Same old question - Which reader?

[LDBoblo]

I hope for OLED or TFT tech to develop more for unlit monochrome readers. Can't say I'm a particularly big fan of e-ink thus far; screen quality just isn't there yet. Perhaps they'll develop it further, but the last few generations of devices have been mediocre.

[PhishStyx]

Er, both oled and tft-lcd are light emitting technologies, you know.

Plus, I'm not sure from your post what you think is wrong with e-ink. Lack of color or contrast? Fragility of the devices? Screen resolution?

[HarryT]

Screen fragility should be a non-issue within the next year, when we start to get eInk screens on flexible plastic substrates, as opposed to the current glass screens.

[LDBoblo]

Originally Posted by PhishStyx

Er, both oled and tft-lcd are light emitting technologies, you know.

Plus, I'm not sure from your post what you think is wrong with e-ink. Lack of color or contrast? Fragility of the devices? Screen resolution?

Must have been tired when I mentioned OLED and associated it with mono reflective. I meant to say I was looking forward to reflective LCDs like that used in the M218 and JetBook readers.

As for what I dislike about e-ink displays...mostly just the contrast and responsiveness...since the poor anti-aliasing of fonts is the fault of the software, not really the hardware. Even so, blameshifting does not change my point that the last few generations of e-reader devices using e-ink have been pretty mediocre for display quality.

Of course, even a great display with good subpixel AA that displays nice fonts beautifully is only part of the dream. Design and interfacing is another thing companies seem to enjoy missing the mark on, whether accidentally or intentionally.

as a side note: I'm pretty well aware that text display has a long way to go in general and that technology like cleartype doesn't translate to low-contrast screens, but for something as mundane as a book, the quality of the text is pretty important. Until ebook reader displays can come remotely close to handling text well, I really can't take ebooks that seriously, since I'll have to pick up any good book I come across as a paper copy to get a decent quality reading experience. eBook readers just can't compete at the moment for anyone who thinks typefaces should be at least somewhat pleasant to the eye. I'm not ditching my PRS-505 yet, but I hope there comes a day when I won't have to reluctantly keep it because my EEE PC, while much better in terms of text viewing, is much inferior in terms of usability.