Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer
How about we change the title to; "Tablets are the future of mobile computing/entertainment/communication... of which eReading is a tiny portion." ?
Makes more sense to me that way. 
Because I'm having a hard time envisioning how having a tablet will increase my ereading pleasure in any way (keep in mind that I'm a "novels only kind of guy"). I realize that tablets may be the future for the rest of the world, but I'm just not a mobile guy... I have a desktop PC, an ereader and no cell phone. I'm set.  |
I do think the title is correct --- tablets are the future of reading, but now is the present and tablets are not there yet. To fully replace readers they need to be lighter, thinner, embrace new screen technologies (if only for longer battery life but for many also for more comfortable reading), and be cheaper. Making them cheaper, however, is a problem. If you make them real cheap and slow then they may work as readers but are lousy browsing and media consumption devices. And let us face it, browsing and media are more important to the vast majority of tablet buyers. My guess is that big tablet makers are more concerned with making them substitute netbooks than aiming for the reader niche market. Exceptions will be small companies like Notion Ink and specialty products like the Nook color.
Perfect would also be screens that can be rolled or folded. But if we have that then such devices could be small enough to also work fine as phones and these two device types would converge.
At the moment tablets are definitely compromise solutions, a lot of people are fine with making those compromises, but tablets are still far from ideal for reading.