news are old....

[dickloraine]

Originally Posted by trocchietto

i think we need to sensibilize people that tablets cause damages for +5 h long reading after the work: eye strains headaches myopy, insomnia discomfort, stress
if we find a way to inform people as corporate social responsibility project, companies will produce more eye safe devices, i am serious i think tablets are great, but hard reading is not good.
is night in amsterdam and believe me i will feel immediately restored as soon as will end this post and will start to read my book on eink in a couple of seconds.

Some people have a problem with back-lit screens. But please show me a study that proofs what you are saying. If you can prove it, then we can make a campaign so that each tablet and smartphone gets a sticker like cigarettes, that warns the users of the serious injuries these device could do

[crossi]

The current eink hardware is fine as is and doesn't need much in the way of innovation.
The devices do what I need them to do already.

Incremental improvements in speed, resolution, clairity and battery life would be nice but hardly innovative. They could use some improvement in software in most of the brands and I would like more memory than most have, but again that would hardly be innovative.

What innovative changes do you think they need? Lots of things don't change much because they don't need to change to do what they are designed to do.

[trocchietto]

Originally Posted by rkomar

If you think we don't have fast eink devices because some salesman hasn't thought of it yet, then you're delusional. We don't have them because they haven't figured out how to do it, and it's not from lack of trying. It's a hard engineering problem to solve.

@Rkomar, Crossi,Dickloraine
Thank you for the reply @Rkomar.
I am glad companies are working on that, I could be malicious and say that todays it all depends on R&D funds and strategy focused policies, and compromises are not impossible to find and that in any way you are focusing on just one on the almost dozen of improvement points i am directly/indirectly mentioning, but I am happy to see that we can have a nice discussion based on logic and respect. It is a fact that till few company gain on variable cost( book selling) than buying the device, the innovation is a relative source of profit, as previous models would do the trick...

@crossi
improvement in speed would be not an important factor in no fiction book? Most of the ereaders have sw bug and are not efficient at all, how many times people reset devices, are caught by loading icons, or just do not have the possibility to peek in the pages fast enough like in normal book? For the rest like battery marginal improvements, and resolution i agree with you, but speed is frustrating if instead to just read a novel you need to open and close books, and jump from a chapter to another. We can say that ereader are perfect to read novels from page to page. But they have this feature since ages, i expect more as normal desktop PC moved from few K to 16 giga ram in few years!


@Dickloraine
just the first link i found in three seconds
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/05/....gadgets.ipad/
and still please consider that is relatively a new medic field, that not all the researches are equal and... that having a laser in your eyes, for sure with common sense human being have been not created to put a ray in the eyes for long period of times, and also that long term effect will come after at least 20 years.

[dickloraine]

That article is just anecdotal and some quotes with much "could, maybe etc" and some scientific scraps, that do not prove anything. Of course, if you google something, you get results. But just because someone has an opinion doesn't mean he is right.
As I said, some people get eye-strain. But even that does not inflict real damage, it is just uncomfortable. And many more people have no problem. It is good to have e-readers AND tablets. So everyone can choose.

[dickloraine]

Oh, and by the way, where did you buy that tablet that shoots lasers in your eyes?

[trocchietto]

Originally Posted by dickloraine

Oh, and by the way, where did you buy that tablet that shoots lasers in your eyes?

is a jedi secret

[Barty]

One thing that I don't think has been mentioned is the glare. All lcd tablets are glossy and it's becoming difficult to find an inexpensive computer monitor that is not glossy. All that reflection adds to the eye strain. It is worse if you like to use a dark background as I do.

[trocchietto]

Originally Posted by Barty

One thing that I don't think has been mentioned is the glare. All lcd tablets are glossy and it's becoming difficult to find an inexpensive computer monitor that is not glossy. All that reflection adds to the eye strain. It is worse if you like to use a dark background as I do.

eh eh everything started with an asus pc, then a msi, the purpose was a letter of somebody that had a my pal asus that wrote to their Italian forum complaining that pc at that time were really expensive and despite every two month a powerful model was going live the old models were not available anymore so this guy suggested that they could combine an arm processor with a notebook to see linux on a cheap pc, ah that guy that just wanted to read digitally under the sun with a bigger pda .. how would i be curious to know who he was.. then the mktg dep of the competitors switched from matte to glossy, making the mini laptop unreadable on the sun light. and bill gates started to think about bigger than a palm, smaller than an lcd, and ipad come to life, so did the tablets

still all the tablet are glossy. doh what is the purpose if you cannot read outside?
so the notebooks like samsung after 5 years of glossy screens, i was writing to the mktg deps since then, decided to go matte again , what umberto eco defines a passo di gambero.

after 10 years still eink is the only solution to read decently on sun light.

[Luffy]

I don't want a whiter background or waterproof screens or even more storage. I use my Kindle for reading only. I don't play music or go online on it. Maybe that's why the battery is still going strong 300 books later. Touch wood.

[bobstro]

Originally Posted by Barty

One thing that I don't think has been mentioned is the glare. All lcd tablets are glossy and it's becoming difficult to find an inexpensive computer monitor that is not glossy. All that reflection adds to the eye strain. It is worse if you like to use a dark background as I do.

I suspect they go glossy for visual pop. You can make a glossy screen matte with a good screen protector. It's impossible to do the opposite. I do put a matte protector on my tablets, both to reduce glare and those ugly fingerprint smudges.

eInk is still much easier to read in direct sunglight, not to mention the devices tend to be smaller and have better battery life. They're also cheaper, so damaging one is not such a big deal. I keep an eInk device around for outdoors and by the beach, but do prefer a larger tablet for indoors reading.

[Luffy]

I think reading outdoors is a necessity instead of a matter of choice. Who wants to read outdoors by choice? I never do that.

[meeera]

Originally Posted by Luffy

I think reading outdoors is a necessity instead of a matter of choice. Who wants to read outdoors by choice? I never do that.

Lounging in the garden and reading, watching the birds go by, enjoying the flowers is one of the delights of life.

[Froide]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Luffy

I think reading outdoors is a necessity instead of a matter of choice. Who wants to read outdoors by choice? I never do that.

Originally Posted by meeera

Lounging in the garden and reading, watching the birds go by, enjoying the flowers is one of the delights of life.

I agree with meeera. Ditto for reading at the beach, in a park, on a boat, while camping, or on the go (sunlight through the windows of airplanes, commuter buses, motor vehicles, and trains typically emulates outside reading conditions).

Omar Khayyam famously extolled the virtues of reading outside, in Rubaiyat:

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, A Loaf of Bread—and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness—
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

[ballfresno]

Originally Posted by Luffy

I think reading outdoors is a necessity instead of a matter of choice. Who wants to read outdoors by choice? I never do that.

Not necessarily outdoors as such: I commute to work every day on the train and depending on where I get a seat, the sun can make reading a tablet or a laptop near impossible. An e-ink display works perfectly in this situation!

[Fluribus]

Originally Posted by Barty

One thing that I don't think has been mentioned is the glare. All lcd tablets are glossy and it's becoming difficult to find an inexpensive computer monitor that is not glossy. All that reflection adds to the eye strain. It is worse if you like to use a dark background as I do.

From what I've read about televisions, it's because people go to the store and tend to gravitate to the brighter picture. Using a matte screen tends to drop the brightness a bit. I had to buy a matte film to put over my television screen because dark scenes were ruined by the reflections.

With my tablet, I'm able to sit while turned away from lights to mitigate reflections.