Jointech JE100 - ebook reader

[ProDigit]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

I've been reading on my LCD for 7 years(?) I've no problems with eyesore and I do a lot of heavy reading... I think it depends on the person. I've known people that could watch at a 60Hz CRT screen without getting a headache (while I got one just glancing at it...)

I did wonder how long I did with one battery charge on my PDA... I think I'll try to measure it this week...




When I read at night, I have a black screen with an off-white lettering. Works perfectly. When I'm reading in the sun (yes, I can read in direct sunlight), I've an off-white background with black lettering.

Which leads met to wonder what kind of LCD screen it is, transflective or not... I wonder if people who think that you can't read from a LCD screen ever seen a transflective screen. It makes all the world of a difference.

Comparing the two PDA's we have at home, one with a transflective screen and one with a more conventional display, I notice the main difference is the way the backlight works. On my PDA (the transflective one), you cannot see the backlight, it is evenly spaced across the screen. On the older PDA, you can see where the backlight is hidden behind the screen. There are two brighter areas. And you can't see anything on that older PDA if you're outside... While on my PDA, it doesn't matter at all whether I'm inside with the backlight on or outside, in full sun-light, with the backlight off.


Edit:
Some searching found me this:

Graphical-subsystem
Display+Type: color transflective TFT display
Display;Color;Depth: 16 bit/pixel (65536 scales)
Display-Diagonal: 7 " (178 millimetres)
Display+Resolution: 800 x 480 (384000 pixels)
Viewableisplay-Size: 6.01 " x 3.61 " (152.63 x 91.58 millimetres)
Dot_Pitch: 133.1 pixel/inch (0.19079 millimetre/pixel)

It is starting to look better and better!

You could call it transreflective, though a 'reflective' screen would be a more correct name.
Reflective screens for laptops are of the last 5 years, and are basically screens that have no anti-glare filter on them,allowing the sunrays to 'freely' travel through and back the LCD screen.
I also used my laptop outside on minimum brightness, but due to different polarization filters my screen looks green/yellow/greyish.

An anti glare filter will scatter any incoming light, so you won't be distracted by reflections on the screen, but the con is that in strong sunlight, the light will be shattered all over the filter, and you will not be able to see anything of the display or screen.

[Abelturd]

Originally Posted by ProDigit

...
So a lot of people complain about eyestrain on LCD's just because they don't know how to adjust the screen to the right brightness!
...
Same goes for E-ink. Reading your E-ink device actually hurts in full sunlight, and your eyes get damaged doing so!
...
E-ink is about the perfect screen for reading in the shadows and inside under mild light (as well as Pixel Qi's technology).

I don't mean to force my opinion on anyone and I'm willing to admit that it depends on the person how much does reading on an lcd bother him/her.
I'd just like to make sure that the contributors to this debate have spent equal amount of time reading on both lcd and eink displays and can make a comparison that's worth something.

I used to read on a transflective screen with a variety of different settings as to the backlight level and background and text color. Some might have worked better than others, but all in all, it was still worse experience than with eink.

But then there are other things that speak in favor of eink and which drove me away from lcd screens: lcds reflect the ambient light a great deal more than eink and usually (in my experience) you have to hold the device right before you at a 90 degrees angle, because if tilted the readability goes down fast. So you can't just put it horizontally in front of you on a table or on bed, always have to hold it in your hand at near 90 degrees angle to your eye axis.
And this is not a matter of personal taste, you all must have noticed this.

Last thing -- reading eink outside on direct sunlight is better than both reading an lcd and reading a pbook, because the contrast of eink is lower, so you still spare your eyes more compared to reading from paper.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by ProDigit

You could call it transreflective, though a 'reflective' screen would be a more correct name.
Reflective screens for laptops are of the last 5 years, and are basically screens that have no anti-glare filter on them,allowing the sunrays to 'freely' travel through and back the LCD screen.
I also used my laptop outside on minimum brightness, but due to different polarization filters my screen looks green/yellow/greyish.

