MSNBC Hates the Nook ... and ebook readers in general

[fugazied]

I think he is partially right, the tablets will devastate e-ink in the next 3-4 years. The general public will prefer to have a device they can read on as well as watch movies, listen to video clips, browse the web with a real web browser, check email, use applications etc etc.

The aesthetics of most e-book readers look like they are from the 80s, a shint cheap tablet with basic iPhone style functionality will hurt ebook devices. They will probably arrive in 2010 but will be expensive as hell. By 2012 they will be cheap(ish) and e-readers will become a small niche product.

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by fugazied

I think he is partially right, the tablets will devastate e-ink in the next 3-4 years. The general public will prefer to have a device they can read on as well as watch movies, listen to video clips, browse the web with a real web browser, check email, use applications etc etc.

The aesthetics of most e-book readers look like they are from the 80s, a shint cheap tablet with basic iPhone style functionality will hurt ebook devices. They will probably arrive in 2010 but will be expensive as hell. By 2012 they will be cheap(ish) and e-readers will become a small niche product.

We all have computers and netbooks already to do all that "non-reading" stuff. Why do we need another device?

Yes, I am sure tablets will outsell e-ink devices, but not among book readers. It is simply that gadget lovers far outnumber readers. Those who read a lot will not be satisfied with a tablet until it is as light as todays e-ink devices, it has a suitable screen technology, and battery life can be measured in days, not hours. You can't just take the keyboard off a netbook. Perhaps we will get there in 3 years, but suitable screen technology will still be very expensive. And if that ever happens, then tablets will wipe out netbooks sooner than they will eliminate readers.

[clarknova]

Originally Posted by =X=

Personally I feel the refresh rate is the most limitting.

True, unless you're using eInk to read books, at which point refresh rate is pretty irrelevant. Unless you're that guy from the Great Space Coaster, in which case you might need something faster.

Spoiler:

[phenomshel]

I tried to resist weighing in here, to avoid the wrath of the "nothing except e-ink" contingent. No, don't lynch me yet, I'm not done. There's nothing at all wrong with preferring e-ink to read on. But there's nothing at all wrong with preferring LCD and color, either.
The attraction of a tablet device for me isn't the ability to multitask, listen to music, watch video, check email, etc. No, it's the compatibility. A tablet running Windows, (and no, I'm not bashing Mac or Linux here, I'm stating fact), now that Amazon has released Kindle for PC, has free software for every ebook format out there. No conversions, no wondering "which version should I buy?" Comparison shopping to the max!

Until and unless Pixel Qi goes mainstream with their screen technology, the battery life and viewability in sunlight on an LCD won't ever come close to an e-ink device. But I still say a tablet with the right form factor, a Pixel Qi type screen, and running Windows (sorry again!!), is MY ideal device. No, not everyone's. Just mine.

[kindlekitten]

Originally Posted by kwjones

That's OK, Kat Hannaford at Gizmodo hates e-books in general...
http://gizmodo.com/5423233/why-i-hat...the-mainstream



I don't understand the fascination of reading in the bathtub, but whatever floats your boat.

actually it floats my rubber duckie.

but seriously. or as serious as anyone can be about a bathtub experience... the reading in the tub bit is relaxing. usually a tub experience, while yes, cleansing, is typically not a get in and get out sort of deal. usually you spend some time letting sore muscles unknit, maybe light a candle, have a glass of wine... all time and activities that go well with book reading.

YMMV

[TallMomof2]

Originally Posted by phenomshel

The attraction of a tablet device for me isn't the ability to multitask, listen to music, watch video, check email, etc. No, it's the compatibility. A tablet running Windows, (and no, I'm not bashing Mac or Linux here, I'm stating fact), now that Amazon has released Kindle for PC, has free software for every ebook format out there. No conversions, no wondering "which version should I buy?" Comparison shopping to the max!

I have a Samsung Q1 tablet that I recently loaded Win7 on and the Kindle PC application. Works great *but* only 2-3 hours battery life, it's danged heavy and puts out noticeable heat. Heat and battery are the biggest hurdles for any tablet. That's what I like the best about my Kindle, with the latest firmware update I have great battery life and have never had a heat problem.

