jetBook Color 2 with New Color E ink screen is coming...

[DeeEs]

That's right, for people who read comics, it is a good thing, too. But will that be enought customers for mass-production?

[imanlhakim]

I Think this news is unofficial or just hoax. here is respond from ectaco

Hi Iman,

Thanks for your message on the jetBook Color. We have not made any announcements on a new version of the jetBook Color, please subscribe to our newsletter for more information.

We do have a great sale on the jetBook color now. The cost is $449.95 ($50 off), also you get a free carrying case and a great ear light reading light.

If you would like to order one now let me know and I would be glad to help you with everything!

Best Regards,
Jerry C
Ectaco Inc.
Fax: (718)728-4023 ATTN: Jerry
Follow Us On Twitter! http://twitter.com/Ectaco

[artifact]

Originally Posted by DeeEs

That's right, for people who read comics, it is a good thing, too. But will that be enought customers for mass-production?

Things where I see color being useful for ebooks:

Cookbooks and other food porn
Field Guides
Gardening
Crafts and Patterns (knitting, cross-stitch, woodworking?)
Home Repair and Decor
Game guides and manuals
Coffee table books
Photograpy books
Work documents with color graphs, photos, etc
Manuals and instructions
Textbooks

I'd call that mass-production.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by artifact

Things where I see color being useful for ebooks:

Cookbooks and other food porn
Field Guides
Gardening
Crafts and Patterns (knitting, cross-stitch, woodworking?)
Home Repair and Decor
Game guides and manuals
Coffee table books
Photograpy books
Work documents with color graphs, photos, etc
Manuals and instructions
Textbooks

I'd call that mass-production.

What proportion of those people currently buying Kindles would pay say twice as much to be able to read an improves version of the books listed above, but wouldn't rather just buy a tablet instead?
I'd guess maybe about 5%. That isn't a mass-market item. It could be a profitabe niche, but still a niche.
If these had came out at the same time as the original iPad, for a fraction of the cost, they would have had more appeal, but now they seem like a product in search of a market.
An eInk reader will provide better battery life, but with tablets offering 10+ hours, the number of people for whom that isn't good enough isn't huge.

Edit: There may be more interesting applications outside of book reading. A hiking GPS with a colour eInk screen would be a nice product.

[LuBiB]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

What proportion of those people currently buying Kindles would pay say twice as much to be able to read an improves version of the books listed above, but wouldn't rather just buy a tablet instead?
I'd guess maybe about 5%. That isn't a mass-market item. It could be a profitabe niche, but still a niche.
If these had came out at the same time as the original iPad, for a fraction of the cost, they would have had more appeal, but now they seem like a product in search of a market.
An eInk reader will provide better battery life, but with tablets offering 10+ hours, the number of people for whom that isn't good enough isn't huge.

Edit: There may be more interesting applications outside of book reading. A hiking GPS with a colour eInk screen would be a nice product.

The only reason i stuck with the jetBook for years now is the book availability. Im not obligated to buy books from Amazon or B&N, as a matter of fact I dont have to buy books at all, especially those that are available online for free.

Same with the jetBook Color. My sister has one for school and she gets all her textbooks online for free instead of paying $80+ for each.

There are no other ebook readers like it and thats why i've been so adamant in keeping mine since the first release. Plus when i'm finished reading a book, i pass the SD card to one of my relatives or friends so they can read it too. It makes life so much easier for everyone lol

[grumbles]

Colour eink will never look much better than colour on newsprint. It all has to do with contrast and brightness range. The best brightness range that can be achieved is about 60 to 1 and that would be on a very good, white, high gloss stock (think of a glossy black and white print). a range of 60 to 1 corresponds to a optical reflection density of about 1.7 which is very difficult to create. I doubt if the best of the current eink screens manage a 10 to 1 brightness ratio (this would be an optical density of 1.0) and if these screens rely on reflected light, they will should also use a subtractive (yellow, magenta, cyan) which may make the contrast problem even worse. It's simple physics (and chemistry ) folks. These is nothing that reflects 100% of the light or absorbs 100%. No eink display will have bold, bright colours. By way of comparison, a colour transparency can have brightness range of up to about 300 to one (an optical density of about 2.5). A back-lit lcd panel (or a crt) can easily get 1000:1 (equivalent to an optical density of 3).

So if you are hoping for eink with colours like a high quality magazine, printed on ulta white, high gloss stock -- forget it, it simply can not be done. If you would be happy with colour as it appears in newspapers, printed on plain white (sort of) newsprint then you will be happy with colour eink.

If colour eink screens can be made with no worse than the current brightness range and at least the same resolution (I would like more than the current 167dpi) then I would be quite happy with them. I don't expect good colour reproduction in most of my books and if good colour reproduction is important then an eink reader would be the wrong device to look at it with.

But for general purpose use, text books, maps and such, a colour eink device would be great.

[JSWolf]

I would much prefer a 1600x1200 resolution 9.7" screen (no color) based reader. But not from Ecatco. I want the software to be good.

[pendragginp]

Originally Posted by grumbles

Colour eink will never look much better than colour on newsprint. It all has to do with contrast and brightness range. The best brightness range that can be achieved is about 60 to 1 and that would be on a very good, white, high gloss stock (think of a glossy black and white print). a range of 60 to 1 corresponds to a optical reflection density of about 1.7 which is very difficult to create. I doubt if the best of the current eink screens manage a 10 to 1 brightness ratio (this would be an optical density of 1.0) and if these screens rely on reflected light, they will should also use a subtractive (yellow, magenta, cyan) which may make the contrast problem even worse. It's simple physics (and chemistry ) folks. These is nothing that reflects 100% of the light or absorbs 100%. No eink display will have bold, bright colours. By way of comparison, a colour transparency can have brightness range of up to about 300 to one (an optical density of about 2.5). A back-lit lcd panel (or a crt) can easily get 1000:1 (equivalent to an optical density of 3).

So if you are hoping for eink with colours like a high quality magazine, printed on ulta white, high gloss stock -- forget it, it simply can not be done. If you would be happy with colour as it appears in newspapers, printed on plain white (sort of) newsprint then you will be happy with colour eink.

If colour eink screens can be made with no worse than the current brightness range and at least the same resolution (I would like more than the current 167dpi) then I would be quite happy with them. I don't expect good colour reproduction in most of my books and if good colour reproduction is important then an eink reader would be the wrong device to look at it with.

But for general purpose use, text books, maps and such, a colour eink device would be great.

Would this be helped by built-in lighting like the Paperwhite has?

[xendula]

Even though I read novels exclusively on my kindle, I would buy a color eink kindle if it were around the same price point as the current PW, for the following reason: some books, even novels, could be enhanced by color.
I read a trilogy and was a bit amazed to discover that the paper versions were using dark green, dark blue and dark maroon font, to match the three covers. This is kind of cool and different, but the cost of color print prevents this from being viable for most print novels.

Novels could be enhanced by colorful chapter numbers, colorful maps, etc., plus non fiction books would become interesting on eink devices.

[Kris777]

I think lighting will be helpful but it may make the cost of unit more expensive.

[grumbles]

Originally Posted by pendragginp

Would this be helped by built-in lighting like the Paperwhite has?

Alas No. The problem is one of contrast. Eink state that their Pearl screen has a contrast range of 10:1. A printed page would run closer to 50:1 depending on the paper and the surface. I would be quite happy with a colour display that would duplicate the colour that you see on somewhat white newsprint. Not good enough for a book of photographs but good enough to use colour as part of the book design and layout. Again, think of the difference between a colour print and a colour slide.