I agree. If I got one it'd be as a neat geek toy, but as a practical device, I've already been reading books on my PDAs for a decade now. They can play music, movies, surf the web, etc, but cost the same as a book reader that just reads books.
I'm all for convergence, I'm on my feet moving all day and the less I have to lug around with me the better. In that regard I agree with Brian absolutely.
I however definitely fall into the category of loving "novels and non-fiction" more than TV, movies, cookbooks and glossy magazines. I spend more time reading than all of the above combined and I simply do not enjoy reading off a backlit display. Be it my iphone or a 30" Apple Cinema monitor I just don't enjoy it and the eyestrain bothers me after only 30-40 minutes. If you could give me a tablet with an LCD on one side and an e-ink display on the other so I get the best of both worlds in one compact device SIGN ME UP!
LCD screens are horrible for reading books. You either are an anomaly or don't do as much straight reading during your 12 hour stretch. Just catching up on some of my favorite websites (gizmodo, lifehacker, consumerist, etc) makes my eyes hurt sometimes, particularly after a long day.
You may just read around your house, but other people use textbooks in school for 7 hours a day, want to read during their lunch breaks or sitting in the waiting rooms of doctors.
If you read as many books as someone like my mom does (who knows what she wants for her birthday), a Kindle would be much, much better than any LCD screen.
Anyone who thinks ebooks are the future has probably never really read a book. And I don't mean that as sarcasm or hyperbole; e-books as a format are simply no good for proper academic use.
@OmegaVader: I think when the technology improves enough, they will be better than paper for academic work. Something like Microsoft's Courier concept would be amazing.
When I think of the things I did when studying like highlighting, taking notes, coping down citations to use in my papers, all these could be done more easily with an ebook. The current state of e-ink is far from ideal but we already have the software end of the technology to do a lot of this really well. The hardware is a bit lagging. E-ink is too slow and the other screens in mass production need big heavy batteries.
Imagine if you could easily search your notes and see what they applied to in the text. Imagine highlighting a section to quote and being able to just pull it into your paper with the correct citation already added for you. Just being able to search a book helps tremendously. The ability to download the book rather than waiting on an interlibrary loan or a return would have certainly sped up a lot of my work. This is before you even get into the ability to add things like links, high-resolution images and multimedia to books. Just something simple like a map could be so much more useful if it were interactive.
I always thought e-Ink was less about emulating books and more about fixing the problem with extended reading on a computer screen. This is a problem we still need to fix, whether or not we go with an e-Ink display in a book-like format.
E-inks benefit is that its easy to read, looks like paper, and only uses batteries when the page is turned. These are strong virtues. Its easy on the eyes and the battery can last multiple times as long as a tablet.
I'm sure tablets will be huge whenever they start coming out. And we'll see what they are like when Apple releases theirs.
But let's not get carried away here, I wouldn't want to read a 1,000 page book on an LCD, especially in direct sunlight where the screen is almost unreadable. People don't read books like they read websites. For novels, people read it to relax, to unwind, to be less distracted. Sit under a tree or in the backyard on a lazy Sunday. Sometimes you want to be away from your e-mail...
The real issue at hand here is price. E-books are merely a novelty until they can sell them for $50-100. I've spent $300+ for my Kindle, and I've owned a Sony Reader before that, but for most people spending that much money on books is ridiculous. E-ink technology at the moment is expensive and limited, but its a mistake to think that it will always be that way.
Technology isn't stagnant (as we should know here), E-ink technology will change, will improve, become faster, cheaper, and add color.
Once we see these technologies mature, and see what these tablets are actually like (Apple's version has been rumored for years); then we can come back to this discussion.
then OLED would probably be the way to go, since if it's in front of an opaque e-ink display, getting a backlight through the to an LCD would eat tons of power unnecessarily.
@Kit Eaton: That's a transflective LCD. No e-ink involved. It's an interesting technology and I really want a netbook or tablet with that. It still will take a fair amount of power though a lot less than traditional LCDs if you turn off the backlight. You do lose color when you turn off the backlight but you still get fast refresh, which e-ink can't give you yet.
With all the commenter's picking on poor Bri, I feel the need to offer a little defense.
E-Ink does it purpose well. Brian never really said it didn't. The point here is that (close!) future tech will offer so many more opportunities to read digital print that having a single device specifically for reading is somewhat pointless.
