Quote:
Originally Posted by crossi
Why would I buy a new one? The one I have works fine. There are no physical changes that it needs which is what most mean by an upgrade. It's like paper books, the concept of a upgrade is pretty meaningless. I never even bothered with changing to a touch screen or a light. The software could use some tweaking but other than better library management simpler is better. Eink is like bound paper to display print. That is all it needs to do and how much could that be improved? What's with the idea that everything needs constant "upgrades".
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That sums it up.
The mistake being made imo is that e-ink readers are being looked at with the same standard as personal multimedia computing devices, which they are not. Mobile multimedia's task is doubly difficult: Not only does it need to keep up with constantly evolving software and content, but it needs to display the full range of conceivable imagery and sound as close to life-like as possible. That's a tall ceiling to strive towards.
Eink crammed moveable ink particles into a sheet of plastic. It is
mechanical print, a function it essentially achieved in full on day one. Its storage and instructions are digital, but it doesn't necessarily need to be. You could make an e-ink reader that gets its instructions from nearly any storage medium and the image on the display would be the same. Its source material does not become more demanding with time. Any changes or refinements to the technology or the devices built around it must not compromise its primary function. The more advanced an eink display, the less it resembles technology.
Eink's success is linked to the consumer preference for print. For eink to fail, print needs to either totally lose or totally win. Tablets and such compete for consumer spending due to an overlap of usage (rather than function), which they are certainly doing, but it's not an evolutionary zero-sum competition similar to VHS/DVD, where one replaces the other. At least, not yet. The fact that display technology had to be totally circumvented in order to popularize ebooks tells me that it has a long way to go before it presents an evolutionary threat.