Why Kindle 2's Screen Took 12 Years and $150 Million 524
waderoush writes "Critics are eating up everything about Amazon's Kindle 2 e-book reader except its $359 price tag. But if you think that's expensive, take a look behind the Kindle at E Ink, the Cambridge, MA, company that has spent $150 million since 1997 developing the electronic paper display that is the Kindle's coolest feature. In the company's first interview since the Kindle 2 came out, E Ink CEO Russ Wilcox says it took far longer than expected to make the microcapsule-based e-paper film not only legible, but durable and manufacturable. Now that the Kindle 2 is finally getting readers to take e-books seriously, however, Wilcox says he sees a profitable future in which many book, magazine, and newspaper publishers will turn to e-paper, if only to save money on printing and delivery. (Silicon Alley Insider recently calculated that the New York Times could save more than $300 million a year by shutting down its presses and buying every subscriber a Kindle). 'What we've got here is a technology that could be saving the world $80 billion a year,' Wilcox says."
purell (Score:5, Funny)
Re:purell (Score:5, Informative)
'What we've got here is a technology that could be saving the world $80 billion a year,' Wilcox says."
Anyone able to translate that into number of trees saved? Not only does it save trees but the chemistry involved in making paper is horrible. Even with new process'. http://portal.acs.org/portal/acs/corg/content?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=PP_ARTICLEMAIN&node_id=1188&content_id=CTP_003400&use_sec=true&sec_url_var=region1&__uuid=b6dfb0f1-988d-4fd1-96e3-8856d0b81993 [acs.org]
Re:purell (Score:5, Funny)
That assumes that some of us won't cut down trees just for the fun of it.
You're speaking with someone who lit a tire on Earth Day just because it pissed off the hippies in the neighborhood.
Re:purell (Score:5, Funny)
I also tried to do the same thing last year. Except that I'm Canadian.
The police didn't find it funny that I tried to burn a Canadian Tire on Earth Day just to piss off the hippies in the neighborhood.
Re:purell (Score:5, Funny)
You guys scare me....Canadians I mean.
90% of you live within 10 miles of our border.
Are you guys getting ready to invade?
Re:purell (Score:5, Funny)
Re:purell (Score:5, Funny)
Are we about to be invaded by people wearing hockey masks? Chain saws optional?
Not too worried... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Glad to see I'm not the only one who reads QC.
Re:purell (Score:5, Funny)
The last time I tried to get into Canada, I was turned back at the border, so I have no idea how many are up there.
Next time, I'll try growing a mullet to bypass the checks at the border
(Mullet == Canadian Passport).
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:purell (Score:5, Funny)
But be careful. If you die in Canada, you die in real life too.
Re:purell (Score:5, Informative)
Har har har... burning a Canadian Tire...
For people not from Canada: http://www.canadiantire.ca/ [canadiantire.ca]
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
actually if you click the "Looking for company info? Click here" button you get company info where you can find nuggets of wisdom such as
"Canadian Tire has a long-standing tradition of operating with integrity and we aspire to be Canadaâ(TM)s most trusted company. We expect each of our team members to perform in a manner that maintains the trust and confidence of our shareholders"
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You're speaking with someone who lit a tire on Earth Day just because it pissed off the hippies in the neighborhood.
What an iconoclast you are. Do you also piss in people's beer at the pub just because they don't like it?
Your parents must be so proud of their contribution to the gene pool.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not pissed off, but I am shocked that someone would brag about such idiocy. What what could be more pathetic than engaging in destructive behavior just because other people don't like it?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
that's two hippies with a single stone!
No, that's two hippies with a single tire!
Re:purell (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone able to translate that into number of trees saved?
Once again, these trees are not from clear-cut tropical forests made into farmland for subsistence farming. These trees are most likely in areas managed by forestry companies who plant at least as many trees as they cut.
There are regulations in western countries and the forestry companies would be putting themselves out of business if they cut down all the trees.
Re:purell (Score:5, Funny)
Re:purell (Score:5, Insightful)
Trees can be replaced easily. Forest ecosystems can't. If we use fewer trees, we can let some tree farms begin the slow, slow process of returning to being actual forests.
A tree farm is NOT a forest.
