The Sony eReader

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2006-12-18 10:54pm

Saw it and tried it out at the local Barnes and Noble, or is it Borders?

It's simply not ready for prime time; the page turn lag is horrible, as is the complete lack of any back light. $350 is simply too much for that kind of technical limitations.

Shortie · Post by **Shortie** » 2006-12-19 07:32am

I've been waiting for electronic paper for years, but yeah, it's still not there yet. I figure at least 5 years before there's a good one at a reasonable price, and also a decent supply of books for it.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2006-12-19 09:23am

I think you'd have to front-light ePaper, but the lack of any light is indeed annoying.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2006-12-19 09:27am

$350 and they leave out one of the more important components? Sony really is batting for a thousand this year it seems.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2006-12-19 02:48pm

The introduction of cheap e-paper would be far better. The new advances in wiring up fibres and OLED ink and so on makes the idea of recyclable flexi screens a more promising field than more pseudo-PDA devices. Besides, we have mobiles for that.

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2006-12-19 03:17pm

When I mean by lag, it's the lag when you turn the page, and the screen flips. It's Horrible. My Sony CLIE SJ22 from many years ago, is far superior to this crap.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2006-12-19 03:39pm

MKSheppard wrote:When I mean by lag, it's the lag when you turn the page, and the screen flips. It's Horrible. My Sony CLIE SJ22 from many years ago, is far superior to this crap.

It's the ePaper technology, I think. It doesn't have very fast refresh times.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2006-12-19 03:49pm

Like I say, the technology is still new and by no means doing what we expect. The lag is similar to what we had with the first LCDs (along with the price). In time, we will have systems that are cheap, likely disposable and have inbuilt memory and power technologies that are similarly flexible and cheap. The goal is to make stuff that is just like a paper pad today, but can do what a computer screen can. Mobile phones show how far we've come in just seven years from bricks with monochrome screens, to sleek things with music players, cameras and full colour displays of larger size.

I can't wait for something like an A4 sized fully flexible e-paper pad, or posters that can change at will (far better than the LCD photo frames today with their horrible pixellated images).

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2006-12-19 10:04pm

I have to say that it is really, really cool. Everyone who looks at it thinks that it is a fake display with a printed screen.

The refresh time, however, is so horrible that it makes navigating the menu a nightmare (you press down and wait fifteen seconds for the cursor to move).