Quote:
Originally Posted by MGlitch
Perhaps if you look at only that one snippet of what I said, however if you examine the entirety of my post the various companies are likely weighing the cost of creating the device, knowing they'll need to match the quality out there now, and the reward from doing so given the current market.
Ereaders offered a boon of features that were not available in print books. Notably that you can carry around many more books, make notes and highlights without damaging the book, not to mention less storage space, to name just a few.
Color eink would have some benefits for a smaller demographic within the ereader audience but those benefits can be achieved with tablets, which are much cheaper now than they were when eink devices were first hitting the market.
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Well, no: we totally agree, if you say companies are weighing costs and benefits and currently the market is not eager enough - that's what I said too. All in all, we are just saying a colour ereader would be good and would have a use, but to produce it now costs too much. That's a deal.
Where I don't agree is on the argument (can't remember if it's yours) "I can't see the use for color ereaders, I would use tablet/real paper/whatever for xxx". Because the reason "you" use a tablet is exactly because a convenient ereader isn't there.
Regarding your latter part: the same benefits: carry more books, notes, less storage etc also applies to color ereaders, you should not cut them out of this.
And no, tablets aren't good for them, you can't just consider the price.
Either the tablets are "good" for reading, or they aren't, and this applies the same way to b&w text and color text, you can't just rule one in and the other out.
If, according to you, tablets are a valid replacement as a reading device for a color ebook, they are also for a b&w one. And if you are going to say that yes, but they weren't so cheap when b&w e-ink was developed, I answer ok, but now that they are, nobody should buy an ereader anymore, since now a tablet is so much more convenient. No.
Truth is that, as a matter of fact, ereaders were developed because tablets and the lot were technically less suitable for long reading. Less battery power, backlight illumination, reflective screen unreadable under sunlight... these were the problems. And despite the fact tablets are so much cheaper now, those are still the problems, and that's why avid readers keep on buying e-ink ereaders. And this applies the same way to color ereader. It's not that a color ebook is going to be read only in a closed space where direct sunlight is not an issue and for so less time that eyes fatigue does not happen... they're book, the same way b&w novels are.
So in the end, there is so much need for color ereaders, there are no valid substitutes for them the same way there isn't for b&w ones, as I showed above. But, the technology still need research (and money), and companies are not willing to invest that much because "color books" readers aren't a big enough market to justify their costs.
I guess the researches will develop little by little, only investing a tiny part of companies' incomes, making small progresses (and lowering the final cost of a quality color device bit by bit) until at a certain point the cost become small enough to crystallize the interests of publishers to create color ebooks and for readers to read them on eink devices... in a virtuous cycle, so to say