Re:purell (Score:5, Insightful)
I drive past a tree farm on a regular basis. If it were shut down, it wouldn't return to forest. It would return to semi-desert scrubland. The only reason there's a tree farm there is because it's just up the hill from the fourth-largest river in the United States. Most places where trees are farmed for paper are like this: take a chunk of cheap land with good irrigation, plant a bunch of fast-growing trees, and harvest them every 15 years or so.
Trees farmed for lumber are different: since they grow slowly and need to be larger to produce worthwhile products, they're usually grown in places where trees would naturally grow.
Re:purell (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, forest ecosystems rely on destruction every few years to clear out the ground clutter and dead trees. This used to be accomplished by fire, but then we started putting these fires out. Then, we logged them, so everything was in a balance.. but in the mid 90's or so, we stopped logging because of environmental reasons in the west, and over the last few years, we have had HUGE fires on the west coast. Logging or fire was the only way to kill the western pine beetle. With no logging, and putting out the fires combined, HUGE sections of the forest are dying. Near where I used to live in Oregon, there was a stand of dead trees that was measured in hundreds of square miles from the beetle. within the next few years, its going to be an insane forest fire.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
In the case of Indonesia, the rainforest is being cut illegally to supply China with wood and paper (and hence US bound products). You can't just "replant" an ecosystem like a rainforest because it has a lot of fragile symbiotic relationships. Once its gone, it becomes cattle grazing land (see australia or southern mexico for examples).
This is why Forest Stewardship Council lumber and paper products should be promoted. http://www.fsc.org/ [fsc.org]
Re:purell (Score:5, Insightful)
So let me get this right: because there's currently a plan associated with gathering a resource, it is wrong to economize the use of that resource? And that companies deserve protection from becoming obsolete?
No, he's saying that because there's currently a plan associated with gathering a resource that's directly proportional to it's replacement that economizing use will not "save trees". If demand goes down fewer trees will be cut and hence fewer will be planted. The trees saved are those that would never have been planted. Trust me that those that find vast percentages of their land not profitable due to increased supply will still chop down the trees and perhaps do something more economically viable with the land.
Buggy-whips and Whale-bone are simply not in demand. Leather for the whips diverted to other things and whale bones are as well.
Re:purell (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's the thing: you're assuming all trees cut down and processed into paper are grown on land owned by paper manufacturers and mills. You're also assuming that replanting always occurs.
What actually happens is a little different. Let's say I'm a company, and I happen to--for some reason--own a forest. Perhaps I use it for experiments, perhaps for milling. I replant because I have an incentive to keep processing wood or using the forest.
I go bankrupt or get bought.
Now these "friendly" fellows called Asset Strippers come in. They do just as their name implies...and strip my assets. This means removing every conceivable resource from the land, and then selling it for as much money as possible.
The truth is that there hasn't been any money in cutting down forests as a sustainable business for about 10-15 years. So a lot of forestry these days is a consequence of asset stripping, rather than any normal business practice. If the bottom dropped out on timber for paper use, you'd probably see clearcutting from asset strippers cease because the cost of the logging would be greater than the profit to be reaped.
Boom! Problem solved and explained.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Why wouldn't a drop in the paper market cause more wood suppliers to go backrupt, and have their forests stripped?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Old growth forests have maximized the amount of carbon they will ever sequester and don't even really provide a lot of oxygen to the environment (compared to other sources). Cutting them down is not inherently bad, as long as you aren't freeing up that carbon--if you're making paper or wooden products out of the trees (two-by-fours, chairs, whatever), it's fine.
At any rate, American logging companies at least plant more trees than they ever plan to harvest.
Re:purell (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:purell (Score:4, Funny)
Old growth forests have maximized the amount of carbon they will ever sequester and don't even really provide a lot of oxygen to the environment (compared to other sources). Cutting them down is not inherently bad, as long as you aren't freeing up that carbon--if you're making paper or wooden products out of the trees (two-by-fours, chairs, whatever), it's fine.
killing endangered animals is not inherently bad either. As long as all the elephants and tigers have their carbon properly sequestered into house hold products or jewelry it's fine.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Why? trees saved means nothing. Most paper come from managed forests that are replanted after harvest.
Most of the destructive tree cutting comes from land clearing for useless things like Golf courses, Subdivisions, Farms, and industry.
