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Originally Posted by boxcorner
Beyond the US - worldwide, I think it could be huge. Schools here in France are currently giving students iPads, but I doubt that schools in Africa and Asia could afford to do that, whereas they might be able to afford B&W readers. Obviously it would depend on how soon colour becomes available, what the prices are, and the differential is.
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<shrug> You can produce LCD devices that will perform the same functions cheaper than devices using e-Ink, and you get good color out of the box. What you
don't get is battery life, but there will be an underlying infrastructure problem regardless: just where do you recharge these devices when they
do need it? In many of the places you might have in mind, that will be a major issue.
You might be better, all told, to simply use paper books. Better durability, no charging issues, and recyclable when worn out.
In many cases like this, the real problems aren't things technology alone can address.
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He he ... in which case, you're still young, in my book. I remember using Ge transistors, a PDP-8, and being excited when the 8" floppy arrived. I could go on, but I won't. However, there's a bloke in the UK called Alan Sugar, who made a fortune buying up 8-bit Z80 microprocessors - after PCs had progressed to 16-bit - and used them to produce low cost word processors. There's a whole world out there that doesn't need, and can't afford cutting-edge technology.
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Hmmm. The Amstrad PCW? Lots of Z-80 based boxes got used for that sort of thing. You had to deal with a 64K address space to hold OS, application,
and data, but a number of things did. I still use an old editor that originated as a CP/M alternative to WordStar and was subsequently ported to MS-DOS.
I logged time on PDP-11s, but missed the PDP-8. (An old friend logged time on a PDP-
1.)
But yes, there's certainly applications for older technology. What we're talking about here isn't older technology by that yardstick. The basic question is the same: just what problem are you trying to solve? That's pretty much the question for things like video on e-Ink displays and color e-Ink. If that stuff
solves a big enough problem, it will do well. Right now it's a solution in search of problems.
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Dennis