More On enTourage's Dual-screen E-Book Reader

Barence writes with some more information on a device mentioned in passing earlier today: "The enTourage eDGe eBook reader was the highlight of the CES Unveiled event, which gives journalists a sneak preview of what’s set to appear this year’s show. It has a 9.7in e-paper display on one side and a 10.1in LCD screen on the other, both of which are touchscreens, allowing you to annotate eBooks with handwritten notes or scan through web pages with the flick of a finger on the LCD screen. In a brief hands-on demonstration, the eDGe showed several clever touches, such as allowing you to perform a Google search on the term using the built-in web browser, and then link the search results to the eBook page, which is a great research tool for students reading academic texts. It's an Android device, too."

Inspector Gadget - Penny's computer book

[jmcbain]

I am seriously dating myself here. I've always wanted the computer [tumblr.com] book [tumblr.com] used by Penny from the Inspector Gadget cartoon. I always thought that was the ideal form factor for a PDA/computer. The closest thing I ever found was the HP-28 calculator [wikipedia.org], but that's been out of production for over a decade. Now finally! we are getting it.

No matter what this thing does...

[d474]

...it is a very ugly piece of hardware. The silver plastic looks cheap, and the wide frame surrounding the screens is a major step backwards in display design. I would be shocked if this ugly mid-90's looking DS tablet sells well at all.

Design is important in hardware sales because it creates the emotional response in the potential customer. Even if logic dictates that this is a "good" piece of hardware, emotion will over rule it by saying, "yeah, but it's kind of ugly, so it can't be that good...". And emotion is always what wins over the masses.

Re:Dual screens -- Neat idea

[geekoid]

"maybe I'm just bothered by the slow page update time."

It's faster thena human turing a page. It's just that you have learned to ignore the effects of page turning. It's like reading with sonmeone else and watching them turn the page. If you arn't used to it, it will seem slow.

ebooks are about being digital books, not about competing with a laptop.

Say what you want, eBooks are easier to use like a regular book then any laptop.

Re:Dual screens -- Neat idea

[timeOday]

I'm sure an eInk display is a big win in terms of power consumption, I'm still not convinced it is that much more readable than a color LCD.

Try both at the beach and get back to us. Emissive displays just don't make sense in well-lit areas - why waste battery power trying to out-shine the sun?

Re:Need open e-book libraries for competition

[Lumpy]

not really. I have several thousand PDF files I'd kill to carry around. 300 from the Crestron library on their own. I dont want to read some silly escapism story, I want a functional display to view important Docs and texts. If I could find a good one that actually did really good PDF rendering and had upgradeable storage (The sony reader FAILS with it's paltry non upgradeable storage) and I dont want to pay for a 3G connection that I will not use.

Give me a non DRM, non crappy eink reader with a 8.5X11 display. I'll be all over it as well as millions of other professionals and students.

brings one of the disadvantages of paper to ebooks

[vanyel]

One of the nuisances of reading a paper book is holding the thing open, now we get that inconvenience in an ebook too!

I'll stick with one page thanks.