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Kevin,
As Alex said, we value politeness in our community here. You'll earn a lot more respect by saying "I disagree with your opinion...", or even better, "I disagree with your opinion because..." than with "anyone who thinks <x> is clearly an idiot". 'Nuff said.
A little about myself. By training a physicist (PhD in radio astronomy); worked in science for 10 years or so (UK nuclear power industry), then realised that IT paid better, and have been a professional systems programmer and software developer for the last 20 odd years. Been reading eBooks since approx 1991 (started on a Psion 3 PDA); until about 2006 on various LCD devices - PDAs, Palms, etc - and since 2006 have owned and used pretty much every eInk device on the market. Currently have about half a dozen different eInk devices and - yes - an Apple iPad.
Now, having read many thousand books on LCD devices, and probably 1000+ on eInk devices too, your views to the contrary, I reckon I actually am in a pretty good position to advise anyone on their pros and cons. You may of course disagree - I've no problem with that (as long as you do it politely) but I very much hope you'll do me the courtesy of not calling me an "idiot" simply because I hold an opinion that differs from your own.
What are the strengths of LCD devices? Let's see - I can think of a few:
- Instant page turns. Very useful for rapidly flipping through the pages of a book to find something you know is there, but aren't quite sure where.
- Instant zooming and scrolling. This is especially handy for things like PDFs - most readers have smaller screen than technical PDFs are formatted for, and the ability to zoom in on a graph or chart to see fine detail with no delay is very handy - especially for complex technical PDFs.
- Immediately response when annotating.
- Full support for colour. Useful for some types of material.
- Larger screens a lot easier to come by.
- Much better contrast than eInk. White whites, and black blacks, compared with the light grey/dark grey of eInk.
- You can read in the dark. Obvious, I know, but a genuine boon for those who want to read in bed.
Now, what are the pros of eInk?
- You can read it in full sunlight. Very useful for some people. Not at all useful for others. Probably more useful in Australia than England.
- Excellent battery life. Many eInk devices will run for weeks on a battery charge. Don't totally knock LCD on this basis, though; there are several devices on the market which will give you around 20h on a battery charge).
- Generally lightweight and highly portable (though there are exceptions).
- None of the eyestrain that some people experience from reading light-emitting screens for long periods.
So, it's a matter of weighing up the pros and cons and deciding which is better for you. There's one thing that's certain, and that's that there's no one device that's right for everyone. If there were such a device, we wouldn't need this forum.
Now, happy to discuss the matter further if you wish. Politely, of course.
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