Digital Books Start A New Chapter 207
conq writes "BusinessWeek has a piece on the latest advancements in eBooks, and how this time they might just take off. From the article: 'Portable devices are becoming lighter and more appealing. The most important step forward may be in digital ink, the technology used for displaying letters on a screen. A small company called E Ink has created a method for arranging tiny black and white capsules into words and images with an electronic charge. Because no power is used unless the reader changes the page, devices with the technology could go as long as 20 books between battery charges'."
Slashdot DUPES Start A New Chapter (Score:3, Informative)
Article is a dupe...articles covering E-Ink's advances can be found here [slashdot.org], here [slashdot.org], here [slashdot.org], and here [slashdot.org].
I'm as excited about electronic paper as the next geek, but this story has no information we haven't already covered in the last four electronic paper stories. 'News for nerds', indeed.
Interesting Topic, but covered too often (Score:2, Informative)
They just might take off (Score:5, Informative)
Oh -- they hate DRM and only distribute standard unencumbered formats. They have this quaint notion that if they treat their customers well, their customers will respect their copyrights.
great e-book vendor (Score:2, Informative)
'Cept they stopped carrying Asimov's and Analog magazines last year, due to publisher. Dang.
Re:Like etch-a-sketch? (Score:5, Informative)
As far as residual image, yes this is an issue - although not a show-stopper. E-Ink currently has 6 waveforms for updating the image, each with a clearer image being presented at the cost of time and "flicker" during the transition. If you update a page of text to a blank (white) screen, you can still read the previous text as a faint residual remains. When covered with new text, however, this ghosting is not that significant of a issue.
I must say, having recently viewed the technology, it has a very promising future. We'll just have to wait and see how close that future is depending on how well the new Sony reader does...
Re:Any other vendors besides Sony? (Score:1, Informative)
They seem to be aiming at selling to other companies to brand, so any personal sales through their website might not have all the bells and whistles software-wise, but it looks like a better product than Sony's, and more hackable too
And I'm one of them (Score:4, Informative)
I've read through all the free offerings (and bought some paper books based on things that interested me) and recently purchased a Webscription. It's a pretty good deal--five books for $15, in plain-vanilla HTML (so I can back them up and read them on any device I want), and three of the five were books I would have probably been tempted to buy as paperbacks. Baen passes a portion of the savings from not having to produce paper books along to the authors, saves on printing an distribution, and everybody wins.
I'm not sure about the digital ink stuff--my biggest concern would be display lifespan. I read at least a hundred books a year either as paper or eBooks (yes, seriously) and the reason my Palm works is that it's my phone so I take it everywhere and charge it up each night, and I'll replace it in a couple of years.
Overall, I'd love to see more publishers doing what Baen is doing. I definitely look for Baen books when browsing brick and mortar bookstores, and would patronize other publishers who would 1) provide compelling content 2) at a reasonable price, 3) in an open format
Re:The good and bad (Score:4, Informative)
The refresh rate is very low. Imagine waiting a second or two every time you typed a character. Oh, and it would be black-and-white. It might be an acceptable substitute for a 300baud VT100, but not for much else.
Re:They just might take off (Score:3, Informative)
They have this quaint notion that if they treat their customers well, their customers will respect their copyrights.
Let me add a second vote to this! They offer a "free library", with a selection of titles from various authors. Then, on their Webscriptions side, you can also read a few chapters of books they're publishing, and if you like, you can buy it right there, or run out and get the dead tree version. What I also like is that it keeps tabs of what you've purchased. If you accidentally delete the book, or have a hard drive crash (no, we never have those, do we? :-D) you simply go back and download it again. Well worth the time to check it out, and support.
Re:Any other vendors besides Sony? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Any other vendors besides Sony? (Score:3, Informative)