Computer Book

[inhumandecency]

It's finally here! It's finally here! I've been waiting most of a decade for commercial applications of e-paper -- it's a paper-thin and -light substance that uses electrical impulses to turn ink-pixels on and off. Unlike LCD screens, it uses reflected light, meaning that the power usage is way way lower, and it gets easier to read in bright light

Comments

[tanjent]

amusingly, there are various DRM-related reasons why the amazon gadget is rather scary - for example, having to pay additional money to read _your own_ PDF and Word documents (10 cents) and RSS feeds (99 cents/month, and you can only select from feeds that Amazon has converted to Kindle format) on the thing. The wireless is via the Sprint EVDO network, not wifi.

Sony recently released the second version of their e-ink reader - considerably more svelte, but no wireless access. On the other hand, reading your own content (including PDFs) on it is free.

Both machines also play MP3s.

(edit - misread some things when i skimmed the review earlier)

[ext_22310]

I believe from the early reviews I've seen that the device has a web browser. You can read your RSS feeds via that. Paying for the feed gets you all the content from the feed bundled up for offline reading.

On the downside, there's zero PDF support. And no Mac or Linux tools for converting your PDFs or other documents into Kindle format.

[contentlove]

I know! I'm excited too. I'm hoping that the cost will go down a bit later this year, but this is a hugely wonderful thing. My eyes are going to really appreciate it, and so is my back when I travel since I usually end up carrying a lot of pounds of books. I'm hoping that the New Yorker is going to get on the band wagon and I'll be able to switch my subscription to that format. I squee'd hard yesterday when I saw it!

[antiquarian]

See also Sony's version, which isn't as DRM-burdened, physically looks better, and costs less (though it still costs too much, and doesn't have the Kindle's wireless downloads) -- Ars Technica review.

I get the impression that e-paper hasn't quite arrived yet, but it's getting closer. Also, that the main obstacle to this sort of gadget becoming good and cheap isn't technology but overprotective copyright holders.

[ext_22310]

Yeah, publishers need to either charge rental-size prices, or drop the DRM so we can actually buy the books rather than renting them indefinitely. They seem to be planning to repeat all the mistakes the music industry made.

[dr_pipe]

I've never been terribly interested in ebooks or ebook readers; I mean I'd like to have text files of my books for searching and reading, be it on a computer or some kind of pda, but an ebook reader doesn't interest me much.

e-paper and e-ink, on the other hand, are awesome!! especially once they become ubiquitous and not tied to some DRMy propritary device! then we'll have e-fliers and e-cereal boxes and e-business cards and e-newspapers! web browsers on a piece of paper! disposable displays!