Very disappointed with the way the tech is developing.

[HamsterRage]

I don't get the OP at all. I'm new to this stuff, having only just bought a Kobo back in April. But I'm happy with it. The screen is perfectly legible, the size is just perfect and all of the issues that anyone has had with it have more to do with the peculiarities of how the firmware works than any inherent shortfall of the technology. For what I use it for, which is reading novels, it's perfect. And it was cheap.

So I'm happy with the tec [sic], and as far as I'm concerned they can stop right now. Just bring the price down so that everyone gets one, they stop printing pbooks and the giant publishers with their ideas about DRM collapse. Now THAT would be innovation.

[harryE123]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

No, "tech" is short for technology.

You know, a big percentage of your posts include either direct statements calling people idiots or implied ones like above...

Good to hear you have invested your time in reading my post history, it makes for some very informative reading.

But save me the holier than thou and self righteous attitude. No one had a problem figuring out what tec stood for. So I shortened it to tec instead of tech, so what? I am not a native English speaker.

The guy came here implying that he didn't understand what "tec" stood for in a mock ironic way since he couldn't have not known what it stood for, even erroneously. And I just posted a roll eyes face. If he thought I spelled it wrong he should have been upfront and said, "hey it's usually shortened to tech not tec", instead of being sarcastic. And you come here lecturing me about insulting others? You have some nerve...

In any case... way to improve the thread, both of you have made excellent additions to it, congratulate your selves.

Originally Posted by ardeegee

Or comments at Youtube or the IMDB.

after all this spelling lecturing, surely this has to be an intentional joke....here I fixed it for you:

Originally Posted by ardeegee

Or comments at Youtube or at [the] IMDB.

[Ravensknight]

HarryE,
no wonder your karma hasn't increased...

[mrscoach]

harryE, the "at" for the second site would be implied and not needed. I'm only correcting you to improve your English (I can't help it, I've been helping teach English, and am getting my teaching degree). If someone asked where to get a particular book the response could be "You can get it at smashwords and mobileread."

And for your information, I had a problem with 'tec' also. I was wondering if this was an acronym I hadn't heard, so snarkiness was not needed.

[harryE123]

Points well taken.

[Ravensknight]

my snarkiness aside...

how would a 9.7in really work out? For the mass consumer I mean. I find my 505 is about as heavy as I can handle with one hand. Anything heavier I'd have to use both hands or lay it on something, both of which are unattractive options.
I use the "heavy factor" because I've always been under the impression that the mass consumers buy mass market paperbacks, which are light.
and it seems like a 9+ device would just be too heavy...

[SensualPoet]

Originally Posted by harryE123

it's not that the public is not ready for 9.7" it's that no one can undercut amazon in the price to offer something similar because amazon is subsidising it with book sales. That's why irex went bust, it has neither amazon's clout nor it's business model, and it's in the business model.

But that's simply not true: there are dozens of companies in the e-reader game. Irex went bust because of poor execution. There's also no evidence Amazon is using ebook sales to prop up its Kindle sales; management, in fact, has stated otherwise. Dozens of vendors were selling e-ink devices well below Amazon's prices, and some still are. You're not suggesting every vendor is selling below cost?

Amazon is also enjoying volume discounts from manufacturers because -- through online sales along until June -- customers were flocking to Amazon online buying something they couldn't touch ahead of time. That speaks to the strength of the entire reader environment Amazon is building.

Originally Posted by harryE123

Plus, we are in a recession and already plenty of gadgets pry for attention, smart phones, ipads, gadgets of all sorts, computers...it's not easy for a single purpose book reading device.

The recession has had no impact on e-reader sales in 2008, 2009 and 2010 as far as I can see. The devices have sold strongly for multiple players; new challengers have entered the market; existing players have enhanced their products and lowered prices; the public has enthusiastically signed on. And some vendors made the wrong gambled in building their business plans or simply executed badly. That's life.