[LDBoblo]

Originally Posted by clarknova

True, unless you're using eInk to read books, at which point refresh rate is pretty irrelevant. Unless you're that guy from the Great Space Coaster, in which case you might need something faster.

This is not true. Many readers wish for much faster response times and navigation ability. If all you do is slowly, linearly follow each word in a book the way you did in elementary school, then yes slow is satisfactory. People with advanced reading skills aren't always so simplistic in their textual navigation.

I am always disappointed when I hear the "reading" defense of e-ink. Yes, it works for low-level reading. It's pretty poor for dynamic reading. Neither belongs on a high horse, but one side has a legitimate problem with the technology that the other tries to deny.

The way I read fiction novels, I can adjust to be more compatible with e-ink. Can't do the same with most of my other reading though. To me, the lack of speed is crippling, and I'll stick with a PC or paper for all dynamic reading, because e-ink readers are insufficient for [that kind of] reading.

[phenomshel]

Originally Posted by TallMomof2

I have a Samsung Q1 tablet that I recently loaded Win7 on and the Kindle PC application. Works great *but* only 2-3 hours battery life, it's danged heavy and puts out noticeable heat. Heat and battery are the biggest hurdles for any tablet. That's what I like the best about my Kindle, with the latest firmware update I have great battery life and have never had a heat problem.

I know most people disagree with me, but neither weight nor heat are dealbreakers for me. Neither is battery life. Every place to sit or lay down in this house is close enough to an outlet that as long as I'm home, battery life makes no difference to me. How heavy is "danged heavy"? I was looking at a few of these on ebay - the specs aren't too bad (except for hard drive space), and if I could get one cheap enough it sounds like a fair compromise til technology catches up to what I want.

[Alisa]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

We all have computers and netbooks already to do all that "non-reading" stuff. Why do we need another device?

Yes, I am sure tablets will outsell e-ink devices, but not among book readers. It is simply that gadget lovers far outnumber readers. Those who read a lot will not be satisfied with a tablet until it is as light as todays e-ink devices, it has a suitable screen technology, and battery life can be measured in days, not hours. You can't just take the keyboard off a netbook. Perhaps we will get there in 3 years, but suitable screen technology will still be very expensive. And if that ever happens, then tablets will wipe out netbooks sooner than they will eliminate readers.

Actually, I'm an avid reader and I would prefer a tablet to a reader if it could go a whole day on a charge, come in at about a pound, and not be a hand-held furnace. That and the screen would, of course, have to be as easy on the eyes as e-ink and daylight readable. PixelQi is nice but it will still need a big battery. I'd love it in a laptop, netbook or phone but I'm skeptical it will make a reader that could wrench me away from e-ink. They say Mirasol may be here next year. I'll be elated if it is. I would be surprised at all to see it in 2011, though.

[HappyMartin]

I am always surprised at how enthusiastic reviewers, marketers and product developers are about convergence. I really dislike one thing performing many functions. Even in my kitchen, and I cook a lot, I much prefer dedicated devices. When one thing breaks, as things do, or need upgrading then it does not disrupt my entire life.

One of the earliest examples of convergence that I can think of is the pencil with an eraser on the back. Useful in emergencies but it has never replaced a dedicated quality eraser for most people. Converged devices will always be a compromise of design and ergonomics and therefore are unlikely to displace dedicated devices for many people.

I think there can be a beauty and elegance in well designed dedicated devices that is seldom present in the busy cleverness of converged devices

[clarknova]

Originally Posted by LDBoblo

This is not true. Many readers wish for much faster response times and navigation ability. If all you do is slowly, linearly follow each word in a book the way you did in elementary school, then yes slow is satisfactory. People with advanced reading skills aren't always so simplistic in their textual navigation.

I'm the first to admit I'm a slow reader, and my book selections are monosyllabic enough that I've never had a problem with auto-hyphenation or fully justified text leaving large spaces on a line, so excuse me when I completely fail to grasp any "advanced" non-linear reading technique that requires you to read single lines of pages at random points in a book? Is this puzzle reading? Do you keep doing this until you've read the whole book and then you're forced to try put it all together at the end? You must be wicked smart!