The logging industry is the most "GREEN" industry you can get, they understand conservation.
not sure this would be a net improvement (Score:3, Insightful)
The number of trees saved will probably be around zero, since newsprint's wood source is almost exclusively tree farms. If demand for wood from tree farms decreased, they'd probably be cut down and turned to some other use, like farms of the non-tree variety.
The other environmental effects are trickier to sort out. Paper, as you point out, uses lots of nasty chemicals. But then so does manufacturing electronics, and mining the various metals that go into electronics manufacturing. Disposing of electronics,
Re:purell (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only does it save trees but the chemistry involved in making paper is horrible. Even with new process'
The process for making plastic, circuit boards, and e-paper in the kindle is cleaner how?
Re:purell (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Purell this week announces that it is suing Amazon and E-Ink for disrupting their hand sanitizer <del>racket</del>business.
Sold (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Sold (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Sold (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sold (Score:4, Funny)
Oh noes (Score:5, Funny)
eInk will never replace newspaper!
How will we start beach bonfires? What will we line the bottom of the bird cage with? What will we do when we forget our umbrellas? What will we put under kitty's food bowl? What will we roll up and smack our friends with? How will we "copy" things with Silly Putty?
Re:Oh noes (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oh noes (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Oh noes (Score:5, Funny)
sudo mod me up
sudo make me a sandwich, and I'll mod you up.
Re: (Score:2)
How will we start beach bonfires?
Gasoline.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
How will we start beach bonfires?
short the battery and stuff it under the wood. you'll have a fire soon.
What will we line the bottom of the bird cage with?
flexible plastic that you clean off. Why are you looking for a wasteful solution?
What will we do when we forget our umbrellas?
Get wet.
What will we roll up and smack our friends with?
Hit them with the kindle. or better yet a panasonic toughbook. They wont forget that one and you wont damage anything important.
Re:Oh noes (Score:5, Funny)
> How will we start beach bonfires?
Kindle boxes!
> What will we line the bottom of the bird cage with?
Kindles!
> What will we do when we forget our umbrellas?
Kindles!
> What will we put under kitty's food bowl?
Kindles!
> What will we roll up and smack our friends with?
Kindles! (bonus for harder smackability)
> How will we "copy" things with Silly Putty?
Damn, you got me there. I knew there was something wrong with this Kindle-utopia. :-)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
How will we start beach bonfires?
Or, indeed, our charcoal grill chimney starters [wikipedia.org]?
Fortunately, the end of newspapers arrived almost a decade ago at our house. The workaround I use for the chimney starter is that I hold a propane plumbing torch under it for a minute or so. It's actually more reliable than the paper was anyway.
Now if only I could come up with something like a "charcoal starter stand" that would hold the chimney starter over a natural gas flame for a minute (plumbed from the house gas lines), that would be really convenient.
outsourcing cheaper: News at 11 (Score:4, Interesting)
"(Silicon Alley Insider recently calculated that the New York Times could save more than $300 million a year by shutting down its presses and buying every subscriber a Kindle)."
Third world labourers wage bills significantly lower than those in developed countries: your company will save money by closing down local presses and giving people output from developing countries.
More news on this channel shortly, don't look away!
Re: (Score:2)
Re:outsourcing cheaper: News at 11 (Score:4, Interesting)
Costs or Price? (Score:4, Insightful)
Their costs may drop but are we going to see a reduction in price? If the Music industry is any indication we'll pay more for the 'ability' to use the Kindle.
Vinyl records were large, required manufacturing and shipping. MP3s only require bandwidth and a server. (Which isn't free, but much cheaper, and scales up much better). With the whole TTS issue I'm guessing that the Printing industry is going to copy the Music industry (and Video industry)...
As a Heads Up (Score:5, Informative)
For anyone interested, Jeff Bezos [wikipedia.org] is scheduled to appear tonight on Charlie Rose [charlierose.com] on your local PBS [wikipedia.org] station.
No doubt, he'll spend most of his time talking about Kindle.
Daily Show appearance (Score:5, Insightful)
Jeff Bezos also appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart a couple days ago. Jon gave him a hard time about how you have to pay $359 just for the device and another $10 per book (some of which are DRM'ed). Mr. Bezos didn't have a good response.
