Sony reveals prototype 13.3-inch e-ink slate with stylus

[markom]

Type name........ Release Date........... Price
"DPT-S1"....... December 3 2013........ Open price


Google translator also says:

"Sony, digital paper towards the companies and universities that use the paper of a large amount, I realize the world's thinnest and lightest ※ 1 in 13.3-inch ※ 2 of A4 size equivalent, it is easy to write and easy to read as paper "DPT -S1 I will commercialize ". In addition, it provides in order to aim the April 2014 solutions that take advantage of digital paper "DPT-S1" through the network, we aim to online business processes along with the "digitization of paper" and teaching materials and documents, production It helps to improve learning effect and nature..."

What is this April 2014 aiming about ?

[Lbooker]

It will read PDFs and nothing else. So this device needs to be hacked to be more useful. At this price, how many hackers will own it ? Interested customers might have to offer a few DPT-S1 to motivated programmers. Personally I would like this reader to be made compatible with any kind of text file, but also Office/LibreOffice files, and I also want to use it as a monitor for my personal computer for office work, since it will be much healthier for my eyes and my brain (see Marshall McLuhan/Herbert Krugman research on the effect of TVs and monitors on brainwaves, on the left brain, and on brain activity).
It will be available next monthin Japan, so we have time to organize ourselves.
4 GB to store PDF files : a bit cheap from Sony at this price. Well, at least microSD cards can be used to expand it.
Around 735 euros. How long for their industrial process to become more efficient and thus less costly ?
I forgot to say that this is a day to rejoice, since we waited for this impressive reader for a long time : it is for real ! Finally !

[din155]

I thought they would target students along with business market but one can never comment on why Sony do what they do when it comes to e-readers. Maybe they want to give the first release to business and see the response before releasing it for general public.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by antistar

Sony has a release day for it (in Japan at least.)

http://www.sony.co.jp/SonyInfo/News/...201311/13-146/

Price is set at 98,000円, about $1000. I am disappointed...if they set it at $500 I would jump at it. Looks like it will be sold only to institutions.

Aren't prices higher in Japan?

[Billi]

I am a little bit disappointed, too. I had already started to put aside money and had hoped for a better price.

[gamba66]

so a price of 1000$ and only meant for business market? Sony Business Solutions indicates that.. If that is true, the pdf-reader will be very hard to come by as a consumer..

Also a japan-only release would be very disappointing, because importing would be useless since even the sony t1 - t3 readers only support japanese language

I am disappointed. For 1000$ you get a 150 DPI last-generation pearl e-ink screen with only pdf support..

[batchaesir]

but This is so far the only eink device that can handle technical/scanned PDF documents well.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by batchaesir

but This is so far the only eink device that can handle technical/scanned PDF documents well.

We don't actually know how well it'll handle them, do we? That depends very much on factors like the amount of memory and CPU speed, as well as merely the screen size. I have PDFs that my iPad takes 5s to render a page for; I don't know how the Sony's CPU compares in speed terms with the iPad. Do you have figures on that?

[batchaesir]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I have PDFs that my iPad takes 5s to render a page for;

These are rare cases. Those PDFs are problematic for viewing on any portable device. I have been using PRS T1 for reading PDFs whether scanned or text-based, no complaint about the rendering speed, only too small is the screen size.

[gamba66]

My hanvon e920 with 200 dpi 9.7" (1600x1200) handles pdfs quite . I never had a problem with any, not even the larger files with lots of pictures

I can read nearly every magazine in full page view (of course the text is small but readable) , even some that arent scanned as good. There are zoom options and glyph embolden too, but I like reading full pages more, especially concerning magazines

Reading books is also very comfortable because a large amount of text can be displayed on the 9.7 screen, even with margins

I never had any problems with large .pdfs or whatever

But the price is also very expensive and you must import

I am happy that I did because it fits my needs perfectly, I read way to much now

[petrucci]

This is great news. Lucky I have been saving for many years for such a device.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by HarryT

We don't actually know how well it'll handle them, do we? That depends very much on factors like the amount of memory and CPU speed, as well as merely the screen size. I have PDFs that my iPad takes 5s to render a page for; I don't know how the Sony's CPU compares in speed terms with the iPad. Do you have figures on that?

The Digital Reader Blog has a few more details:

http://www.the-digital-reader.com/20...00/#more-59844

2.8GB storage will be a bit limiting. But the real bottleneck will be RAM.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

The Digital Reader Blog has a few more details:

http://www.the-digital-reader.com/20...00/#more-59844

2.8GB storage will be a bit limiting. But the real bottleneck will be RAM.

Yes, it was RAM that I was referring to when I said "memory", not file storage space. It's the fact that eInk devices typically only have small amounts of RAM that makes them choke on many PDFs.

[Dulin's Books]

are the @$%&!!@# kidding?

seriously Sony can build that exact thing sans mobius display for 120 bucks at volume at most. im over a hundred there because i figured the cost for a 13.3" wacom digitizer will be 50. this pricing is suggesting that the Mobius display alone costs $300-$500 for them to build at volume.

A 13.3 IPS LCD would cost a hundredish. i think the 9.7 inch eink displays are right about $100 now total all in for a whole display. the material itself is less than half. the hi-dpi material at 13" shouldnt cost much more than than the 9.7". The flexible backplane tech cant possibly cost several hundred dollars to produce and then marry to the display material.

brother tried to sell a 9.7" eink reader as a digital printer a few years ago for $1,500 and that went no where. even though this is larger and has the flexible display they cant really believe they will sell any. it cant do anything but allow you to write on a pdf.

i understand they have allot of sunk cost in the development but wouldnt they recoup the cost faster if they sold millions of them at $300 rather than a handful or none at $1k?


edit- i might be wrong about the price. there is a suggestion it might be Ntrig instead of Wacom. Which would be fine for notes and also MUCH CHEAPER.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Yes, it was RAM that I was referring to when I said "memory", not file storage space. It's the fact that eInk devices typically only have small amounts of RAM that makes them choke on many PDFs.

Maybe it depends on the PDFs?

The Digital Reader said:

the 2.8GB of storage can hold 3 or 4 average sized PDFs.

Which means that they consider the average size 0.7-0.9 GB

The PDFs that I have are between 10 KB and 3 MB, which would me closer to the estimate that Sony gives of 1MB per PDF.