Color E-Book Displays Coming From E Ink Next Year 219
waderoush writes "E Ink, which makes the monochrome electrophoretic screens used in the Amazon Kindle, the Barnes & Noble Nook, the Sony Reader line, and other e-readers, is gearing up to supply manufacturers with the first color versions of its displays by early next year, according to an Xconomy interview with T.H. Peng, a vice president with Taiwan's Prime View International, which bought E Ink last year. Peng argues that E Ink has nothing to fear from the e-book apps on the Apple iPad and other devices with color LCDs, which, in his view, produce more eye strain and aren't as suitable for digital reading. Nonetheless, the company says its first color screens in 2011 will have newspaper-quality color, followed within a couple of years by improved versions that can handle magazine-style content."
Re:I predict in the next version (Score:3, Informative)
I know you're joking, but taking notes in the margins has been there for a bit. Some of sony's e-readers have touchscreen display (which sucked in their first incarnation, but are better now), and let you annotate books at will.
Re:I've got a better idea (Score:3, Informative)
interestingly enough. I recently did quite a bit of research into readers as my wife wanted one and the Sony one came out on top. The clearest screens and the best at reading open formats such as txt and PDF. I know /. is big on compatibility and openness so I thought I'd throw it out that at the moment Sony is the best. Sure you can get features like wifi and reading webpages on things like the kindle, but in terms of reading e-books, the Sony reader line is top notch
Re:Eye strain my hair ass (Score:4, Informative)
You mean the LCD's I read off of 10 hours a day at work are completely unacceptable for reading now?
Obviously everyone is entitled to their own opinions and preferences and whatever else... And there's certainly room for individual variation in how your eyes perform at different tasks...
But, from what I've seen, most of the folks who claim that they're reading for 10 hours a day at work, aren't actually reading for 10 hours a day at work.
If you actually look at their workflow, it doesn't generally involve staring at a screen containing nothing but text for a full 10 hours. Usually it involves looking at a screen running some kind of GUI that contains text elements. Usually it involves navigating through that GUI in order to display different text elements. Normally it involves looking at various images and diagrams in addition to text. Normally it involves periodic breaks to type or click buttons or answer the phone or speak with a co-worker or whatever.
Which is actually pretty similar to what my workflow looks like. And in the average day I don't have any problem working off my LCD at work for 10 hours either. But that's a very different experience from when I'm curled up with a good book and reading for fun.
When I'm reading for fun I'll attempt to remove as many distractions as possible. I will, hopefully, not be distracted from my book for many hours. I might very well spend 10 hours staring at text.
I've been reading ebooks on various devices for years now. First a Handspring Visor... Then a Palm PDA... Then an assortment of netbooks and laptops and desktop computers... And now I'm reading them on a nook...
And I'll tell you right now that when I wind up reading something engaging - literally staring at text for multiple hours with no distractions - on an LCD I definitely experience eyestrain. There have been days when I wound up doing literally what you suggest in your post - staring at text for 10 hours straight - and by the time I get home in the evening my eyes basically refuse to focus. It becomes impossible to read much of anything.
No, I don't have some kind of degenerative eye disease... It's just eye strain, nothing more. And it can happen reading off of paper or watching TV or anything else. It just so happens that for me an LCD causes more strain than printed paper, or an e-ink display.
Now, I'm not going to call you a liar simply because I disagree with you...
And I personally agree that the Kindle has a less-than-wonderful display - which is why I bought a nook, which has better contrast in my opinion.
But I suspect that you don't spend quite as much time staring at text on a screen as you suggested in your post.
Re:Cool, I'll wait for the magazine quality ones. (Score:3, Informative)
On the other hand, e-ink vs LCD, a big "eh".
Seriously? I have a Nokia 770 and an iRex iLiad. The 770's TFT is 225dpi and is one of the nicest LCD's I've ever used (the nicest was an IBM monitor that was also 225dpi but was 23"). I can read books on it, but my eyes start to feel tired after an hour or so. Using it in direct sunlight is also a problem - the screen just looks white. The iLiad's eInk screen is only 166dpi, but it's significantly better. I can read outside in the sun for several hours without my eyes feeling at all tired.
This isn't the sort of comparison like HD and SD, where you see them side-by-side and see a big difference, but only see the inferior one by itself and don't really notice, it's a difference that you notice even when you just use one of them.