Sony reveals prototype 13.3-inch e-ink slate with stylus

[Kumabjorn]

From what I've seen it seems like it has some proprietary OS or perhaps stunted Android that will need to be rooted if you want full tablet capabilities, and then most likely you'll miss out on some of the features.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

From what I've seen it seems like it has some proprietary OS or perhaps stunted Android that will need to be rooted if you want full tablet capabilities, and then most likely you'll miss out on some of the features.

Sony has had its own OS for a long time now for eBook Readers. Teachers consider this a good thing so that students are sitting around playing games instead of using it as a book reader. (It is linux based I believe)

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

Actually anyone who's primary format is PDF would like this reader with several weeks battery life instead of about 10 hours

I wish people would stop repeating this misleading comparison.
Yes, eInk readings have a battery life of a month, if you only use it for half an hour a day.
Yes, tablets tend to have a battery life of about 10 hours, if you use it continuously.
Those figures are not in any way comparable.
Yes, an eInk device will probably have a battery life somewhere between 2-4 times that of an LCD device. Why isn't it enough to just say that, rather that the repeating the misleading puffery that Amazon/B&N/etc put out?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by BoldlyDubious

After all, paper documents don't allow zooming and we use them all the time without complaining :-)

Sure they do. It simply involves the use of external tools.

[ottdmk]

It occurs to me, HarryT, that that external tool might work ok with this proposed e-reader. :-D

[ApK]

Originally Posted by ottdmk

It occurs to me, HarryT, that that external tool might work ok with this proposed e-reader. :-D

The e-reader would need a much higher dot density for that tool to be useful.

Enlarging does not not help when there is no fine detail to be enlarged.

[Begemot]

All I can say that if Sony actually brings this 13.3 to market under a price of $500 and it truly is an e-ink, I will buy despite their rootkit past. How easy can one be tempted..

[BoldlyDubious]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

I wish people would stop repeating this misleading comparison.
Yes, eInk readings have a battery life of a month, if you only use it for half an hour a day.
Yes, tablets tend to have a battery life of about 10 hours, if you use it continuously.
Those figures are not in any way comparable.

My ebook reader is on for a couple of hours a day, and gets charged maybe once every two or three weeks. (Including the odd week-end in standby, when I forget to turn it off.)
An e-reader uses very little power except for the brief time intervals when the screen is refreshed. If you use it to read books or documents, actual battery life is measured in whole days. Of course this is true only if you keep the wireless network off!
(Tablets, on the contrary, require significant power just to keep the screen backlight on, and tend to have much faster -and power hungry- processors.)
So: yes, those figures are comparable.

[Feher]

Originally Posted by Begemot

All I can say that if Sony actually brings this 13.3 to market under a price of $500 and it truly is an e-ink, I will buy despite their rootkit past. How easy can one be tempted..

It won't be under 500$. According to this post by zeng, who is associated with onyx, it will be expensive. Incidentally Onyx has started working on 13.3 inch Ereader
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...8&postcount=12

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by BoldlyDubious

(Tablets, on the contrary, require significant power just to keep the screen backlight on, and tend to have much faster -and power hungry- processors.)

And they don't require power to keep the screen backlight on when the screen is not in use.

So: yes, those figures are comparable.

No, they aren't, they are measuring different things.
One is counting time that the device is actually in use (tablet), the other is counted elapsed wallclock time, regardless of whether the device is used or not (eInk). On the same basis, you could say that the tablet will last two to three weeks. (If you only use it for half an hour a day.)
It is deliberately misleading. Indeed I note that in Amazon's description of their eInk readers in the UK, they have removed the misleading chart they include in the US version, perhaps because of the stronger UK advertising regulations.

[ST-One]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

And they don't require power to keep the screen backlight on when the screen is not in use.



No, they aren't, they are measuring different things.
One is counting time that the device is actually in use (tablet), the other is counted elapsed wallclock time, regardless of whether the device is used or not (eInk). On the same basis, you could say that the tablet will last two to three weeks. (If you only use it for half an hour a day.)
It is deliberately misleading. Indeed I note that in Amazon's description of their eInk readers in the UK, they have removed the misleading chart they include in the US version, perhaps because of the stronger UK advertising regulations.

Read a book for the same amount of time on a tablet and on an eInk reader - guess which one uses more power for the same activity.

Hint: It's the tablet.

[Crusader]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

One is counting time that the device is actually in use (tablet), the other is counted elapsed wallclock time, regardless of whether the device is used or not (eInk). On the same basis, you could say that the tablet will last two to three weeks. (If you only use it for half an hour a day.)
It is deliberately misleading. Indeed I note that in Amazon's description of their eInk readers in the UK, they have removed the misleading chart they include in the US version, perhaps because of the stronger UK advertising regulations.

So you would only count the times the eInk device is actually refreshing the pages as actual use (excluding the time it's being read)?

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by ST-One

Read a book for the same amount of time on a tablet and on an eInk reader - guess which one uses more power for the same activity.

Hint: It's the tablet.

Did you actually read my posts?
I said that. I said that eInk devices tend to have between 2-4 times the battery life, counting time spent actually using them, than LCD devices.
But they don't have the 50x battery life that the misleading adverts pretend that they do.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by Crusader

So you would only count the times the eInk device is actually refreshing the pages as actual use (excluding the time it's being read)?

I would count the time spent actually reading the book.
Seems like the obvious thing to count.

Does anyone seriously think that comparing one figure which is measured in days (but you can only use the device for half an hour a day) with another measured in hours (of constant use) is meaningful?

Lets say a new tablet is released with 10x the battery life of current ones.
So it lasts for 100 hours of continuous use.
With the current advertising of eInk devices, they would claim a month of use for the eInk device vs 4 days for the tablet. Whereas in reality you could read for far longer on the tablet than the eInk device.
It is simply misleading. The only purpose is advertising copy. eInk device battery lives used to be measured in page turns, until Amazon and B&N got into an advertising war about battery life.

[ST-One]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

But they don't have the 50x battery life that the misleading adverts pretend that they do.

If it is only about reading, then, yeah, they do. Perhaps not 50 times the battery life of a tablet (which does a lot more things, even when you don't use it actively) but significantly more than just 2 or 4 times more.