Originally Posted by harryE123

But trust me, the market is there, and the public is ready, a decent a4 or close pdf e-reader will be a best seller in academia and people who read lots of technical articles for example.

This may be the only thing I agree with you on. A number of devices have come to market trying to figure out what works best. What the public is not ready for is the current cost of producing such units. It's probably something that looks like an Android tablet -- and will be cheap enough to serve this market may arrive in 2011.

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by Ravensknight

I find my 505 is about as heavy as I can handle with one hand.

For myself, anything with a total unit size larger than the PRS-300 is too large for long-term reading-- I want to be able to cup the unit in my hand (thatswhatshesaid) and the 300 is at about the limit of doing that comfortably. Now, if someone managed to put a 6 inch Eink screen in a body the size of the 300 with minimal bezels, that would be nice.

[cmdahler]

Originally Posted by Ravensknight

how would a 9.7in really work out? For the mass consumer I mean. I find my 505 is about as heavy as I can handle with one hand. Anything heavier I'd have to use both hands or lay it on something, both of which are unattractive options.

I use the "heavy factor" because I've always been under the impression that the mass consumers buy mass market paperbacks, which are light.
and it seems like a 9+ device would just be too heavy...

I don't really think weight would be a factor in the large reader marketplace, since the person who would be interested in buying something that large would likely be the sort who would also purchase a quality hardback (someone who usually reads paperbacks would probably be more interested in a 6 inch device anyway). In the hardback market, even the relatively heavy iPad is a welcome relief. My iPad, including the Apple cover, weighs in at 1 pound 14 ounces. The size of the print block on this screen is essentially the same as a typical hardback. The largest hardback I have at the moment is James Michener's Texas, and it weighs in at a whopping 3 pounds 6 ounces. Michener's Centennial is somewhat smaller at 2 pounds 10 ounces, and Watership Down, one of the smaller hardbacks I've ever had, basically weighs the same as the iPad. However, in no case could I hold any good-sized hardback with one hand for more than just a few minutes of reading both because of weight and also bulk.

So for a typical hardback reader, a 9.7" Kindle DX weighing in at only 1 pound 3 ounces would feel like a feather that one could hold for quite a while before needing to prop it up.

That being said, though, the weight of a good-sized paperback such as Michener's Chesapeake is basically 1 pound, and a smaller one like Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird is 14 ounces, about 2 ounces shy of a pound. So really, the Kindle DX is only around 5 ounces heavier than the average paperback and a good deal lighter than most hardbacks. I think the issue with a 9.7" reader, then, would be more bulk than weight for a person who usually reads paperbacks.

[leebase]

Originally Posted by harryE123

yeah, well, I love my fantastic 9.7" almost identical device too, and I think it's the next best thing to sliced bread, I queued for it on launch and expected it for the past five years.

But I was referring to e-ink as I can't read on my ipad.

Sux to be you. I say that with true empathy. I can't play 1st person shooter games because I get motion sickness. A whole area of entertainment is therefore denied me while millions go on enjoying not caring about my own pain

I imagine you've already tried turning the brightness down, increasing font size, etc. I find for me, I can read on the iPad for hours on end with no problem at all. If, that is, I keep the screen suitably in line with ambient light and the font size large enough.

I think many of the things you mentioned will come to the iPad long before they are brought to eInk, given the collapse of the "expensive eInk" devices' market.

Lee

[dapriuk]

Originally Posted by Ravensknight

my snarkiness aside...

how would a 9.7in really work out? For the mass consumer I mean. I find my 505 is about as heavy as I can handle with one hand. Anything heavier I'd have to use both hands or lay it on something, both of which are unattractive options.
I use the "heavy factor" because I've always been under the impression that the mass consumers buy mass market paperbacks, which are light.
and it seems like a 9+ device would just be too heavy...

1. Do you read newspapers, magazines, street maps etc one handed?

2. Wait till presbyopia sets in and you'll appreciate larger fonts on larger screens

3. Not all readers, even "mass" market readers, read solely paperbacks ...

[dapriuk]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

Yeah, no. I disagree that the technology is flailing miserably.