What I think he should have pointed out is that The Daily Show interviews many authors and it would really be nice to hear about a new book, download it, and start reading it in minutes rather than wait a few days for it to arrive in the mail.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
it would really be nice to hear about a new book, download it, and start reading it in minutes rather than wait a few days for it to arrive in the mail.
Yeah! Fuck you, patience.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Additionally, from interviews that I see on the Daily Show, John Stewart can sometimes be a bit overbearing so being able to get some of the points you would like to as the interview
how long before we spammed to death on Kindle? (Score:2)
Kindle currently uses a paid-subscription model instead of ads. And quite a pricey one for the Times at $14 a month. I'd go broke if I got everything I read
Re: (Score:2)
> Kindle currently uses a paid-subscription model instead of ads.
Oh Yeah, that will last. Riiiiight!
I guess this explains... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The Motorola F3 [motorola.com] has a (fairly rudimentary) E-Ink display, and only costs about $25 for an unlocked handset.
If they can get these things in a lot of devices, the $150mil R&D should be easily recoverable. Remember that the Kindle also includes a wireless modem, storage, and a decent amount of processing power.
Saving or just another Lock In (Score:3, Insightful)
> What we've got here is a technology that could be saving the world $80 billion a year,' Wilcox says."
Really?
What happened to the 80 billion worth of printers, loggers, paper mills, transport, and fish-wrappers? Did they all go on Welfare so we can ship their jobs overseas to the Kindle manufacturing countries?
News print is a renewable resource. Is the Plastic in Kindle?
You can look around the ads (or read them as you see fit) in newsprint.
Will you be able to do that on the Kindle when corporate sponsors for media grab control of the device and make you stare at an advertisement for 6 seconds prior to viewing the content of a story?
Kindle might be great for books, but remember, its principal reason for being is to enforce DRM, to keep the book you bought on ONE device, to prevent sharing, or even transfer.
Netbooks is where mass media is going. And once you have a netbook, who needs a Kindle.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Saving or just another Lock In (Score:5, Insightful)
You make a good point about DRM and closed systems.
However, your first point about loggers and paper mills is lost on me. Is is my moral duty to buy paper books so a logger can keep his current job? Was Henry Ford a bad person because he destroyed the demand for blacksmiths in the United States?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Netbooks is where mass media is going. And once you have a netbook, who needs a Kindle.
Kindles do have some features that your netbook probably doesn't. For one, it's very light, thin, and doesn't require you to open it like a clamshell device. Second, it has electronic ink, which lowers power consumption and supposedly is much easier on the eyes. Also, I've read that you get free wireless internet (via cell phone networks) to download books and such wherever you are.
Now I don't know whether Kindles will ultimately do very well, but they aren't the same sort of device as a netbook.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They're not comparable. Your average netbook has a battery life measured in hours. The Kindle's battery lasts over 30 hours. In addition, people report that the display is much more comfortable to read for long periods.
And of course, the kindle is smaller and lighter, and includes free 3G internet access.
Different tools for different jobs.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So after stating that they are not comparable, you proceed to compare them??
You make far too much of mere temporal technical issues. Display technology, battery run time, and form factors change all the time. The netbook does so much more than a kindle.
DRM for books :( (Score:2, Insightful)
They've already tried to put DRM on these things, what makes you think they'll stop? This is just another attempt at turning book ownership into the same thing music ownership has become :(
hrmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
I've not yet had a chance to check one of these out. As I understand it, the look and feel of reading the eink display is just like reading bright white paper fresh from the laser printer. I've never had problems reading text on computer screens for long stretches but many people say it causes eye strain for them.
I'm curious as to how this technology scales. It boggles the mind to think it took that much time and money to develop but now that they have it, how cheap can they make it? Could they get the readers down to a more reasonable cost? And what about the books? I have no problem paying a buck or two for a rental like getting a movie out of a DVD kiosk -- I only have the dvd for a limited time, would have to pay again if I wanted it later, and have nothing to physically show for it. I feel more possessive when talking about books, especially books with DRM. DRM, unless you hack it, means your purchase is as impermanent as a rental and renting a book for $9.99 is a pretty damn expensive proposition.
