:4, Insightful)
I am an avid ebook reader using Palms for the purpose for years, but as soon as I can get an e-paper reader without stupid limitations at a reasonable price (which for me is anything south of 250eur), I'll go that route. I mean, that would be the best of both world: paper book with the ability to (non-destructivelly) bookmark, annotate, search, copy text at will.
Robert
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What software do you use, and where do you get your books from? One of the main reasons I bought a Treo was to use it as an E-book reader, and I have been very disappointed. I have tried e-reader, adobe reader, plucker, and a few others, but found them all to be disappointing- either annoying conversion programs are required, or the text is just unbearable to read (scrolling every 5 lines or so gets old quick).
Ebook Reader for Palm OS. (Score:2)
The only thing Palm Fiction lacks IMO is webpage and documentation in English
Of course it doesn't read any proprietary, encrypted formats, but since I'v
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While it may be true that the current e-paper projects aren't looking to replace computer screens, the technology will eventually be incorporated into them. If it's easier to read e-paper than an LCD screen due to better contrast and less glare, then why would people continue using LCDs?
Re:I don't know... (Score:4, Insightful)
There are two significant advantages to epaper that LCDs and OLED's simply cannot match.
One, epaper is a reflective technology, rather than emmissive, so the brighter the area in which one views it the better (just like a book).
Two, epaper draws no power whatsoever to maintain a static display, none, zero, zilch. It only requires power to update the display. Once changed to what is desired, the power source could be disconnected entirely and the last image stored on the display would remain. No powered display technology can top that.
Refresh rate is not a huge issue for epaper, as long as it is geared towards displaying content that is relatively static.
So the biggest problems with the technology are just poor resolution and the price for color displays. Even more unfortunately, these areas do not seem to be improving at a promising rate.
Who cares? (Score:2, Insightful)
To largely replace paper books we need a minimum of large size, lots of contrast, rugged construction, light weight, and generally usable anywhere for long periods of time. We are no where *near* that. Add in cost and being able to make marks on it being a requirement for many applications and we have some real issues.
Size, rugged, and battery life do not go together. I need som
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I thought these epaper device
Price (Score:2, Interesting)
There are tons of copy right expired content online. I can't wait to curl up on the couch and read a good classic novel.
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http://www.sonycard.sony.com/sonygateway/gateway.aspx?offerlink=iklipze [sony.com]
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Go to Amazon and check out something like Dover Thrift editions and for your $199 you could have around 80 - 100 good classic novels right now to curl up with.
The Pros and Cons of Epaper (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't think epaper will make a huge difference in our life in the years to come. The biggest reason is that it's overpriced. A laptop is a good example. Laptops go from $400 to thousands. On the upside, they will save you money after you have used at least 400000 (four hundred thousand) sheets of paper roughly. It is also more environmentally friendly and efficient. Not to mention more organized and smaller! However you've also got battery life... It works just as well without the price and no batteries r
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Backwards (Score:2, Interesting)
People from 20 years in the future will laugh at us for our crappy IO devices. Still, they'll all
e-Paper is like Linux on the desktop (Score:2)
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I own one and use it constantly for reading project Gutenberg texts (pre rendered for the device and downloaded from ht [mobileread.com]
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Well, it might (Score:2)
Change our lives in the next few years (hey that is what the article says, blame the editors)? Might be tricky, since we don't actually have e-paper available right now, and no clear date when it will be either, how exactly is it going to chance our lives?
THE BLOODY STUFF DOESN'T EXIST YET.
I am sure a cure for cancer will change our lives, but it doesn't exist yet, so it won't be in the next few years.
Real paper is incredibily cheap and can be easily recycled, do we really want to replace it with somethi
e-voting? (Score:2)
We've heard this before and it means.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not a tree hugger as trees are just crops that take monger to harvest, but the point is clear.
Stuff e-books, I want e-wallpaper! (Score:2)
With the added bonus that if I don't like how it looks, I'm not stuck with it until I can afford the time/money to do it again.
e-face (Score:2)
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"epaper" == "Polavision" (Score:4, Interesting)
Fast-forward several years. "Browsing devices" are the "VHS moviecams" to epaper's version of Polavision. Before anyone starts ranting against web-browsers, let me point out...