• Epaper is far more difficult to design and build than you suspect. The overwhelming majority of infrastructure to build displays is oriented towards LCD's, and getting epaper anywhere near the refresh rates of LCD's is extremely difficult. As a result, it has a much smaller market.

• The devices are consistently improving -- often just via firmware updates. They're getting smaller and lighter; connectivity options are increasing; speed is improving; battery life is growing; availability of commercial ebooks is booming; sales are up; the industry is expending more and more energy on ebooks. Heck, even some of the proofreading has improved slightly in the past year. Oh, and in case you didn't notice, prices have dropped dramatically over the past 18 months. That alone is a huge benefit.

As to the corporate comments, someone is always going to kvetch about whoever is ruling the roost at the moment. In the heyday of paper it was Barnes & Noble, who allegedly drove numerous independent bookstores and smaller chains out of business, and terrified the industry with its attempt to purchase Ingram. Amazon came out of nowhere and was the underdog, now that they've body-checked B&N it's their turn to be the Bad Guy. If Sony had the biggest market share, I'm sure someone would throw a temper tantrum every time they made a customer service misstep.

I concur that some things can always benefit from improvement, and there will be more advances very soon. However for a lot of types of reading, ebooks are fully usable right now -- which is why I've barely read any paper books in the past year or so.

I agree. I'd add that when looking at this sort of issue you have to be careful about using the word "market". There are different markets with different but overlapping requirements. North America is not the same as Europe or the rest of the planet, consumer use is not the same as business use is not the same as professional or academic use.

For example I doubt any work environment would allow the attempted monopolistic Amazon and Apple approaches to be used - handling content control and device access to a remote shopkeeper is a recipe for disaster.

Technology typically improves incrementally and while I would like a colour, large format Epaper based reader I am willing to compromise for a while as current technologies are perfectly adequate for some of what I need.

[drawlll]

I have a 6" kobo reader, as far as readability goes I'm happy with it, would I like a larger reasonably priced reader, yes.

What is more important to me is the quality of a lot of epubs, broken lines, strange inserts in the text (&@@$#) etc etc.

Fix up the software before thinking of larger devices.

[LDBoblo]

I have nothing to say in defense of ebook reader technology. I too am very disappointed at the direction most companies have taken, and I think both the devices and software are rather tragically underdeveloped. Sometime around Computex, I lost whatever remained of my hope for the rest of the year, so now I'm just chillaxin and worrying not one bit about Mirasol or Liquavista or Pixel Qi or even a half-assed iPad competitor. I hope the stumbling around in the dark and endless clusterboink of stagnant Chinese clones comes to a close sooner than later, but I'm not going to hold my breath anymore.

In the meantime, I still have to strip and rebuild my own PDFs, and I may get a newer Kindle or one of the new Sonys to replace my even-more-rubbish 505 to enjoy the fruits of my labor just a little more. For fiction, I think I'll be able to stomach it for a while, especially since the price is quite a bit more trivial now than it was when I got my 505.

[harryE123]

Originally Posted by leebase

Sux to be you. I say that with true empathy. I can't play 1st person shooter games because I get motion sickness. A whole area of entertainment is therefore denied me while millions go on enjoying not caring about my own pain

I imagine you've already tried turning the brightness down, increasing font size, etc. I find for me, I can read on the iPad for hours on end with no problem at all. If, that is, I keep the screen suitably in line with ambient light and the font size large enough.

I think many of the things you mentioned will come to the iPad long before they are brought to eInk, given the collapse of the "expensive eInk" devices' market.

Lee

Hey Lee, yeah buddy I 've tried everything sepia background, different fonts, low contrast etc. The only thing that's barely tolerable is white on black in apps such as instapaper and read it later. But even then if we are talking about reading a novel or a paper, forget it.

And it's exactly as you said, the ipad did bring about (at least for the time being) the collapse of the expensive eink market, something no one here noted.