Preserved Topic: Electronic books

Up until now they have been largely disappointing - usually the screen has let us down but not anymore as Sony have launched the Librie EBR-1000EP eBook reader which has a paper-like screen:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,1197495,00.html

Anyone got experience of this new format BBeB (BroadBand eBook)?

Emps

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Emps

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quote:

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it looks more like paper than the computer screen it is

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That sounds exciting (yes, I know I need to get out more). I really wish I could see this for myself... I'm having a hard time imagining what it looks like (even with the explanation of how it works).

I think that, at some point in the future, e-books will become standard. That's something I'm quite excited about, but I must admit that I still appreciate the feel of a book in my hands, not to mention the ability to acquire a large library of books (the product mentioned here only allows borrowing, and with the way things are going I can't see this trend reversing itself any time soon--but who knows?).

At any rate, this for me falls into the "interesting, but not interesting enough that I'm actually going to invest in it at this point" category.

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Suho: www.liminality.org | Cell 270 | Sig Rotator | Keeper of the Juicy Bits

Suho: Thats my thinking exactly - up until now I have been following developments but haven' been impressed enough to get even mildly excited but this certainly takes things up a step - it clearly needs more work (I'm curious about the format and you don't want to be stck with the latest example of the Betamax) but I'm now officially excited.

Clearly the lack of support for English makes things a tad tricky for most of us so we'll have to wait and see but that will come in time and mass production will drive the price down.

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Emps

The Emperor dot org | Justice for Pat Richard | FAQs: Emperor | Site Reviews | Reception Room

Some links:

Announcement abou the screen:

http://www.eink.com/news/releases/pr70.html

Other reports with better pictures:

http://www.digit-life.com/news.html?103145#103145

http://www.flexbeta.net/main/comments.php?catid=8&shownews=6851

Some links on this (some of them in Japanese but probably the most relevant):

http://www.lottachan.net/weblog/archive/000567.html

http://www.kanai.net/weblog/archives/001996.html

The diagram of it is interesting:

http://www.wirefarm.com/archives/003793.html

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I also started an FAQ on eBook formats (I'm currntly nosing aorund that area):

What eBook Formats are there?

Although as I can't find anything much on this new format it will have to wait.

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Emps

The Emperor dot org | Justice for Pat Richard | FAQs: Emperor | Site Reviews | Reception Room

Ooh... those pics of the screen are quite interesting. It does indeed look quite different from your typical computer screen. Of course, trying to judge what it looks like by a pic on a computer screen is kind of like trying to figure out what reality is from inside the Matrix.

This is really really cool technology! I love to read, and the idea of being able to amass a library of significant size without taking up valuable real estate on my bookshelves is really intriguing to me.

I can see all sorts of possibilities for this that they haven't even gotten into yet... Library books that you can download and then which delete themselves if you don't renew them, e-books for purchase and permanent storgae... the college text book thing is a really interesting notion as well - I'm surprised more Universities aren't using this method, but again, there's real money in college textbooks... Our Univeristy average for books each term is $600! They haven't got the kinks worked out yet with the distribution of info, and we'll run into some intellectual property rights stuff, like with the downloading of mp3s now... but I can see this really taking off if they can get the price down to a reasonable level... but the starting price on the Sony looked in the $200 range... not bad for a first release product...

I'll have to bide my time with my trusty ol' pulp and ink books for the time being... but I'm excited about this!