What will e-readers be like 10 years from now?

[barryem]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Hey Barry, I know you are several years older than me so I want to ask when you were a kid did you ever think we would have instant knowledge like can you drive a car barefoot or be able to communicate instantly across the world in real time without paying 3 arms and 4 legs in long distance fees?

Lots of unexpected things have happened since I was a kid. I was born before TV was invented. My father was a Ham radio operator with a W5 license which was issued before there was commercial radio. Radios had been invented already. Radio stations had not.

I think I was 8 when we went to New York to visit my grandmother, probably during the Christmas holidays but I'm not sure. She had a TV, which I hadn't even heard of till I saw hers. I remember when we got back I mentioned that TV in class and half the kids didn't believe me. The teacher had read about TV and that the picture didn't actually exist but that a moving dot of light fooled you into thinking it was a picture and she was absolutely convinced that would make you go blind. When I explained that it was easy to see the picture she didn't believe me. i think I got sent to the principal's office for being contradictory, or some such. It was a few years before TV and stations came to our part of Texas.

I was 14 when we got our first TV at home and we were the only one in our area with one. All of a sudden we got really popular. TV screens then were roundish. The top and bottom was kind of flat but overall it was a circle. There were two stations in Houston and one 50 miles away in Galveston that we could watch about 1 day out of 3 or 4. TV came on at 3:30 when kids got home from school and it went off at 10:30 after the nightly news. In between those times there was nothing on.

My first exposure to data communications was at work, probably about 1967, working for the Harris County (Houston) District Clerk. We had a 55 baud modem that we used to receive data from some federal agency, I forget which. Then we got a T1 line and joined the newly started NCIC system.

I first got on the internet probably in the mid to late 1970s. I don't recall the actual date. It could have been the early 1980s. My roommate had a brother who was the head of the math department at the university of Calgary, (I think that was the school) and when he came to visit he asked me if I'd help his students learning to use small computers online. He set me up with a phone number to call to connect to their computer, which let me connect through it to a lot of other computers. At the time I'd never heard of the internet and I had no idea I was on it. I didn't find out till years later. At the end of each session it would put a bill for the time I'd used on their Amdahl mainframe, usually in the thousands of dollars, which included the long distance to connect to it. I didn't have to pay it of course.

Later I got in Compuserve, which my company paid for at the rate of $12 per minute during off hours and I think it was $80 a minute during business hours. Compuserve was what the world used until the internet became available to the public.

So yes, there have been some changes. And no, I wouldn't have guessed at most of them.

Still, even though I think most of us know we can't predict where technology might go in the future, discussing it's possibilities is both fun and valuable.. It stirs up thoughts and ideas that just might help us invent the future.

Barry

[barryem]

Originally Posted by AnotherCat

As just one example, when people claim that LCD shines light into their eyes they are displaying a limitation of knowledge. Light reflected from displays such as E Ink is diffused, all LCD tablet displays also have diffused displays so both emit diffused light, neither "shines" light. Such people also seem to be unaware of, or incapable of setting up a tablet's display for reading despite the better reading applications providing effectively infinite control of background and text color, often background textures as well, superior greyscale, brightness (usually by a simple swipe gesture) and provide contrast orders of magnitude superior to E Ink.

The LCD on a tablet doesn't emit light. The LED backlight behind it does and it has to emit enough light up through the LCD to make the colors bright enough to see. Yes that does diffuse the light somewhat but in a white background it's still sending a lot of light through the LCD.

I do read on my phone and I've experimented a lot with adjusting the brightness and the background color to give me the very least eyestrain. I've reached the point with my AMOLED phone that I can read 20 or 30 minutes without a problem. Then, after a 2 or 3 minute break I can read another 20 or 30 minutes. If I don't take that break my eyes start watering and I'm done reading for the day. By the way before I got my AMOLED phone I had an LCD phone and my reading time without a break was cut in half.

I can read on my Kindle or Nook with it's front light for a couple of hours. Granted I do take a couple of breaks during that time but even if I forget to I'm okay. After a couple of hours reading I'll stop for a while, get a drink or a cup of coffee and I'm back reading. E-ink is that much better for my eyes than AMOLED.

The difference, it seems to me, is that with e-ink the light is reflected and not really as bright and much more diffused. I'm not a physicist so I'm guessing at those reasons but the fact is there: I can read a lot longer on a lighted e-ink screen without a break than I can on my phone or a tablet.

Barry

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by barryem

Lots of unexpected things have happened since I was a kid. I was born before TV was invented. My father was a Ham radio operator with a W5 license which was issued before there was commercial radio. Radios had been invented already. Radio stations had not.