This also brings us back to the issue of resale. There are so many books available on Amazon for what essentially boils down to shipping and handling. I can find even recent books for 75% off the cover price. If physical books are no longer printed or printed in far smaller runs, this means that the secondary market collapses. I can't borrow a book from a friend after they read it. I can't sell the book to a bookstore when I'm done. If my friend wants a copy, he's paying $9.99 the same as I did.
I don't know how this is all going to shake down but it'll certainly be an interesting fight.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
As a fellow book cheapskate I agree that is a little frightening. Hopefully the efficiency of electronic delivery, combined with the market forces of supply and demand, will force e-publishers to lower their prices after a book is a few months old. (Though I realize this has been a long-running issue with iTunes with many objecting to graduated pricing.)
If nothing else, look at it thi
Re:hrmmm (Score:5, Informative)
I've not held one nor seen one update the screen, so I can't speak to those attributes. But I have seen the screen and it is nothing like black text on bright white paper. It's like black text on drab gray paper, it's too low contrast to have any appeal over a printed book. If the reader was priced at $9.99, and a had large selection of $1-$2 books were available (pot-boilers and other commuter fare), I think it would take over the world in short order, but it's just not nearly as user friendly for most people as a book. For blind people and those with the kinds of motor function impairments that make holding a book or turning the pages difficult or impossible it is probably a great improvement, so I wouldn't say it will have no market after the fad fades. And it is of course possible that the display quality and price will improve greatly in the next year or two.
Re:hrmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
My wife's Kindle showed up yesterday. I was blown away by the display. At one time, it looks like a fake image plastered on top of the case AND like an actual printed page. Watching it redraw the screen is the only time you realize that this isn't a static picture. There's absolutely no flicker in the foreground or background.
She read hers for a couple of hours last night and only put it down when she nearly fell asleep. I think it's easier on the eyes than any other electronic device I've seen.
As to the price tags, yes, new books are typically $9.99, but they have a large back catalog. My wife found several short stories for $0.45 each, and some other, older novels in the $4-5 range.
[disclaimer]I'm not an Amazon fanboy...[/disclaimer]
content is still too pricey (Score:2)
Don't want one (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but as cool as I think the concept of e-Ink really is, I can't get past the fact that native Kindle books are tied to your Amazon account. The Kindle represents an attack on the first sale doctrine, and I refuse to support it to the tune of $400 plus the price of crippled books.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Check out www.scribd.com then :)
ob. xkcd (Score:5, Funny)
Good, but no cigar. (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
the summary doesn't seem to indicate that while saving tons on cars per year, you'll be costing businesses down the line money, lost jobs (think feed, blacksmithing, carriage repairs), etc.... So while it may save one type of business, it may put others on the street.
Re: Broken Window Fallacy (Score:3, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window [wikipedia.org]
Re:While good in one way (Score:5, Funny)
But I have an even better idea. Why don't we use our military to evacuate cities and then destroy them. Think of all the jobs that will be created in the evacuation, military, and construction industries!
Re:While good in one way (Score:4, Informative)
Your argument seems to me like an instance of the Broken Window Fallacy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window [wikipedia.org].
Re:While good in one way (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:While good in one way (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You just won 5,000,000 internets.
It would have been 10,000,000 if you'd gone further and mentioned 1984 and DRM.
Re:While good in one way (Score:4, Funny)
You seem to think that discussions here always wind up with the same old erroneous arguments. If that were the case, Slashdot would lose its common carrier status.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, he's right. "lost jobs" due to technology upgrades are not costs. To be sure, they are not good for the people who lose the jobs, but society as a whole benefits: those people are now freed to do something else, increasing the net wealth available to everyone.
It doesn't map perfectly to the broken window fallacy, but it is certainly well related.
If you always count "lost jobs" as costs, you'll never get beyond Mennonite colony levels of lifestyles. Come to think of it, you'll never get UP TO that lev
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Right, in fact technology will get to a point where we will need to become a lot more socialist in our care for people.
Lets talk about robots.
Lets say I make a robot that can run the grill and fry stations at a fast food joint.
Lets say the cost 25G a piece.
I would displace nearly all worker who worked those stations. that approx 125,000 workers at Mcdonalds alone.
Using modern methods of manufacturing, I wouldn't needs half that number to build and maintain those robots.