Originally Posted by LDBoblo

I am always disappointed when I hear the "reading" defense of e-ink. Yes, it works for low-level reading. It's pretty poor for dynamic reading.

"Dynamic reading?" Oh! Now I know what you're talking about. But don't worry, bro, I ported one of R.A. Montgomery's Choose-Your-Own-Adventure novels to mobipocket and it worked out fine for me on my Kindle. I found the treasure chest and everything.

[sergiodongala]

Originally Posted by LDBoblo

I am always disappointed when I hear the "reading" defense of e-ink. Yes, it works for low-level reading. It's pretty poor for dynamic reading. Neither belongs on a high horse, but one side has a legitimate problem with the technology that the other tries to deny.

So 1 second per pqge turn is too much?
So if it was like LCD 60 turns per second would you be able to read a 60 pages
in 1 second?

[LDBoblo]

Originally Posted by sergiodongala

So 1 second per pqge turn is too much?
So if it was like LCD 60 turns per second would you be able to read a 60 pages
in 1 second?

Yes one second is slow if you are not on the exact page you want to be on and don't have the precise page number to go by. If for example you are looking for a detail or unknown word that you could recognize by sight (leaf, paragraph, and syntax cues) while spanning across a series of 10-20 pages in the vicinity of the information, it can be easy to process upwards of 10 pages a second visually to assess location relevance. I do this by scrolling with my mouse scroll wheel while looking at a 2-page PDF view on a large-screen monitor on my PC (one pair of pages per mouse wheel stop, about 8 stops per finger scroll in 1-2 seconds), and I do it by flipping through book pages in paper books. Both methods are pretty effective; the advantage to the computer scanning approach is that it also allows keyword searches which can be very useful and pretty quick in some situations, along with useful multilingual dictionaries (like StarDict) and other reading support programs in the background, all with quick access and input. None of those advantages fully exist for e-ink devices; where the functionality exists, it is too slow to be really useful.

Fast scanning and skimming aren't exactly esoteric methods either. They're highly common in a lot of reading and research where data retrieval is more dynamic than just a link to a chart or a footnote (which, in my opinion, is still quite unbearably slow on e-ink). In my previous field of research, an easy or common example would be to find a certain narrative device, translation technique, or structural pattern within different parts of an anthology of, say, 200 poems and their translations. Lacking specific enough information for a keyword search, casual flip-scan methods allow me to look at perhaps 4 pages a second if I'm familiar with A) the device I'm looking for but not B) the overall content. That number further increases if both A and B are familiar from previous reading, as I only need passive recognition for bookmarking and setting references. That is just a personal example, and far from the only situation that calls for and benefits from rapid global navigation.

Navigation does in fact mean a lot to some people in different reading modes. Don't read that as elitism, but it's useful to understand that not everyone reads in a casual word-to-word, line-to-line method all the time. With novels, sure it is typical (narratives in general usually demand it), but novels and stories are not the only kind of reading out there, and yes some people do skip around a lot, especially the case in re-reading or cross-referencing unbookmarked segments, or even just browsing in a piece of literature. Even flipping around a magazine for something interesting (especially those with interesting pictures ) demands more content processing speed than any e-ink device can muster at the current state of technology.

It'd be nice to get a good portable form factor with pretty good battery life, daylight readability, and reasonable navigation speed and control in the same device. It's not that extreme a requirement actually, and it won't be surprising at all to see something approaching that released in 2010 or 2011, even if annotation and input remains limited/poor.

[kjk]

Originally Posted by LDBoblo

Navigation does in fact mean a lot to some people in different reading modes.

Navigation is key.

[clarknova]

Originally Posted by LDBoblo

Fast scanning and skimming ...

Really? I mean, REALLY? "Advanced" and "dynamic reading" indeed.

I can't believe I wasted a CYOA joke on "skimming."

Anyway, of eInk's many shortcomings, I remain unconvinced that the slow refresh rate applies for reading (if you happen to have a very (very!) loose definition of reading, please substitute in "perusing") books.

If you don't actually read books but instead skim, browse, or reference passages in them, then yeah, perhaps eInk isn't for you.