E-ink will be a nice replacement; long term for libraries. I would love to see 'getting a library card' replaced with 'getting an e-reader'. Libraries could store their entire inventory as digital and work in a much smaller space. E-readers could be stacked on shelves instead of books and a user could select the book they want from the digital library. To 'take the book with you' you would need your own reader. Then you could even return & check out new books without ever having to go to the library. multiple libraries across the country (or even the world) could pool their resources and offer a much wider selection of reading material.
With all that said. Unless someone pushes the e-reader into iPod like status quickly; new tech will replace most of the market share.
@justsomereportingguy: People are beating up on Brian because of some silly things that were said. Things like 'oh I can stare at a computer screen for 12 hours a day while I work, THEREFORE reading off a computer screen for sustained periods is fine'. Oh and the 'kids today are used to eye-strain' argument is a classic. Why don't we also get used to bleeding out of our ears? If kids got used to it, then head trauma wouldn't be so bad!
It's really is not possible to read off a screen for an extended period of time. You can consult with a computer screen reference. You could read off of one for maybe twenty or thirty minutes at a time. But to study a text, to genuinely read a book for hours at a time? no chance.
I downloaded a pack of old literary essays, and tried to read a TS Eliot essay on my large, expensive, high res LG flatscreen monitor and it was pretty awful. It made my eyes feel itchy and unpleasant. It was horrible.
I think people might trust Brian's opinion on this if anyone actually believed that he was a reader; that he actually did what readers do - sit down with a book for an hour or two a day and give it sustained attention.
The "dead tree media" comment is a total giveaway. Anyone who actually reads and respects books wouldn't say that. It's contemptuous. So I don't trust his opinion on any technology devoted to reading.
"It's really is not possible to read off a screen for an extended period of time. You can consult with a computer screen reference. You could read off of one for maybe twenty or thirty minutes at a time. But to study a text, to genuinely read a book for hours at a time? no chance."
I think most people don't realize how often they look away from their screen while they're working.
@Pope John Peeps II: You have a few good points and a few others... not so much.
Extended reading for example: I wear contacts or glasses (have for 30 years) and I have actually read a few books on a BlackBerry Pearl screen. I even read a few stories on my iPhone. Both are not much different from PC screens. and no, I wasnt reading short stories either; I read the complete 'Art of War' on my Pearl.
Different people have different thresholds. I also don't think Bri meant anything negative by his 'kids today are used to eye-strain' argument; I think his point was that later generations of people are developing better abilities. If you took a guy out of 1920 and asked him to read a book from e-ink it would give him headaches. Kids today stare at screens more than we do, their eyes are better developed for that purpopse and therefore do not experience as much strain.
This argument; much like Apple/Win could go on forever however. We will all have our opinions and only time will prove or disprove them.
@Pope John Peeps II: Maybe I have crazy eyes or something, but I've been reading ebooks for years on PDAs. First a HP Jornada and now a Dell Axiom.
I get no eyestrain with their screens, I can mow through a ebook almost as fast as a real one, color, music, yadda yadda yadda. And the battery life? I think I ran out of battery life on a plane once. But it was a 12hr flight and I was kinda expecting it not to hold up.
I've been thinking of getting an itouch or zune hd as my ebook reader upgrade.
@justsomereportingguy: That's just dumb. "Kids today are used to it, therefore it's not a strain"? If it's difficult for the eye, it's difficult. Period. The body doesn't evolve in a single generation. And the world of optometry is pretty certain that substantial staring at screens is damaging to the eye.
e-Ink was meant to replace PAPER, not to be a new type of video display. Reading books on a flickering LCD screen is NOT the future of reading. The refresh rate of e-Ink (0hz) means it's equivalent of paper. Even a static image or text on an LCD screen is 30-60hz or more, which tires the eyes. Plus, eReaders only use power when they turn pages, a tablet is just a laptop without the keyboard and would require to be turned ON all the time.
Methinks the author is just an Apple fanboy drooling over a product that doesn't even exist yet (Apple tablet).
blam, i think you're talking about two different things here. the first is e-ink, a technology for an "easier on the eyes" screen, and the second is dedicated book/magazine readers.
personally, i spend all day looking at a computer screen, and by the time i go to bed, my eyes are bloodshot and hurt. e-ink is a fantastic alternative to staring at a backlight, and is sure to provide a much more comfortable reading experience. as much as i'd love to have one iphone-like device with web access and holding all my books and magazine subscriptions, i don't want to take the only remaining time i spend consuming media but not on a computer, and spend it looking at an led/oled screen.
so what are some alternative ideas? maybe a tabled device that has a "hybrid"-type screen like the... olpcs i think? that has an oled mode and an e-ink mode? something that can both satisfy my desire for convergence and also give my tired eyes a rest.
