It looks like Epson is on a roll, where the company recently introduced the first PC with the Vista-capable badge, and now it's saying it has developed a groundbreaking roll-up digital ink display. This design concept is different from Sony's upcoming Reader, where the Epson A6 QXGA Electronic Paper display is flexible, using a manufacturing process called "surface free technology by laser annealing" (SUFTLA). The company says the operation of the drivers it's written to display an image on a flexible screen is a world first.

If this is real, the 7.1 inch display has an notably high resolution of 1536x2048 pixels, otherwise known as QXGA (Quantum XGA). It's a technology demonstration that's not the first foray into e-ink tech for the company. Epson demonstrated electronic ink technology about 18 months ago at the Embedded Technology 2004 convention, showing its Electronic Ink + RFID design for electronic price tags. We're thinking it'll be a while before any of these flexible display ideas are truly practical. – Charlie White

Epson A6 QXGA Electronic Paper [Akhabara News]

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