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September 26, 2006
ebook Readers Finally Good Enough
I'm a pretty avid reader of fiction and I have tons of books I reference when I work. I don't always read consistently (except bedtime) nor do I need to carry all those books around with me. I've seen and read about ebooks but they were overpriced (still are) and weren't small enough.
It seems ebooks have finally come to a point ready for mass market consumption. All my gripes with them have been addressed. Number one, being size. ebooks should be no bigger than any standard hardcover book. They should have memory expansion to add more books. They need an easy drag-and-drop application to help organize all your books. They need excellent battery life. They need to be wafer thin. Most importantly, they need to simulate the reading experience as best as possible - meaning high contrast and no crazy back lighting to hurt my eyes.
There are two solutions on the market (or soon to be). The first of which is the Panasonic Word Gear. The Word Gear has a 5.6" 1024 x 600 color touch screen with an SD port. Navigation is handled thru a unique soft grip touch pad on the side (which I've yet to understand) and the whole thing weighs 325g. It's an awesome product for those who would read all their publishings in a digital format, i.e. books, comics, newspapers, and magazines. On the down side, because of its high powered screen, it only gets 6
hours of battery life and costs almost 350 dollars.
A better option for someone who only reads books would be Sony's ebook Reader. The ebook uses the latest electronic ink technology that is so high in contrast, it looks like print. The display is slightly bigger at 6" and the technology uses so little power that a single charge can last for 7,500 page turns. The ebook comes with both MemoryStick and SD card ports for you to store not only books, but RSS feeds, pictures and
even music! Navigation is a little more straight forward with dedicated page buttons and chapter markers. There's even a cool little button that dog-ears a page - bookmarking it for you. The only negative mark would be the Sony Connect Store and price of $350. I was hoping Sony would open the platform to allow ebooks from other services but at least the connect store is very well organized and currently has over 10,000 titles.
The future looks pretty good and I'm anxious to see when the educational markets will jump in. All those heavy ass books from college could have been saved on a single SD card all in one device. Since publishers set the price, I don't know why they shouldn't jump on the ebook bandwagon.
more pictures after the jump
Posted by tranism at 12:41 PM | Permalink
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Comments
I'd like to see some kind of comprehensive article about e-readers and electronic paper.
I hear different companies talking about things they have in development/are planning to release and then never see anything else about it
Posted by: ichi bin at September 26, 2006 1:46 PM