@manyou07: Bang on. Absolutely correct. Another backlit screen? To read books off of? Sounds like a horrible and as-yet-undiscovered circle of hell. E-Ink had two major advantages - easy on the eyes, and easy on battery life.
The problem is that the people advocating LED and OLED readers - tablet readers - simply aren't themselves used to reading. You simply cannot read a text in a sustained way on the screen. Reading off a computer, you need breaks, you need space between to rest your eyes, you need time away from the constant illumination. Reading comments on a blog for a couple minutes at a time isn't the same as studying a text for a couple of hours at a time.
keeping a mind to the problems of Formats, I don't think the paper book is dead.
you don't need any software or hardware to read a paper book... but older media and data formats are already in danger of becoming unreadable, and hence the information held lost.
plus there's also the whole thing of proven technology...
Completely agree. I have a Sony PRS-500, and though I love how it looks as a static page, the negatives (B&W only, distracting flash every time you turn a page, no backlighting) outweighed any positives.
Seriously, that page flash-I understand the necessity due to the technology. No idea how people (esp. fast readers like me) can bear it for a whole book.
I'll gladly charge my eBook every night for a color LCD/OLED display. My Sony may have better battery life, but then again, no one is using it.
@dogcow: Unfortunately the current disparity in battery life is huge between e-ink and LCD. I haven't seen enough OLED stats to compare but my understanding is that, while it beats LCD, it's nowhere near e-ink. Sure, we're at the point where some netbooks are boasting 8 hours on a charge (which is usually 4 in real world tests). PixelQi claims they'll get 20 which is all kinds of awesome but that's with a 2lb battery. E-ink gets days. I don't really need days. I'd settle for one full day of real usage. The Kindle 1 battery is 1.6 oz. This is why e-ink devices are so much lighter than any tablet out there. I don't want to read on a 3-4lb heat generating device for hours on end. Readability issues aside, screens are going to have to get a lot more efficient to give me the tablet of my dreams.
If a netbook with a PixelQi screen comes out, I'll jump on it but I don't see it replacing a reader for me. It's at least ready for manufacture right now. All these wonderful prototypes we see now are likely years from mass production. How long have people been buzzing about OLED? It's still rare in devices.
@FigNinja: That PixelQ tech looks pretty sweet. And yeah, I love the battery life on the Sony-it really feels like it could go on forever. Its just the whole "it looks just like paper" argument falls flat when you try to turn pages, for me at least.
Of course, maybe we just haven't had the right designers working on E-ink yet-the Sony has a plethora of other UI issues, and the Kindle doesn't seem much better, so I'm keeping my options open (as is Brian Lam, seems like)
I'd die for a cheap-cheap e-ink reader I could load full of datasheets and various manuals I need when doing work. It's a pain, IMO, to deal with an electronic copy on a PC (I just don't like reading PDFs on the computer), especially when running between applications as-is and then having to thumb back to a PDF reader. It's better, IMO, to have something portable side-by-side my work that I can flip back and reference to.
And paper copies? Hell no. I'm not printing 1000+ pages and throwing it in binders. Not for what FedEx/Kinkos wants me to pay, hell no.
Could anyone recommend a decent e-book reader with PDF support that's on the cheap? All I ever see for 'cheap ebook readers' on eBay are those little 4.3" crappy PDA things that read .txt and nothing else.
@dragonONE: Not the answer you're looking for, but maybe a second monitor is the answer if most of your work is on the computer. I use my Kindle every day, but when I need to reference a PDF, I open it on the computer. It's too much of a hassle to find and flip back and forth between content.
Kindle DX would probably come closest, but it costs a lot more than you're willing to pay.
@dragon: ONE: I usually need to work with a datasheet and a terminal visible at the same time. So at work I have a 1920x1080 24" LCD. For most 8.5x11" formatted datasheets this works great. Having both windows in the same viewplane is much better than a paper copy or another screen (LCD or e-reader).
What I'd really like is remote control for the Acrobat pane so I could flip pages and zoom/pan without changing focus from my editor. Something like the media player hotkeys. Repurposing the numpad would be perfect.
@jetRink: The PDF support on the DX isn't that good yet. Links don't work. That's a deal-breaker for me. It has a good sized screen for PDF so if they ever fix the firmware, it could make a useful option. Sadly the only cheap e-ink devices are small (5-6") and PDF on a small screen that is slow to refresh is painful. The good options (like iRex) are expensive.