- the ORIGINAL web, as developed at CERN, was text-only with browsers like lynx
- you can read files on your local drive with Firefox or IE or Lynx
Note that I said "browsing devices", not PDAs, or micro-laptops. I think that cellphones with browsers are going to be far more of an epaper-killer than laptops...- there are a lot more people already lugging around cellphones/smartphones than will ever buy single-purpose "ebook readers"
- many cellphones/smartphones already have browsers built-in
Which do you think the average person WHO IS ALREADY LUGGING AROUND A CELLPHONE/SMARTPHONE more likely to do for casual reading...- buy yet another $200 device that they have to lug around, or
- use the cellphone/smartphone THEY'VE ALREADY PAID FOR AND THEY'RE ALREADY LUGGING AROUND to accomplish the same task
In a world where cellphones/smartphones/PDAs do not exist, a $200 stand-alone "ebook-reader" might have a market. In today's world, fuggedaboutit. Most people will end up sticking a USB stick into a cellphone/smartphone/PDA and reading text directly with their browser. Verizon subscribers, however, will find that their cellphones are crippled, and they have to upload the file to their account, and Verizon will charge them by the kbyte for the uploads.Re: (Score:2)
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Do I have to put my text in bold as well to yell back again?
Application? (Score:2)
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Sony PRS-505 ebook reader at Borders (Score:4, Insightful)
The local Borders store set up a display w/ one of these yesterday and I spent a while playing with it. Initial impressions:
- nice size, _very_ thin
- crisp, sharp greyscale display --- very readable
- uses GPL software (there's a list of utilities in the user manual as well as notes on where to d/l the source for the software)
- decent interface w/ sensible buttons and okay layout
- supports pdf, txt, rtf, bmp, jpeg, gif and png files as well as the proprietar? BBeB books (.lrf and
- plays mp3s
- switches from portrait to landscape and back quite easily
- nice magnification mode
On the downside:
- ~2--3 seconds to switch from one page to another sometimes one gets a distracting flashing
- sometimes one gets ``ghosting'' if the new page has a lot of white space where text or image was before
- the text H&J when displaying text files and
- the font used for displaying rtfs uses oblique, not italic for emphasis
- sidebars of some of the text font characters, ``i'' most egregiously is not good resulting in poorly spaced text
- urls in
- while one can play an mp3 while reading, controlling the mp3 functions require going all the way back to the main menu --- would've been better to've over-ridden the number buttons for use as audio controls while an mp3 is playing.
One can't help but wonder if the status bar at the bottom can be turned off --- it displays a persistent page number --- perhaps people will format
More information on the reader at:
http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&categoryId=16184 [sonystyle.com]
Apparently this is an updated model and the text updating used to be even slower.
Borders didn't seem to have a mechanism for selling BBeB books in their stores though which is strange since they can be stored on memory cards (Sony proprietary sticks and SD memory cards).
William
(who found it inspiring enough to want to put some more effort into getting his Fujitsu Stylistic to boot off of a compact flash card in a CF-IDE adapter, since he uses that to read a _lot_ of ebooks and the hard drive noise is distracting (and to make them, see http://members.aol.com/willadams/portfolio.html [aol.com] which includes my version of _The Book of Tea_ which is in the TeX Showcase))
The best e-book...is a book (Score:2)
None of the examples given in the article embody my ideal electronic ink application; none of these devices would come even close to getting me to give up paper books. I think Neal Stephenson had it right in his novel Diamond Age: an e-book should look and act just like a paper book—with some additional benefits, of course. The format could be anything between a small, thin, pocket-size paperback or something like an unabridged desk dictionary. There would be maybe a hundred pages or so in the ebook I
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can I wipe my ass with it?
can I wrap fish with it?
can I spank the puppy with it?
will the puppy poop on it?
can I roll a doobie with it?
until these technical obstacles are overcome I think we should hold off adoption.