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Originally Posted by DawnFalcon
Only in the last few months have they begun to appear in what I'd call mainstream laptops, and they are still not present in most smaller devices because of the design issues involved.
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If you mean 'Only in the last 14 months' as the 'last few months' then I agree. But 14 months of full production is a LONG time in 'gadget time'.
I wholeheartedly disagree with your assessment that they aren't present in most smaller devices. I listed several newer devices I would consider smaller (iPod Touch, iPhone, Blackberry Storm, HTC smartphones, Archos 5 and 7) that do have LED backlit LCDs and thus no flicker (and thus not the eyestrain menace reported widely in this forum). If you meant even smaller devices than these (watches?), then no, I don't think I'm aware of anything smaller than a 4" display that has LED backlit LCDs, and smaller than that would severely limit their capability as an ereader anyway.
But I love your last statement and that has been EXACTLY what I've been trying to state:
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It's far from automatic at this stage what you're getting, and it needs to be checked on a device-to-device basis.
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We should al agree that emerging LCD devices shouldn't be automatically disregarded as ereaders since the emerging trend for the last full year has been to equip them with LED backlit LCDs that produce NONE of the flicker inherent in earlier LCD backlighting designs and thus are equal, ney, superior to e-ink in display characteristics because of the lack of page-turn flicker, page after-effect ghosting, and clarity of displayed text. These devices STILL lose the race with e-ink on power management, and I see that as the major discriminator consumers should evaluate to determine if an LCD device would meet their needs as an ereader. They do meet my needs but YMMV.