Posted on 09/28/2006 12:00:16 PM PDT by kdot
Books have been the orphan in the digital world. Music has the iPod. Video has YouTube. Books have, well, Amazon.com, where you can buy them printed on paper.
Of course, there are electronic books available for download at Amazon and elsewhere, but they haven't really caught on.
Sony Corp. however is now tackling part of the problem with the U.S. launch of the first e-book reader that imitates the look of paper by using innovative screen technology.
Is this the iPod for books? Not quite. But it is a step forward.
The Sony Reader is a handsome affair the size of a paperback book, but only a third of an inch thick. It went on sale this week for $350 (£190) on Sony's Web site, and is available in Borders stores in October.
Unlike other e-books, the screen has no flicker or back light, allowing the reader to spend as much time reading as they want without the fear of eyestrain.
The 6-inch screen can be taken for a monochrome liquid-crystal display at first glance, but on closer inspection looks like no other electronic display. It's behind a thin pane of glass, but unlike an LCD it shows no "depth" - it pretty much looks like a light grey piece of paper with dark gray text.
The display, based on technology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology spin-off E Ink Corp., is composed of tiny capsules with electrically charged particles of white and black ink. When a static electric charge is applied on the side of the capsule that faces the reader, it attracts the white particles to the face of the display, making that pixel show light gray.
Reversing the charge brings the black pigments floating through the capsule to replace the white pigments, and the pixel shows as dark gray.
Like paper, the display is readable from any angle, but it doesn't look as good as the real thing, chiefly because the contrast doesn't compare well. The background isn't white and the letters aren't black. The letters show some jaggedness, even though the resolution is a very respectable 800 by 600 pixels. It will display photos, though they look a bit like black-and-white photocopies.
But it's still a more comfortable reading medium than any other electronic display. The text is easy on the eyes in almost any light you could read a book by.
The other major advantage of the display is that it's a real power sipper. Sony says a Reader with a full charge in its lithium battery can show up to 7,500 pages.
The reason behind this trilogy-busting stamina is that the display only consumes power when it flips to a new page. Displaying the same page continuously consumes no power, though the electronics of the device itself do use a little bit.
The Reader's internal memory holds up to 100 books, depending on their size, and can be expanded with inexpensive SD cards or Memory Sticks.
Here's a link to the product page on Sony's website.
http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/eCS/Store/en/-/USD/SY_DisplayProductInformation-Start?ProductSKU=PRS500U2&CP=sony_9_25_explore_electronics_ereader&ref=http%3A//www.sony.com/index.php
Will it read MS Reader, html, .txt, .doc files from a Memory Stick Duo?
Media Formats Supported
| Unsecured Text: BBeB Book, Adobe® PDF, TXT, RTF, Microsoft® Word (Conversion to the Reader-requires Word installed on your PC) |
| DRM Text: BBeB Book (Marlin) |
| Unsecured Audio: MP3 and AAC7 |
| Image: JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP |
Looks like the futuristic clipboards they used on Star Trek.
That is a great idea!
It is extraordinary how little appreciation my wife and kids have for this practice.
I like Books on Tape.
Think of it...plug this gizmo into your USB port, access the NY Times (G-d forbid) website, or some other and download today's edition...as part of your subscription or simply use a credit card or PayPal to buy a single issue that will expire in say...one week. Has possibilities I think.
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