10/12/09
10/12/09
I however definitely fall into the category of loving "novels and non-fiction" more than TV, movies, cookbooks and glossy magazines. I spend more time reading than all of the above combined and I simply do not enjoy reading off a backlit display. Be it my iphone or a 30" Apple Cinema monitor I just don't enjoy it and the eyestrain bothers me after only 30-40 minutes. If you could give me a tablet with an LCD on one side and an e-ink display on the other so I get the best of both worlds in one compact device SIGN ME UP!
10/12/09
When a dedicated device can do it's job in a far superior way to a multipurpose device, that dedicated device is not dead.
Only when a book is as comfortable to read on a multipurpose device as it is on a ebook reader, will they be dead.
10/12/09
You may just read around your house, but other people use textbooks in school for 7 hours a day, want to read during their lunch breaks or sitting in the waiting rooms of doctors.
If you read as many books as someone like my mom does (who knows what she wants for her birthday), a Kindle would be much, much better than any LCD screen.
10/12/09
10/12/09
When I think of the things I did when studying like highlighting, taking notes, coping down citations to use in my papers, all these could be done more easily with an ebook. The current state of e-ink is far from ideal but we already have the software end of the technology to do a lot of this really well. The hardware is a bit lagging. E-ink is too slow and the other screens in mass production need big heavy batteries.
Imagine if you could easily search your notes and see what they applied to in the text. Imagine highlighting a section to quote and being able to just pull it into your paper with the correct citation already added for you. Just being able to search a book helps tremendously. The ability to download the book rather than waiting on an interlibrary loan or a return would have certainly sped up a lot of my work. This is before you even get into the ability to add things like links, high-resolution images and multimedia to books. Just something simple like a map could be so much more useful if it were interactive.
10/12/09
10/12/09
I'm sure tablets will be huge whenever they start coming out. And we'll see what they are like when Apple releases theirs.
But let's not get carried away here, I wouldn't want to read a 1,000 page book on an LCD, especially in direct sunlight where the screen is almost unreadable. People don't read books like they read websites. For novels, people read it to relax, to unwind, to be less distracted. Sit under a tree or in the backyard on a lazy Sunday. Sometimes you want to be away from your e-mail...
The real issue at hand here is price. E-books are merely a novelty until they can sell them for $50-100. I've spent $300+ for my Kindle, and I've owned a Sony Reader before that, but for most people spending that much money on books is ridiculous. E-ink technology at the moment is expensive and limited, but its a mistake to think that it will always be that way.
Technology isn't stagnant (as we should know here), E-ink technology will change, will improve, become faster, cheaper, and add color.
Once we see these technologies mature, and see what these tablets are actually like (Apple's version has been rumored for years); then we can come back to this discussion.
10/12/09
10/12/09
im SURE it can be done.
10/12/09
10/12/09
then OLED would probably be the way to go, since if it's in front of an opaque e-ink display, getting a backlight through the to an LCD would eat tons of power unnecessarily.
Are OLEDs transparent when powered off?
10/12/09
10/12/09
nice catch!
@BLam:
what say you on this??
10/12/09
10/12/09
10/12/09
10/12/09
E-Ink does it purpose well. Brian never really said it didn't. The point here is that (close!) future tech will offer so many more opportunities to read digital print that having a single device specifically for reading is somewhat pointless.
E-ink will be a nice replacement; long term for libraries. I would love to see 'getting a library card' replaced with 'getting an e-reader'. Libraries could store their entire inventory as digital and work in a much smaller space. E-readers could be stacked on shelves instead of books and a user could select the book they want from the digital library. To 'take the book with you' you would need your own reader. Then you could even return & check out new books without ever having to go to the library. multiple libraries across the country (or even the world) could pool their resources and offer a much wider selection of reading material.
With all that said. Unless someone pushes the e-reader into iPod like status quickly; new tech will replace most of the market share.
10/12/09
It's really is not possible to read off a screen for an extended period of time. You can consult with a computer screen reference. You could read off of one for maybe twenty or thirty minutes at a time. But to study a text, to genuinely read a book for hours at a time? no chance.
I downloaded a pack of old literary essays, and tried to read a TS Eliot essay on my large, expensive, high res LG flatscreen monitor and it was pretty awful. It made my eyes feel itchy and unpleasant. It was horrible.
I think people might trust Brian's opinion on this if anyone actually believed that he was a reader; that he actually did what readers do - sit down with a book for an hour or two a day and give it sustained attention.
The "dead tree media" comment is a total giveaway. Anyone who actually reads and respects books wouldn't say that. It's contemptuous. So I don't trust his opinion on any technology devoted to reading.
