Jinke reveals upcoming product line of E Ink e-book readers

[Nightwing]

Originally Posted by NatCh

My wife is working really hard to become a college prof. One of the services available to them these days is something called "TurnItIn.com" which checks for plagiarism (I copied the word from their site, 'cause I can't spell it on my own ). However, that means that she gets the papers electronically, so if she uses the service, she has to print them out in order to grade them.

She loves the idea of an easily readable device that would let her mark up the papers and zap an e-copy back to the student while letting her file her notes and grades for future reference (like at final grade time, or when mommy & daddy come to argue with her about why their little angel flunked, which was most likely 'cause mommy & daddy have always made everything in little angel's life all better, and not let little angel learn that screwing-up hurts and so little angel shouldn't do things that are probably going to end up being screw-ups).

Such a device would appeal a great deal to teachers & professors (as well as corporate types -- not to mention lawyers!) as education gets more and more electronicated, just for grading purposes, alone. Then there's articles, and not having to carry all those piles of papers home, decreased likelihood of misplacing a paper, and all the other stuff that we've discussed countless times around here but always drag back out when it seems like someone might be listening in particular.

From the client base I have. I can tell you the Medical prof will go crazy when it reaches that stage of a or close to full paper size with witting. PDA and Tablets just dont hack it.

[BKeeper]

I completely agree. An A4 reader is a must.

A4 is the most used standard among heavy consumers of written information e.g.: lawyers doctors, scientists and people in academia.
In these areas we use a lot of short-term/ short-lived information. Documents lose value really fast and usually end up being destroyed.

Maybe one could say that ebook devices right now are not so much for readers but for printers. :-)

It's in these segments that and eReader has potential (maybe even more than for ebooks, since there is clearly no emotional attachment to the classic and much loved pbook, which is to say that a pbook nowadays has somehow an inherent value. As we all know, sometimes that value can itself be a barrier for mass ebook success.

[icecubex]

I personally would be happy to cope with a4 split into two portrait a5 pages (do readers do this already?; don't personally need colour as I'm all about the maths, and would much prefer something portable.

However, for reading score...that's another thing...being able to play music off a real ebook device would friggin' rock. Of course, then annotations would be really nice : )

So, I'd ideally like two, then (with lots and lots of memory capacity).

Annotations would be nice, but...insofar as the a5 model would be concerned, I'd be able live. I mean, as it is, I have to carry about these annoying papers, only small sections of which I need to concentrate on at any given time, generally simultaneously scribbling on a sheet of paper...I always carry 'round a notebook, and can't see an ebook reader changing that any time soon.

: D

Could 10 inch displays display most a4 things with the margins trimmed? I have no real idea of scale...excuse me...

[JSWolf]

What we don't need is another format for ebooks. Wolf format. POO! Sorry, but that sucks. What we need is a reader that can handle multiple existing formats besides PDF. LIT, PDB, LRF would be good choices to support. But unless it supports something that is already out there for ebooks other then PDF then it's almost useless. Sorry. But I don't see yet another non-standard format taking off.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by NatCh

My wife is working really hard to become a college prof. One of the services available to them these days is something called "TurnItIn.com" which checks for plagiarism (I copied the word from their site, 'cause I can't spell it on my own ). However, that means that she gets the papers electronically, so if she uses the service, she has to print them out in order to grade them.

She loves the idea of an easily readable device that would let her mark up the papers and zap an e-copy back to the student while letting her file her notes and grades for future reference (like at final grade time, or when mommy & daddy come to argue with her about why their little angel flunked, which was most likely 'cause mommy & daddy have always made everything in little angel's life all better, and not let little angel learn that screwing-up hurts and so little angel shouldn't do things that are probably going to end up being *****-ups).

Such a device would appeal a great deal to teachers & professors (as well as corporate types -- not to mention lawyers!) as education gets more and more electronicated, just for grading purposes, alone. Then there's articles, and not having to carry all those piles of papers home, decreased likelihood of misplacing a paper, and all the other stuff that we've discussed countless times around here but always drag back out when it seems like someone might be listening in particular.

Would not a laptop with a detachable screen that doubles as a tablet do all these things?

[NatCh]

Yes, JSWolf, it would, but it has all the attendant drawbacks of a tablet, heavy, hot, backlight glare, poor battery life, etc.

That being said, the way things are looking like they're going, a tablet of some sort is most likely what she'll end up with, if she pursues that approach.