[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by brecklundin

Actually, yes, yes they do. But remember Joe Q. Public has no idea if 4096 colors is enough or not. Categories of books which color is seriously important references from photography books to books travel books to books on art and antiques and many other categories where photos are an important portion of the book, as important as the text itself. Color accuracy is very important for antiques reference as colors of pieces will offer clues to maker or just the ability to differential between a rare short run color for an item or a common different color of an object. The lack of true color will affect the value of the references in almost all cases in this category but all of these categories depend on accurate color and combined represent no small portion of annual sales.

Oh, I concur. I've mentioned references on art, photography, and design as works ill-suited for electronic publication due to lack of color support in eInk based readers and screen sizes too small to handle the pages.

In fact I know one author of a very popular and important photography reference who eagerly awaited the iPad simply so the Kindle version hos his book would be able to work in color. It's a book on lighting which need the full color the iPad offers.

Yep. Accurate color is an absolute requirement for that sort of book.

So, while the E-ink color panels certainly will be good enough for books with simple colored graphics are used to improve it's usefulness, there is a HUGE segment of readers who will not be served by this generation of panels. Because of that there is not as much incentive for the publishers of the books which need better color rendering, to spend the money on creating ebook versions...I am not even sold that magazines will be happy with the color reproduction, especially the higher end mags.

The pictures I've seen of the new color eInk displays don't thrill me. Yes, they do color, but not all that well. I need greater accuracy and vibrancy for the sort of stuff I'd be likely to view.

I just don't assume I'm representative of the broader market. The question is how good is "good enough", which will be determined by who the user is and what they want to read. Some folks may find a color eInk display acceptable for the material they read. What we don't know is whether there will be enough such folks to make devices using color eInk viable in the market.

Still we have to wait and see what they look like in the real world.

Exactly. I look forward to seeing accurate photos, and not someone's video of a device in action.
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Dennis