Quote:
Originally Posted by faithbw
I guess we'll see. At this point, e-ink could go either way. Maybe e-ink will be like 8tracks or maybe they'll be like vinyl. I think the vinyl analogy is the best e-ink can hope for though and that will depend on how much demand exists for their technology.
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Or maybe e-ink is like CD, falling behind MP3 downloads, but still viable. The advantages of e-ink are real, while the advantaged of vinyl are largely imaginary. My wife has a tablet, she has to plug it in just about every day, while I can go several days without charging. It's also lighter than a tablet and easier to read in sunlight. As for vinyl, it's questionable whether or not people can actually tell the difference between a high-quality vinyl record and a CD. I used to have an 8-track player, and 8-track had little advantage over cassette. You got over cover art on the 8-track, I suppose. But songs would be cut off in the middle as the device changed tracks. There's enough of an advantage to e-ink to keep a viable market for it. E-ink is too young a technology, the stuff of sci-fi just a few years ago to write its epitaph so soon. Before we would see an end to e-ink readers, we would likely see Amazon slowing down the release of new e-ink Kindle models.