If the robots had the capabilities of
Re:While good in one way (Score:5, Insightful)
the summary doesn't seem to indicate that while saving tons on printing press per year, you'll be costing businesses down the line money, lost jobs (think ink, delivery, machinery engineers), etc.... So while it may save one type of business, it may put others on the street.
Like pretty much any other invention in the history of humanity, it may cost someone his (before, profitable) business model, but ultimately it benefits everyone on a much larger scale. This goes for telephone, automobile, airplane, TV, Internet...
Re:While good in one way (Score:5, Insightful)
Shall I send you a buggy whip, sir?
The math is simple. Say your subscription to the NY Times costs $1 per day, $365 per year. That's a Kindle. Even if you replace them every two years, and pay retail for them (which are both unlikely) you're still coming out on top if you give them away.
I'm sorry, but we shouldn't support a business model if it's grossly inefficient, not in this day and age.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I'm sorry, you are the one that's working under an incorrect assumption.
You ASSUME you'll be able to BUY a Kindle2. ;-)
The Kindle 1 was almost never in stock...and I looked often.
It was always on a pre-order basis.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It was always on a pre-order basis. ;-)
Does that mean that, if you order one, you'll eventually get one? Just not right away?
Either way, if there were enough buyers, I'm sure Amazon would ramp up production. When there are shortages like this, it's often because they don't want to ramp up production too much and then end up with a surplus they can't sell.
Re: (Score:2)
That's really just another way of stating the broken window fallacy. One business saving money isn't bad for the economy because it just moves money around. The times could lower their subscription costs or invest the money elsewhere, either way the money will end up back in the economy somehow.
Forcing one business to pay money for something that it doesn't really need doesn't help the economy. Imagine if everyone got their NY Times through the Kindle, would you suggest returning to print to boost the ec
Re: (Score:2)
So? The car industry drove buggy manufacturers and their suppliers out of business, and we got along just fine without them. Adapt or die.
Re: (Score:2)
Your point about ad revenue is well made, even if you predicted the wrong result.
Ads will infest the Kindle. But since its off-line, they will be bigger, more intrusive, and fully embedded. Your 10 paragraph news story will come with 10 megabytes of ads.
The revenue stream lives on. Fear not.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, I don't think you went far enough.
Kindle2 == Steak knife (good at one thing)
Netbook == Swiss Army Knife (pretty good at a BUNCH of things)
Kindle2 price is equivilent to a Netbook
For me, the netbook makes more sense for the money.
If the Kindle was $50, then fine.
But it's too much for a single purpose item of that sort.
Re:Stupid=Kindle, Stupider=2 (Score:4, Insightful)
Netbooks have a fraction of the battery life, are heavier, are bigger, and are harder to read for long periods of time.
Try to spend 12 hours on the beach reading from a netbook, and from a Kindle. You'll see the difference.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You somehow forgot to mention that it requires a freaking booklight to read in the dark.
The most absurd facet of the thing if you ask me.
I still prefer my Nokia N810 [wikipedia.org] device with software ebook reader FBReader [fbreader.org]. I can set the display to red text on a black background and reap the following benefits:
For a $360 device that uses electronic paper I'
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You somehow forgot to mention that it requires a freaking booklight to read in the dark.
Yeah, that's because it doesn't shine a powerful backlight right into your eyes - which is not good for the eyes in general, and particularly so if you do that in darkness.
Seriously, do not stare into bright screens when the environment is dark (such as reading from a lit screen at night in a room with no lights). No color combination will solve this problem, though some are better than others (as you say yourself). If you care about your vision, then keep in mind that the only right way to read is with a p
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
My wife an I like flipping through the Sunday paper over pancakes, handing sections back and forth, pointing out stories to each other, she likes cutting coupons, flipping through the sales circulars. I just don't think all that works as well in E-form.
Re:Still shouldn't cost almost 400 (Score:4, Funny)
Greed? How so?
It's basic economics of supply and demand. There is no more "Greed" in the equation than that of the publishers selling paper books at $20, they have their margins and operating costs.
My guess is what your definition of greed is, "It's a toy that I can't justify for the price, though I might like to have it if it was cheaper".
Sounds more like your crying 'sour grapes' to me.