An anti glare filter will scatter any incoming light, so you won't be distracted by reflections on the screen, but the con is that in strong sunlight, the light will be shattered all over the filter, and you will not be able to see anything of the display or screen.

There's a major difference between transflective and reflective...

Reflective liquid crystals are unique because they operate without the use of a backlight. Instead, they rely solely on ambient light. This allows the device to consume very little power. In fact, the power consumption is typically reduced up to 60% more so than other liquid crystal displays, such as the transflective displays. Some of the older calculators used the reflective displays.

Transflective displays basically adapt to their surroundings, making them somewhat superior to their reflective counterparts. When color is needed, transflective displays have become very common and often popular to use. A transflective liquid crystal display reflects most of the ambient light that may surround it and adapts to the amount of light within the user’s area.

(from http://www.screentekinc.com/resource...flective.shtml)

Originally Posted by Abelturd

But then there are other things that speak in favor of eink and which drove me away from lcd screens: lcds reflect the ambient light a great deal more than eink and usually (in my experience) you have to hold the device right before you at a 90 degrees angle, because if tilted the readability goes down fast. So you can't just put it horizontally in front of you on a table or on bed, always have to hold it in your hand at near 90 degrees angle to your eye axis.
And this is not a matter of personal taste, you all must have noticed this.

No, I haven't noticed this at all. Yes, on the older PDA that is true. But on the newer one (the transflective one), I have perfect view at all angles.

[Abelturd]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

No, I haven't noticed this at all. Yes, on the older PDA that is true. But on the newer one (the transflective one), I have perfect view at all angles.

I wouldn't say that ipaq 214 is an old device and I can't believe you haven't noticed this. I agree that this might not be the case with jetbook for example, but I can't imagine how can a tft touch screen lcd device elude this.
May I ask which device do you use and if you've had some experience with eink before? I'd be most thankful.

[manifestor]

Originally Posted by Ham88

Seeing as this has become part of this thread I don't like reading on a back lit lcd, such as my laptop, but I love reading on the lcd on my jetbook. So I think the whole eyestrain thing is just the backlight, but I'm no expert

I agree. The LCD on the jetbook is a reflective display and it reads just like e-ink. I used to have a "non-backlit" monochrome Palm PDA and it was a very nice ebook reader.

And one more thing I like about an e-ink device is the battery life. I personally don't mind the relatively slower refresh speed of the e-ink display since it's just a very brief blink, and I turn pages just every 30 seconds or so. And most of the page-turn waiting is due to the slow CPU of the reader rather than the display itself.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by Abelturd

I wouldn't say that ipaq 214 is an old device and I can't believe you haven't noticed this. I agree that this might not be the case with jetbook for example, but I can't imagine how can a tft touch screen lcd device elude this.
May I ask which device do you use and if you've had some experience with eink before? I'd be most thankful.

I'm using a Fujitsu Siemens Loox 720. The older PDA I have is a Loox 600.

And yes, I've seen e-ink screens. Even side-by-side by my PDA. I hardly noticed a difference between the quality of the screens. (at least, once I turned my colours around as I mostly have the black background )

[Abelturd]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

I'm using a Fujitsu Siemens Loox 720. The older PDA I have is a Loox 600.

And yes, I've seen e-ink screens. Even side-by-side by my PDA. I hardly noticed a difference between the quality of the screens. (at least, once I turned my colours around as I mostly have the black background )

Seeing is not believing in this case. Try using it for a while, let's say a couple of days worth of reading on eink and you will see my point.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by Abelturd

Seeing is not believing in this case. Try using it for a while, let's say a couple of days worth of reading on eink and you will see my point.

I'll come back to you once I bought my first e-ink device and used it for a while

[GuillaumeJay]

Can we please do the "Lcd are bad, no they're not" dance on another thread ?

This reader seems great : windowsCe is a big plus for me, size and resolution are great, the lower battery life is not enough for me : when I can't sleep at night (99% of my ebook usage is at night, so no e-ink for me) 3h is too short.

