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Originally Posted by ProDigit
^^ Indeed! Reading e-ink in the full sun shine might hurt your eyes, and shadow is preferred.
This makes the dillemma all the bigger, like should we go for even whiter e-ink screens?
As they become more readable in darker environments, they lose their readability in lighter environments like under the full sun.
In such a case the jetbook, with it's LCD layer over a white background, makes more sense!
Unless the brightness of the e-ink background page can be adjusted, e-ink becomes useless in full sunshine, and already is useless in dark places!
And IF e-ink can not have back-lit background like LCD can have, then it gets into a disadvantage in both above situations.
IF e-ink can only have a front light, then more energy is needed to the leds, and more battery is consumed; while backlit screens can have very efficient LED lights in the back, and light can be very evenly spread out over the screen (unlike the Sony PRS-900 series, where the center and edges of the book where brighter than the corners).
So in conclusion to that thought, e-ink is best used in office environments, and under the shadow outside.
LCD, while still in infancy for reading devices, actually looks pretty great in those environments too! Probably equal to the first e-ink screens out there, only with a much faster response time.
And please do not think of LCD screens like your plasma TV or iphone! LCD screens can include pixelqi's screen, the jetbook's screen, and extremely low light backlit screens too (think EeePC701, where with you could set the screen so dark, that even in pitch black environment it was hard to make out any words on the screen)!
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In many places you wouldn't be caught dead in the sun for most of the year (Taiwan were I live is one of those places) but it is quite nice now or in winter when the sun is out. So I do most of my reading in the shade or indoors. But I still prefer e-ink with indoor natural light or after turning on the lights to LCD. Why sit in the dark with an illuminated screen if you don't have to? Even though I do read on LCDs quite a lot, the tablet for my newspapers and while browsing, the phone for reading when I am on the road. But that is a convenience, not a preference.
Anyway, there are better screen technologies coming up (that hopefully combine the advantages of both), LCDs will be a distant memory soon. As for that "non-backlit" LCD on the Jetbook and such. Most of you users are happy with it (just as I was happy with restistive touch screens on phones, you could use anything as a stylus for handwritten notes or clicking on links in the browser) but it is DEAD. Nobody has made a device with such a screen in years. So you better stop dreaming about it.