MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Jinke reveals upcoming product line of E Ink e-book readers

CommanderROR · 11-13-2006, 07:24 AM

Thank you for joining us!

It is always good to see a company taking an active interest in the ideas of the Community.

I have one thing to say about the whole ebook affair:

I think we need to make a difference between devices that are book-replacements for fiction books and devices that are used for academic, technical and other text.

For Fiction books, a display of 5-8" should be optimal, so I think the 6" screen is rather good although I like my 8.1" Iliad screen very much and think that a little more space can't really do any harm.
An ebook device in this category needs to be rugged, lightweight and easy to handle. It needs to be a device that I can pick up and use for reading, just like a paper-book. Some thought ought to be given to navigation and to the sorting of books on the memory card. If I use a 1GB card, I can put very many books on it and I need to be able to browse through them/search for a specific book quickly and easily. Apart from that, I'd make the device as basic as possible to provide optimum battery-life and ease-of-use.
Annotation, scribble and similar features that require a full-screen touchscreen are optional for that in my opinion.

For the other sector, I think a 10" screen would be very nice, fullscreen touchscreen for annotation, filling in forms and similar things and maybe some WiFi added in for better communication between devices.

Then, there are various other, smaller sectors where the Hanlins could be used as a sort of PDA replacement, but for the reading/writing application that I see as main foucs-point of eink devices, I think the above two scenarios would be pretty accurate.

When it comes to Software, I'd recommend providing a basic OS with readers for Wolf, HTML, TXT and PDF and then leave the rest of the development to the community. I don't know how many "free" developers we still have here at the forums since Scotty, arivero, antarctica, jaed and some others are busy working on the Iliad, but I still think that a lot could get done in a short time if you manage to provide a few samples of the V2/V9 devices to developers around the world.

I'm not sure about the OEM/ODM thing...my feeling tells me that it will probably make things slow and expensive for all involved, but I can't really comment ont hat with authority. Maybe setting up a distribution network would work better than marketing the devices under a different name in every country?

Thanks again for joining us, I'm sure the community will be able to provide you with lots of helpful feedback both here and at your forums!

11-13-2006, 07:24 AM	#9
CommanderROR eink fanatic Posts: 2,022 Karma: 4924 Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Germany Device: STAReBOOK, iRex Iliad, Sony 505, Kindle 2	Thank you for joining us! It is always good to see a company taking an active interest in the ideas of the Community. I have one thing to say about the whole ebook affair: I think we need to make a difference between devices that are book-replacements for fiction books and devices that are used for academic, technical and other text. For Fiction books, a display of 5-8" should be optimal, so I think the 6" screen is rather good although I like my 8.1" Iliad screen very much and think that a little more space can't really do any harm. An ebook device in this category needs to be rugged, lightweight and easy to handle. It needs to be a device that I can pick up and use for reading, just like a paper-book. Some thought ought to be given to navigation and to the sorting of books on the memory card. If I use a 1GB card, I can put very many books on it and I need to be able to browse through them/search for a specific book quickly and easily. Apart from that, I'd make the device as basic as possible to provide optimum battery-life and ease-of-use. Annotation, scribble and similar features that require a full-screen touchscreen are optional for that in my opinion. For the other sector, I think a 10" screen would be very nice, fullscreen touchscreen for annotation, filling in forms and similar things and maybe some WiFi added in for better communication between devices. Then, there are various other, smaller sectors where the Hanlins could be used as a sort of PDA replacement, but for the reading/writing application that I see as main foucs-point of eink devices, I think the above two scenarios would be pretty accurate. When it comes to Software, I'd recommend providing a basic OS with readers for Wolf, HTML, TXT and PDF and then leave the rest of the development to the community. I don't know how many "free" developers we still have here at the forums since Scotty, arivero, antarctica, jaed and some others are busy working on the Iliad, but I still think that a lot could get done in a short time if you manage to provide a few samples of the V2/V9 devices to developers around the world. I'm not sure about the OEM/ODM thing...my feeling tells me that it will probably make things slow and expensive for all involved, but I can't really comment ont hat with authority. Maybe setting up a distribution network would work better than marketing the devices under a different name in every country? Thanks again for joining us, I'm sure the community will be able to provide you with lots of helpful feedback both here and at your forums!