PVI revenues drop - weakening e-paper orders!

[tirsales]

I am actually very glad about the backlight in my phone - I use it at night relatively often, where I dont have the possibility to provide adequate lighting. E.g. when working as spotter at a firework - you need a mobile phone to contact the pyrotechnical leader if something happens but you cannot make any light (this would bother the show).
But I accept that it is not always needed.

[radleyp]

Agreed, that's an excellent solution, but the on-off backlight switch has never existed, to my knowledge.

[bob_ninja]

Originally Posted by bbusybookworm

....
Most text for education is not avaliable in digital format. What little is, is in PDF, and that too iften DRM'd or password protected. Even The Illiad, which appears to provide a resonable PDF experience is not that great, and the price premium is huge.
....

Well the Iliad price can only be categorized in a certain context. For general literature sure it is expensive. However, for students paying as much as $100/book it is only about 8 books worth!!! So for edu market it is probably not that expensive.

DRM is the problem, indeed. However, poor students are the most productive copy protection breakers. When I was a student I had no means to buy any expensive software then sold (things like programming languages and such). I did purchase Borland's stuff like Turbo Pascal that was reasonably priced.

So many of these overpriced DRMs textbooks will be copied one way or another. Thus a student can easily purchase Iliad when it pays for itself after a single year worth of text books.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The current batch of eink devices doesn't have good software to support the educational market. NONE of them will do. They would need to be at least 9.7" screen sized and the software would need to be considerably better in order to do what is needed to be done. So as it stands, even if the book were in some other format then PDF, they would still not work. The hardware for most is not good enough either. The iLiad while the closest so far doesn't even cut it. Battery life needs to be significantly increased. IMHO, I think the reader would need to be retooled from the ground up and then the software written to handle the new hardware and do it right. But that would take a lot of development time and I don't think anyone will be doing that any time soon.

Originally Posted by chef

Never thought I would see the day that WEEKS of battery life is not enough. Must demand more. How American.

We get weeks of battery life now because most of what we do is just reading. The battery uses not much power to sit there while we read and wait for us to press a button. But, when we add in a 9.7" scree, touch and/or tablet capability, wifi, and the need for heavier duty processing besides just reading, then the weeks we used to get will be less. The iLiad gets about 12-15 hours on a charge. That's not enough.

How is all of this American? What this is is reality. The batter life of the Astek is rated at 5000 page turns. Once you add in all the other stuff, you'll find that going down a lot. Do you want to be sitting in a class with your device and find that the battery just died? What would you do then when you no longer have your classes text book handy and you find you need it? These eink devices need a lot of retooling in order to be usable in educational environments. Once you do decide you want to use these devices for other then reading, then you need more then what we have now because what we have now just isn't good enough. I like my 505, but other then reading books, it's not good enough.

[chef]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

We get weeks of battery life now because most of what we do is just reading. The battery uses not much power to sit there while we read and wait for us to press a button. But, when we add in a 9.7" scree, touch and/or tablet capability, wifi, and the need for heavier duty processing besides just reading, then the weeks we used to get will be less. The iLiad gets about 12-15 hours on a charge. That's not enough.

How is all of this American? What this is is reality. The batter life of the Astek is rated at 5000 page turns. Once you add in all the other stuff, you'll find that going down a lot. Do you want to be sitting in a class with your device and find that the battery just died? What would you do then when you no longer have your classes text book handy and you find you need it? These eink devices need a lot of retooling in order to be usable in educational environments. Once you do decide you want to use these devices for other then reading, then you need more then what we have now because what we have now just isn't good enough. I like my 505, but other then reading books, it's not good enough.

It is American because people are never satisifed with what is offered; they always want more. Regardless of the age of whatever it is. Since E Ink and e-readers are in their infancy, you got to start somewhere. You can't expect the perfect device to come out in the intial launch. Improvements WILL be made over time.

[astra]

Originally Posted by chef

It is American because people are never satisifed with what is offered; they always want more. Regardless of the age of whatever it is.

Rubbish. The same happens here in the UK. People are permanently complaining and are never satisfied. The same I can say about a few more countries.

[chef]

Good? I don't know if that is good or not (that other countries are like that too), but I was just speaking from experience knowing that I am American.