Are B/W e-ink readers becoming out of date?

[crossi]

I wouldn't want a floppy ereader. Floppy newspapers that you either need a table to hold or to fold enough that they are no longer floppy are bad enough,

[stop__dreaming]

Hope not. I prefer the black and white e-Ink.

[JoHunt]

B/W absolutely for reading, but what about color photos that are becoming the norm in new non-fiction books? Viewing them in B/W seems to me to be antiquated.

Will e-ink readers in their current state only be suitable for reading fiction?

[HansTWN]

Obviously it would be great to have color. But technology just isn't there yet. So if color pictures really are that important, then I will buy the pbook.

[Sydney's Mom]

Hope not, the battery useage and ability to read in bright sunlight are key for me.

[QuantumIguana]

No one is talking about "floppy" books. But flexible displays are good. One problem with e-readers that that they can't flex, the screen cracks. A flexible display can flex without breaking, so will be more durable. A flexible e-reader can also be lighter because it doesn't need the material to prevent it from bending.

Maybe some non-fiction has color pictures, but that doesn't make monochrome e-ink obsolete. Some people might choose LCD for the color pictures, others will choose e-ink for the lighter weight, lower cost and lower power consumption. It's nice to only recharge every week instead of every day.

[wyndslash]

i love to use my kindle while eating. since it's not a touch screen, i don't really smudge it, except maybe for the page turn buttons, lol. but it's so lovely under sunlight

[ccowie]

I'm with most others as well on this one. Most of my pleasure reading I'd prefer to do in B&W and I love my Sony 950.
I also have an Ipad, but really don't like it as a reader - too big and flashy. I do like it for some of the great cookbooks I can get from the download library. I can sit it on the counter, read it from a good distance away and see the beautiful pictures. But for long periods of uninterrupted reading (one of life's greatest pleasures), I'll not be tossing my Sony any time soon.

[NickyWithNook]

I much, much prefer b/w e-ink. I think there are a lot of us in the world, and there will always be a market.

[sabredog]

Originally Posted by pidgeon92

I read fiction almost exclusively. It's rare that there are any pics in any of the books I read. I vastly prefer reading on my eink readers; I'd be quite sad if they quit making eink devices.

If I do pick up a non-fiction ebook, like a cookbook, it goes on my iPad.

Same here. PDF's and comics on my iPad2 and novels on my ereaders. Pretty much perfect for me.

[tomsem]

I prefer do almost all of my long form reading on my Kindle. For PDFs and technical docs, my Xoom is much better, both because there is more screen to work with, and navigation is more fluid.

That said, eink screens have not improved for 2 years. I hoped some device other than iRiver HD would come out with a 1024x768 screen, but that has not happened. Development of 300dpi eink screens was announced over a year ago (EInk/Epson partnership). I think additional resolution would help: I notice that on my Kindle, embedded fonts don't look so great at the smaller text sizes I use, as they have not been tweaked like the built-in fonts (which on Kindle are essentially demi-bold rather than regular). But the standard 800x600 6" screen enjoys such economies of scale that other configurations might be prohibitively expensive to produce at this point, with 7" LCD tablets diving below $150.

And of course if there were any way to make the whites whiter and the blacks blacker...