Electronic Paper reviewed

[Colin Dunstan]

EContent goes to great lengths in Epaper: The Flexible Electronic Display of the Future describing why electronic paper such as E-Ink will become an affordable and widely used technology within the next years. As Mobileread reported earlier (here, here, and here), a next-generation flexible electronic paper is in the works which will hopefully go in full-scale production by 2007.

Do people want electronic paper? Sony spokesperson Atsuo Omagari says, "our business [of the Sony Librie] went well as planned so far," there's a feeling amongst industry watchers that its overall customer reviews have been somewhat underwhelming." Sony responded to address the situation. "They began selling with new devices a CD, which contained about 100 Japanese novels on it, as well as some very useful tools, most notable of which was a one-step-simple printer driver, so now whatever can be printed off of a computer can print directly to the device."

It sticks out like a sore thumb that Sony is not reading Mobileread. Can someone please tell them that the key to successfully selling an e-book device is to remove it from its ridiculous DRM obstacles?