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Old 04-09-2012, 03:21 PM   #16
morriss003
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Originally Posted by Fozzybear View Post
Reading a thread about the rumours about new front-lit readers and seeing how some people have bought many, many e-readers it struck me as interesting that something as outwardly basic as a device for reading a book attracts much the same gadget upgraditis that other consumer electronic devices attract. I'm curious about what people think about this - are we victims of the push for more gizmos, more bells and whistles? Are people still searching for the 'perfect' device to read from or are we being led like sheep to buy the 'new' just for the sake of it? Is there something lacking from the devices of today that tangibly interferes with your reading?
Computer (chips) are like automobiles (or perhaps the internal combustion engine). The invention transforms everything. If you consider the auto to have been invented c.1890, then it has been about a hundred twenty two years since that invention, and there have been quite a few upgrades, not to mention the various kinds and types of motor vehicles. If you consider the personal computer (with the 8008 chip) to have been invented about 1975, then it has only been 37 years since that invention. We are in the late infancy of the personal computer (chip), and there should be a lot of upgrades coming, many of which we cannot even predict at this time.
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Old 04-09-2012, 03:43 PM   #17
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Originally Posted by morriss003 View Post
Computer (chips) are like automobiles (or perhaps the internal combustion engine). The invention transforms everything. If you consider the auto to have been invented c.1890, then it has been about a hundred twenty two years since that invention, and there have been quite a few upgrades, not to mention the various kinds and types of motor vehicles. If you consider the personal computer (with the 8008 chip) to have been invented about 1975, then it has only been 37 years since that invention. We are in the late infancy of the personal computer (chip), and there should be a lot of upgrades coming, many of which we cannot even predict at this time.
And today's PCs have more computing power than a 1970s vintage super computer.
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Old 04-09-2012, 04:37 PM   #18
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And today's PCs have more computing power than a 1970s vintage super computer.
Wehaven't seen anything yet. The power of computer chips is increasing at an exponential rate (while prices continue to crash), so what we consider high-end today will be even more laughable 40 years from now. As computer chips increase in power and drop in price, it becomes easy to sell a cheap device with even more features than the previous high-end, there's always more room for extra features people didn't know they wanted, especially when those extra features come in a device that's cheaper than their old device.

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Old 04-09-2012, 05:01 PM   #19
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Originally Posted by Ninjalawyer View Post
Wehaven't seen anything yet. The power of computer chips is increasing at an exponential rate (while prices continue to crash), so what we consider high-end today will be even more laughable 40 years from now. As computer chips increase in power and drop in price, it becomes easy to sell a cheap device with even more features than the previous high-end, there's always more room for extra features people didn't know they wanted, especially when those extra features come in a device that's cheaper than their old device.
Well, yes "The power of computer chips is increasing at an exponential rate"; but not "prices continue to crash". A high end PC costs the same today as it did in 1985. Around $1000 would get you a state of the art PC AT clone then, and it will get you a high end quad core processer with a TByte drive and 8 GB of RAM today.

It's just that a high end PC is very much higher end than it was in 1985. Actually the prices are decreasing, but only in terms of the dollar not being worth as much today as it was then.
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Old 04-09-2012, 05:10 PM   #20
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As to the OP, follow this link back in time to 1972, 40 years ago. Then you will find acclaimed director Orson Wells (of War of the Worlds fame) whining about the exact same thing.

http://youtu.be/6Ghzomm15yE
What a fun and unintentionally amusing television documentary -- especially the montages and soundtrack! This is the kind of dystopian editorializing over filter sweeps that made Boards of Canada want to do music.

I especially enjoyed Mr. Welles' line about "the premature arrival of the future." That's even better than the monologue at the beginning of Plan 9 from Outer Space: "We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. . . ."

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Old 04-09-2012, 05:27 PM   #21
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Prices for computers really have plummeted. I remember in the 1990's reading articles speculating about computers costing less than $1,000. Inflation makes the price drop even bigger. Ite IBM PC sold for $1,565, which would be nearly $4,000 today.

http://inventors.about.com/od/comput...t/a/Ibm-Pc.htm
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Old 04-09-2012, 06:17 PM   #22
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Originally Posted by Ninjalawyer View Post
Wehaven't seen anything yet. The power of computer chips is increasing at an exponential rate (while prices continue to crash), so what we consider high-end today will be even more laughable 40 years from now.
Not exactly exponential anymore. For most folks, we already have excess CPU power available for desktop computers and laptops. Outside of benchmarking and specialized applications, you'd be hard pressed to notice a difference between a $1000 hexa-core Core i7 Sandy Bridge-EX and a $50 dual-core Celeron Sandy Bridge. The move in x86 right now is more towards integration and lower power consumption.
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Old 04-09-2012, 07:40 PM   #23
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I was dithering on the ereader issue for a few months and finally bought the Nook Touch last Thanksgiving. I'm happy enough with it and am more than happy with the ebook experience in general. My only "want" is that my Nook to play audiobooks. There are plenty of Overdrive audiobooks that aren't available in ePub. I should have done a little research into it as I now know there are ereaders out there that do play audio. It's not a huge issue (I won't be switching anytime soon) but it's something I'll keep in mind when I do buy another one.

