Quote:
Originally Posted by twowheels
So, basically something like the old Palm PDAs with the green backlight. Those were awesome for reading -- I did a lot of reading on them. Then I started buying "better" color screens and my ebook reading dropped off significantly, but with e-ink I'm back.
I've actually considered buying an old Palm m100 off ebay for the very reasons that you mention... much smaller than my Kindle, easy on the eyes (similar to e-ink since they're not backlit), and the green backlighting is easier on the eyes than LCD backlighting.
edit: looking now, it looks like the m100 and m105 suffered from a worse backlight... I guess I'd have to get the original Palm III like I used to have to get those properties back.
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As I understand it, eink is entirely opaque so a "backlight" can't work. However surface-mounted "frontlighting" should work just fine. I just don't understand why nobody's done this. When I use a booklight on my Nook, I do something similar to that -- I twist the light so that it's on the edge of the reader pointing sideways, and the light illuminates the screen just fine without glare like you get if you have the light pointing down at the screen. The next step is to pull the LEDs out of the light, embed them into the bezel of the reader, and power them from the device's battery. But to do that correctly would require manufacturing the LEDs into the bezel. Anything done after the fact just won't work well.