10/12/09
"It's really is not possible to read off a screen for an extended period of time. You can consult with a computer screen reference. You could read off of one for maybe twenty or thirty minutes at a time. But to study a text, to genuinely read a book for hours at a time? no chance."
I think most people don't realize how often they look away from their screen while they're working.
10/12/09
Extended reading for example: I wear contacts or glasses (have for 30 years) and I have actually read a few books on a BlackBerry Pearl screen. I even read a few stories on my iPhone. Both are not much different from PC screens. and no, I wasnt reading short stories either; I read the complete 'Art of War' on my Pearl.
Different people have different thresholds. I also don't think Bri meant anything negative by his 'kids today are used to eye-strain' argument; I think his point was that later generations of people are developing better abilities. If you took a guy out of 1920 and asked him to read a book from e-ink it would give him headaches. Kids today stare at screens more than we do, their eyes are better developed for that purpopse and therefore do not experience as much strain.
This argument; much like Apple/Win could go on forever however. We will all have our opinions and only time will prove or disprove them.
10/12/09
I get no eyestrain with their screens, I can mow through a ebook almost as fast as a real one, color, music, yadda yadda yadda. And the battery life? I think I ran out of battery life on a plane once. But it was a 12hr flight and I was kinda expecting it not to hold up.
I've been thinking of getting an itouch or zune hd as my ebook reader upgrade.
10/12/09
10/12/09
e-Ink was meant to replace PAPER, not to be a new type of video display. Reading books on a flickering LCD screen is NOT the future of reading. The refresh rate of e-Ink (0hz) means it's equivalent of paper. Even a static image or text on an LCD screen is 30-60hz or more, which tires the eyes. Plus, eReaders only use power when they turn pages, a tablet is just a laptop without the keyboard and would require to be turned ON all the time.
Methinks the author is just an Apple fanboy drooling over a product that doesn't even exist yet (Apple tablet).
10/12/09
personally, i spend all day looking at a computer screen, and by the time i go to bed, my eyes are bloodshot and hurt. e-ink is a fantastic alternative to staring at a backlight, and is sure to provide a much more comfortable reading experience. as much as i'd love to have one iphone-like device with web access and holding all my books and magazine subscriptions, i don't want to take the only remaining time i spend consuming media but not on a computer, and spend it looking at an led/oled screen.
so what are some alternative ideas? maybe a tabled device that has a "hybrid"-type screen like the... olpcs i think? that has an oled mode and an e-ink mode? something that can both satisfy my desire for convergence and also give my tired eyes a rest.
10/12/09
The problem is that the people advocating LED and OLED readers - tablet readers - simply aren't themselves used to reading. You simply cannot read a text in a sustained way on the screen. Reading off a computer, you need breaks, you need space between to rest your eyes, you need time away from the constant illumination. Reading comments on a blog for a couple minutes at a time isn't the same as studying a text for a couple of hours at a time.
10/12/09
you don't need any software or hardware to read a paper book... but older media and data formats are already in danger of becoming unreadable, and hence the information held lost.
plus there's also the whole thing of proven technology...
10/12/09
Seriously, that page flash-I understand the necessity due to the technology. No idea how people (esp. fast readers like me) can bear it for a whole book.
I'll gladly charge my eBook every night for a color LCD/OLED display. My Sony may have better battery life, but then again, no one is using it.
10/12/09
If a netbook with a PixelQi screen comes out, I'll jump on it but I don't see it replacing a reader for me. It's at least ready for manufacture right now. All these wonderful prototypes we see now are likely years from mass production. How long have people been buzzing about OLED? It's still rare in devices.
10/12/09
Of course, maybe we just haven't had the right designers working on E-ink yet-the Sony has a plethora of other UI issues, and the Kindle doesn't seem much better, so I'm keeping my options open (as is Brian Lam, seems like)
10/12/09
And paper copies? Hell no. I'm not printing 1000+ pages and throwing it in binders. Not for what FedEx/Kinkos wants me to pay, hell no.
Could anyone recommend a decent e-book reader with PDF support that's on the cheap? All I ever see for 'cheap ebook readers' on eBay are those little 4.3" crappy PDA things that read .txt and nothing else.
10/12/09
Kindle DX would probably come closest, but it costs a lot more than you're willing to pay.
10/12/09
What I'd really like is remote control for the Acrobat pane so I could flip pages and zoom/pan without changing focus from my editor. Something like the media player hotkeys. Repurposing the numpad would be perfect.
10/12/09