I have a Sandisk music player but I can no longer access it when it's hooked up to my computer. It still works and the battery still charges but since I can't access its hard drive, I can't hook it up to Overdrive. I have my music on a 16gb SDHC microdisk but Overdrive won't work with it. In any case, it would be nice to have all the books-e and audio on one device, my ereader.
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Old 04-09-2012, 08:19 PM   #24
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I think that the 6 inch black and white eInk reader is a classic design not in much need of improvement.

In ten or twenty years, it should be possible to make them so they never need battery charging, even if mostly kept in the dark. That will be nice. Lower prices combined with more durability (gorilla glass?) would be undoubted pluses. But I don't think improvements are urgent. And I think that the device changes we are likely to see will be be more helpful in making purchases from the like of Amazon than in actually improving the experience of reading long texts.
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Old 04-09-2012, 09:30 PM   #25
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As far as just reading books (fiction and non-fiction) is concerned, the current crop of e-ink readers is more than good enough for me. I would, however, like to have a tablet with a better screen technology. Perhaps a future generation of Mirasol or similar. An all-in-one device of reading books, magazines, websites, and newspapers; that is also fast enough to play videos and with a long lasting battery.
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Old 04-09-2012, 11:24 PM   #26
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I didn't upgrade my K3 to a K4 because I don't care that much about touch. But if they had introduced a meaningfully improved screen (say, the same improvement as there was between the k2 and k3), I would have definitely upgraded. E-ink screens still have quite a bit of room for improvement.
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Old 04-10-2012, 04:25 AM   #27
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Not exactly exponential anymore. For most folks, we already have excess CPU power available for desktop computers and laptops. Outside of benchmarking and specialized applications, you'd be hard pressed to notice a difference between a $1000 hexa-core Core i7 Sandy Bridge-EX and a $50 dual-core Celeron Sandy Bridge. The move in x86 right now is more towards integration and lower power consumption.
Well to be fair, Ninjalawyer did say "computer chips" and not necessarily "CPU". GPUs are still advancing quite quickly, and there are plenty of other chips and options that are in their infancy. Massively parallel computing (hundreds or thousands of cores rather than just the 6-12 we have at the high end today), vector processors, SSDs and other memory and storage advacnements, bus advancements like USB3 and Thunderbolt, quantum computing, etc. Just because Moore's Law has theoretically topped for CPUs out doesn't mean there's nowhere else to go.
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Old 04-10-2012, 08:03 AM   #28
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Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze View Post
What a fun and unintentionally amusing television documentary -- especially the montages and soundtrack! This is the kind of dystopian editorializing over filter sweeps that made Boards of Canada want to do music.

I especially enjoyed Mr. Welles' line about "the premature arrival of the future." That's even better than the monologue at the beginning of Plan 9 from Outer Space: "We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. . . ."
By golly, you get several thousand karma points just for genius of acknowledging my genius of acknowledging Orsen's genius of Chicken-Littleing the entire future. Dire, I tell you. It's dire all the way down.
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Old 04-10-2012, 08:37 AM   #29
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Improvements that would get me to buy a new ereader would include:
  • full MP3 player (for music & audiobooks)
  • mSD card slot (for music & audiobooks)
  • folder organization (to store more books, games, & music)
  • 5" touch screen (same size as Galaxy Player 5)
I'd love to have an eink reader the same size as my Galaxy Player 5 and with the above features. Such a device would get me to carry it everywhere I went.

But, tis not to be. So, I'll settle for my K3 with just a few books on it and do my reading at home.
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Old 04-10-2012, 09:17 AM   #30
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Well, yes "The power of computer chips is increasing at an exponential rate"; but not "prices continue to crash". A high end PC costs the same today as it did in 1985. Around $1000 would get you a state of the art PC AT clone then, and it will get you a high end quad core processer with a TByte drive and 8 GB of RAM today.

It's just that a high end PC is very much higher end than it was in 1985. Actually the prices are decreasing, but only in terms of the dollar not being worth as much today as it was then.
The price per transistor on a chip really has crashed; what you get for $1,000 today isn't just an improvement, it's orders of magnitude more than what you got in 1985. And don't discount the forces of inflation, the real prices of computers have gone down significantly compared to the average Westerner's real income.

Those increases in transistor density, married to falling costs, haven't just made desktops better either. They've made modern cellphones and entire other branches of technology possible, which by the standards of 1985 would be computational wonders.

Just like finding the forest when you're surrounded by a bunch of dumb trees, it's hard to see the revolution when you're in it, and the computer revolution never ended.


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Just because Moore's Law has theoretically topped for CPUs out doesn't mean there's nowhere else to go.
There's still plenty of room at the bottom as far as CPUs go. Particularly with the recent creation of atom-sized transistors.

Last edited by Ninjalawyer; 04-10-2012 at 09:21 AM.
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