Any word on how much and when ? My Axim x51 just died on me yesterday evening

[Edit]http://wwwjointechcomhk.itrademarket...101/je-100.htm
Sample: US$199 (We will return the unit price balance to you against to your first order.)
MOQ 100pcs
100-1000 US$144 (With 1GB SD Card)?
1001-10000 US$137 (With 1GB SD Card)

I'm nearly ready to chat with them on msn to ask for a quote directly.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by GuillaumeJay

Can we please do the "Lcd are bad, no they're not" dance on another thread ?

This reader seems great : windowsCe is a big plus for me, size and resolution are great, the lower battery life is not enough for me : when I can't sleep at night (99% of my ebook usage is at night, so no e-ink for me) 3h is too short.

Any word on how much and when ? My Axim x51 just died on me yesterday evening

I wonder what the battery life will really be. It says 3-6 hours. But is that with the backlight off? Or with the backlight at full?

How about replacing the battery? Can you do it? Is it easy to do? If it's easy to replace a battery, it might be handy to have two batteries ready. One in the reader, one in reserve. I should be able to replace my battery without losing data (if only that backup battery would work) for example.

In short, we need a hands-on!

[manifestor]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

I wonder what the battery life will really be. It says 3-6 hours. But is that with the backlight off? Or with the backlight at full?

How about replacing the battery? Can you do it? Is it easy to do? If it's easy to replace a battery, it might be handy to have two batteries ready. One in the reader, one in reserve. I should be able to replace my battery without losing data (if only that backup battery would work) for example.

In short, we need a hands-on!

I don't think we would ever turn off the backlight with the traditional LCD display, so there's no point estimating the battery life with the LCD off.

By the way, 3 hours is just too short for reading fictions. I go longer than that when I'm really absorbed in a certain book. And the need to charge more often hinders the reader's autonomy.

[nelsonescorcio]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

I use an LCD device as my primary reader, and haven't found that to be true. I think you've overgeneralized your dislike of LCD screens into an invalid conclusion.

«the statement wasn't phrased as an opinion. It comes across as a statement of fact.»

I am sorry, but you have clearly no idea of what you are talking about.

Google "LCD" and "eyestrain".
You will discover amazing things...
You will be able to actually read some scientific material.

[ProDigit]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

There's a major difference between transflective and reflective...

To clear up a misunderstanding the 'reflective' screen I was talking about was not about the LCD crystals but the surface finish.
Basically all LCD screens are 'reflective' screens,only some manufacturers prefer to layer the screen with an anti-glare filter. The anti-glare filter is the one that makes the screen look blurry and hard to read in sunlight.
You can remove this layer if you (carefully) peel it off. The process takes about 24 hours to do so (first soaking in water for about 20 hours)...

there have been multiple of tests done,and it is safe to do if you know what you're doing. Google for "remove anti glare filter Eee Pc", and you'll see a bunchload of articles and so...

Anyways, the reflective I was referring to, is the screen surface that reflects the light instead of absorbs them.

[ProDigit]

Originally Posted by manifestor

And most of the page-turn waiting is due to the slow CPU of the reader rather than the display itself.

I don't know about the jetbook,but the Sony reader has something like a 500Mhz processor under the hood. That's good enough to display about 5 pages per second or more. It's the combination of all; the processor goes into a sleep state, and when you swap pages it needs to come out of it, which takes a few milli seconds (I thought I read in the likes of 10ms somewhere).
But the processor itself is fast enough to give you perhaps even 10fps in B&W text mode. The only thing that taxes the processor (real bad) is color and larger than screen resolution pictures.

And there's also the delay from reading the info from the internal memory or SD card. That's an additional >2 ms.

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by nelsonescorcio

«the statement wasn't phrased as an opinion. It comes across as a statement of fact.»

I am sorry, but you have clearly no idea of what you are talking about.

Google "LCD" and "eyestrain".
You will discover amazing things...
You will be able to actually read some scientific material.

How could I not know what I am talking about? I stated my experience, then expressed an opinion.

I then Googled the terms you suggested and found only anecdotal evidence on the first 4 pages. This is not enough to overrule my own experience.