I think I was 8 when we went to New York to visit my grandmother, probably during the Christmas holidays but I'm not sure. She had a TV, which I hadn't even heard of till I saw hers. I remember when we got back I mentioned that TV in class and half the kids didn't believe me. The teacher had read about TV and that the picture didn't actually exist but that a moving dot of light fooled you into thinking it was a picture and she was absolutely convinced that would make you go blind. When I explained that it was easy to see the picture she didn't believe me. i think I got sent to the principal's office for being contradictory, or some such. It was a few years before TV and stations came to our part of Texas.

I was 14 when we got our first TV at home and we were the only one in our area with one. All of a sudden we got really popular. TV screens then were roundish. The top and bottom was kind of flat but overall it was a circle. There were two stations in Houston and one 50 miles away in Galveston that we could watch about 1 day out of 3 or 4. TV came on at 3:30 when kids got home from school and it went off at 10:30 after the nightly news. In between those times there was nothing on.

My first exposure to data communications was at work, probably about 1967, working for the Harris County (Houston) District Clerk. We had a 55 baud modem that we used to receive data from some federal agency, I forget which. Then we got a T1 line and joined the newly started NCIC system.

I first got on the internet probably in the mid to late 1970s. I don't recall the actual date. It could have been the early 1980s. My roommate had a brother who was the head of the math department at the university of Calgary, (I think that was the school) and when he came to visit he asked me if I'd help his students learning to use small computers online. He set me up with a phone number to call to connect to their computer, which let me connect through it to a lot of other computers. At the time I'd never heard of the internet and I had no idea I was on it. I didn't find out till years later. At the end of each session it would put a bill for the time I'd used on their Amdahl mainframe, usually in the thousands of dollars, which included the long distance to connect to it. I didn't have to pay it of course.

Later I got in Compuserve, which my company paid for at the rate of $12 per minute during off hours and I think it was $80 a minute during business hours. Compuserve was what the world used until the internet became available to the public.

So yes, there have been some changes. And no, I wouldn't have guessed at most of them.

Still, even though I think most of us know we can't predict where technology might go in the future, discussing it's possibilities is both fun and valuable.. It stirs up thoughts and ideas that just might help us invent the future.

Barry

It is even more fun to listen to the older ones talk about when they were younger.
I am not sure if it was first but one of our first tv channels was in about 1957. I wasn't around then, but I spent quite a bit of time at that station in the 70s.
Home video games were our new thing.
Right now, I am playing slots on one tablet, typing this on another and streaming a movie through the Playstation from Amazon. I remember when you had to buy or rent movies on VHS.

[AnotherCat]

Originally Posted by barryem

The LCD on a tablet doesn't emit light. The LED backlight behind it does and it has to emit enough light up through the LCD to make the colors bright enough to see.

Of course I know that, I would have hoped that you would have seen that I was just being economical with words (and echoing those words used by many others here) as I believe that I have through my posts indicated that I have a very good knowledge of technologies. And for the sake of clarity I will make it clear here that I am also aware that AMOLED/OLED actually do emit light.

Originally Posted by barryem

Yes that does diffuse the light somewhat but in a white background it's still sending a lot of light through the LCD.

That may be in part correct when inside of or outside of many apps, that depending on the panel. But, by way of example, in the case of the reading app that I use (Android version of PocketBook) one can, while within a book itself, modulate even a pure white (RGB 255,255,255) background (and, of course, other whites on the screen too, such as in color images) up and down from very bright down to so dark that black text (or that of any other color ) is not readable.

That is done with a simple vertical gesture on the screen while the book is open. The device's normal brightness control has no effect at all on the brightness of the open book and conversely the app's brightness control does not have any effect on the normal brightness of the screen for anything else other than the open book's pages themselves. If I recall correctly, it has been a while since I checked through some of the better ones, some other reading apps allow the same.

So, in the book itself whites (should one want to have a white background, remembering even a paper book is not white) can be modulated right down to near zero brightness, but when one reverts to the reading app's display of collections (for example) or to another application or the device's home screens the display reverts to whatever brightness setting one had for general use of the device.

I won't be pedantic about your incorrect relation of the word "diffuse" to the amount of light transmitted, I will put it down to you too being economical with words .

[HLS]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

It is even more fun to listen to the older ones talk about when they were younger.
I am not sure if it was first but one of our first tv channels was in about 1957. I wasn't around then, but I spent quite a bit of time at that station in the 70s.
Home video games were our new thing.
Right now, I am playing slots on one tablet, typing this on another and streaming a movie through the Playstation from Amazon. I remember when you had to buy or rent movies on VHS.

When I went to college I never heard of the internet. we had a card catalog and a typewriter room. no pcs lol

No cell phones either. I had a Bart Simson wall phone that apparntly selling on ebay now for over 1,000 I paid like 10$ for it at Spencers Gifts in 1988

[HLS]

Back on topic...


