BBC: E-INK UPDATE! : Sony Reader targets book lovers

[slaughters]

Great news. I know I should have bought some E-Ink stock last year. :(

I do want to say that the article got something wrong though when it said, "E-books have not made much of an impact as the experience of reading on-screen has failed to live up to expectations..."

I have a PDA the size of a paperback novel that currently has over 46 books on it and I read on it all the time. The problem is not the experience of reading on-screen with a PDA (I will grant that reading on a desktop/laptop s*cks though).

The problem is expecting people to purchase a $300 - $400 device to read books on.

Get it down to a cheap(er) $50 purchase and then you'll see the e-book start to take off.

[chrisWhite]

That's still a little expensive, but you get it down to $200 and I would certainly get one.

[ernest]

yes, if they get to 200$ I certainly buy one...

does anybody know if the sony reader has a backlight installed, so I can read in the dark, or does the e-in display only work with ambientlight?

[Schwinnz]

The problem is expecting people to purchase a $300 - $400 device to read books on.
The problems on my side are mostly these:
· Single format
I will have to say that what I hate the most is that it's only under one format, and a small one too. I have numerous books that would be handy to travel with but can't work in a small format.
· Buying books, again?
Am I ready to invest in new books? Quick tip: the answer is no.
· Reproduction
How do I scan/copy parts of a book for personal use?
· Borrowing
Can I pass the book to friends? Probably not with DRMs!
· DRMs
Can I copy the source file for different displays? Can I print it if I want to?
· Licensing
Are the costs for publishers? Will anyone be able to distribute files as they want? Proprietary format or standards? [pdf, postscript, open document?]
· One book at a time
How do you open multiple books at a time? You can't.
· Seeking
How do you seek for pages? You can't go through easily. Given that there is a page seeking feature, browsing in a 500 pages book only 15 times would deplete batteries?
· Resolution
Is the resolution high enough? (at least 200-250 pixels per inch for enough quality for smaller type sizes)

And you don't get the feel of paper, you can't write in it. Overall I don't see why I'd want this.

[aaron111]

$300-400 is WAY too much for something like this. You could buy an ipod and listen to audio books for half that (not including the cost of audio books).


does anybody know if the sony reader has a backlight installed, so I can read in the dark, or does the e-in display only work with ambientlight?

The article says specifically that it isn't backlit. This supposedly "avoids eye strain"??

It says Sony is creating an itunes like service for purchasing the books - I'm wondering how much the books will cost. And are they going to try to create some sort of DRM scheme for what is essentially a text file, it wouldn't surprise me.

Overall this looks like another flawed attempt at creating a popular ebook reader. Keep trying.

[E_Moelzer]

Yeah, I am sure they will have their DRM- crap in that one too. So you will only be able to print it out twice and make one copy on a cd, or something. You wont be able to copy it to another harddrive ;)
I could not care less about it ;)
CU
Elmar

[slaughters]

Schwinnz, some clarification on my experience on using a PDA to read books on.

· Single format - With my PDA I find it is like reading paperback book that allows me to increase font size to what ever is comfortable for my eyes.

· Buying books, again? - The 46 I have on my PDA were free from the Publisher (BAEN Books) - Additionaly my Library has an online service that let's you download time expired (two weeks) PDA versions of their books.

· Reproduction - My PDA has a Text Select/Copy feature. I can easily copy/paste text if I want to.

· Borrowing - The free ones I have you are actually encouraged to send them to friends. It's seen as a promotional tool

· DRMs - The DRM imposed on the ones I download from the Library act just the same as a real book would that I had checked out from them. I.E. I'm given two weeks to read it.

· Licensing - There are a ton of e-book formats out their with a ton of free e-book reader apps. Publishers love it because it lowers their distribution and production costs.

· One book at a time - You open a book to a page - use a hyper link to go to another spot in another book. Hop back and forth all you want. Not a lot more effort that glancing from one book to another.

· Seeking - Most readers let you jump right to specifc page numbers and allow for placing of book marks. Most even have built in search features.

· Resolution - My PDA runs at 320 x 480 resolution. Good enough to read by, seeing as you can set the text to any size you want (200-250 ppi is pretty high - your PC runs at only 72 ppi)

[Kargokultti]

Well, this is an idiotic gripe, really, but I wouldn't want to read books in Finnish on a device that has 'reader', 'next' and 'prev' written on it.

One thing is that if a book is in Finnish, it's covers are in Finnish as well. But another is that how many books have arrows pointing towards the next page? The design seems ok, but think it could be more intuitive.

And anyways, why would the text have to be static? A big thing with these E-books seems to be that they just want to port books as they are now into a device that clearly isn't a book. As far as formats go, I'd still say that for things in book format, a book is the best format.

[Jozvex]

And anyways, why would the text have to be static? A big thing with these E-books seems to be that they just want to port books as they are now into a device that clearly isn't a book.

The reason the pages stay static is because they use no battery power at all to maintain the image on the page, only to change it.

[noisewar]

Great news. I know I should have bought some E-Ink stock last year. :(



I didn't know you could buy e-Ink stock, they're privately held I thought. But some major players involved in e-Ink are worth investing into indirectly, like Phillips, APD, and the ripe Motorola.

I don't know the full deal with this gadget, but you haven't missed the boat. The first gadget of a genre usually isn't the one that makes the big money. I'd bet on third or fourth gen.

[PyRoT]

Sony won't be the only company to make these. Other ones..cheaper ones will be made without DRM and it will be ok and cheaper due to competition. I had a ite once about another company making these e-book readers though they wern't for sale yet.

Here it is (http://www.jinke.com.cn/english/v2/index.asp)
You might have to navifate around a bit though yeah.. hope for the future.

I'd love one of these. I just got an mp3 player 1gb in size mainly to listen to audio books.

Tomek

[Agent Vesago]

Here is a link to the Sony site (http://products.sel.sony.com/pa/PRS/).

So far they are stating compatibility to multiple formats. Plus they say you can enlarge the text up to 200%

Quote from site. "Forgot your reading glasses? Enlarge text up to 200%."
"It also displays Adobe® PDFs, personal documents, blogs, newsfeeds, and JPEGs with the same amazing readability, so you can take your favorite blogs and online newspapers with you. It even plays audio files."

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