I wanna ereader in a fancy rose gold ipad like casing but with an eink display

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by kcladyz

When I went to college I never heard of the internet. we had a card catalog and a typewriter room. no pcs lol

No cell phones either. I had a Bart Simson wall phone that apparntly selling on ebay now for over 1,000 I paid like 10$ for it at Spencers Gifts in 1988

The computer labs as far as the internet were just starting when I started college in 1996

On topic, I think there will be various ereaders.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by kcladyz

Back on topic...


I wanna ereader in a fancy rose gold ipad like casing but with an eink display

You don't want a diamond studded iPad? 11.43 carats to be exact.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by kcladyz

Back on topic...


I wanna ereader in a fancy rose gold ipad like casing but with an eink display

Crayons, my good lady. Crayons. (You 'wanna' and crayons deliver.)

(The posts have ranged from 'old' to 'young'. And me: I wasn't around when television with cathode ray tubes hit the U.S.A. market in 1938. That means I'm middle-aged.)

[Latinandgreek]

Originally Posted by Deskisamess

I don't want or need buttons. I love the new Oasis, but would have preferred it without page turn buttons. They click and get dusty.

I don't need color for 95% of what I read, when I do, I use an iPad. Color e-ink may be good someday.

I don't personally need a good device for PDF documents but know many users do. I use an iPad or iPhone when I need to.

Foldable e-ink screens maybe? I'd still like more margin control than the Kindle gives, and better font control for side-loaded books. Retinal Control for page turns? Longer battery life is a given, although fairly I'm happy with the Oasis as is.

I do need a good device for PDF documents, and when I first got into ereaders (almost a decade ago), I wanted and all-in-one device, for reading fiction, and one that I could use to read comics and PDFs, most of which were journal articles and academic literature. I now actually really appreciate having separate devices, and I don't want to read novels on a super large screen, and I don't want to read articles on a small screen. I'm like you, in that an iPad is perfectly fine for when I need to view something in colour, or for PDFs. My first iPad was unwieldy, but the newer models have much better screens and are much more comfortable to use.

Foldable e-ink screens sounds like a neat idea, though!

[lkmiller]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Hmmm, where did you see this? Tablets are in no danger of disappearing.
The Chromebooks and Surface Pros are hybrids. I haven't seen an Apple or a Samsung with the keyboard attached. All the big box stores still sell tablets.

There used to be a ludicrous amount of options in tablets. Every increment in size between phone and all-in-one computer. Android, Windows, and, of course, iPad. And a range of prices from cheap to premium.

Now companies like Dell and HP have dropped tablets altogether. Others have fewer. They've pretty much conceded the field to Samsung and Apple. And even Samsung has narrowed down their variations a lot.

For Windows, it seems that the Surface has convinced everyone that you should have some sort of physical keyboard. At least, that's how it looks to me here in the US.

-------------

Back more or less on topic, even if multi-purpose tablets with color e-ink style screens replaced dedicated readers, I'd still want to use one that way anyhow. Removing distractions of email, non-reading apps, games, etc. as much as possible.

ETA: Some company at CES (I forget who) had a large TV that rolled up like a movie projection screen. Wouldn't it be cool to have an ereader that rolled up into a little tube? Tuck it in your pocket like a pen.

[Deskisamess]

Dell had a new laptop at the CES. It is only .6" thick with a magnetic (maglev) keyboard. It is being referred to as a 2 in 1, so the screen must detach so it can used as a tablet.

[Conan46]

Originally Posted by Deskisamess

Dell had a new laptop at the CES. It is only .6" thick with a magnetic (maglev) keyboard. It is being referred to as a 2 in 1, so the screen must detach so it can used as a tablet.

You have to wonder where they will have to stop at the thinness and weight of these devices. There is a point at which something becomes too fragile. Will be interesting to see how far they can go

[barryem]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

I remember when you had to buy or rent movies on VHS.

I remember when you couldn't buy or rent movies. You had to go to a theater to see them.

Barry

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by lkmiller

There used to be a ludicrous amount of options in tablets. Every increment in size between phone and all-in-one computer. Android, Windows, and, of course, iPad. And a range of prices from cheap to premium.

Now companies like Dell and HP have dropped tablets altogether. Others have fewer. They've pretty much conceded the field to Samsung and Apple. And even Samsung has narrowed down their variations a lot.

For Windows, it seems that the Surface has convinced everyone that you should have some sort of physical keyboard. At least, that's how it looks to me here in the US.

-------------

Back more or less on topic, even if multi-purpose tablets with color e-ink style screens replaced dedicated readers, I'd still want to use one that way anyhow. Removing distractions of email, non-reading apps, games, etc. as much as possible.

ETA: Some company at CES (I forget who) had a large TV that rolled up like a movie projection screen. Wouldn't it be cool to have an ereader that rolled up into a little tube? Tuck it in your pocket like a pen.

I know LG had an 85" 8k TV at CES.
Yes, it would be cool to have roll up devices.