Friday, March 26, 2004
E Ink/Sony release 'First Generation' E-Paper display
This looks like the first commercially viable product to come out of research into 'e-paper' - it's basically an ebook reader that stores about 500 texts and lets you read them on an epaper display. Note that in this case the display is a single 'sheet', ie the device looks just like a Palm or iPaq PDA, it just has an 'e-paper' display instead of an LCD one.
so how is this e-paper? and what's the gain over just having an LCD screen? well, one goal of e-paper is to offer a much more 'readable' medium for the display of text - even the best LCDs have low contrast compared to paper, and they suffer from restricted viewing angles and reduced viewability under bright light. The e-paper display in this device claims to offer enhanced, high-contrast readable text from almost any angle.
But at the end of the day this is just an ebook reader with an improved display - the real 'e-paper' will be when we have a paperback book that changes its text when you wave it over a download pad. until then, unless I want to carry 500 texts around with me (hasn't happened so far), I'll be sticking with paper for my books and LCD for my calendar.
This looks like the first commercially viable product to come out of research into 'e-paper' - it's basically an ebook reader that stores about 500 texts and lets you read them on an epaper display. Note that in this case the display is a single 'sheet', ie the device looks just like a Palm or iPaq PDA, it just has an 'e-paper' display instead of an LCD one.
so how is this e-paper? and what's the gain over just having an LCD screen? well, one goal of e-paper is to offer a much more 'readable' medium for the display of text - even the best LCDs have low contrast compared to paper, and they suffer from restricted viewing angles and reduced viewability under bright light. The e-paper display in this device claims to offer enhanced, high-contrast readable text from almost any angle.
But at the end of the day this is just an ebook reader with an improved display - the real 'e-paper' will be when we have a paperback book that changes its text when you wave it over a download pad. until then, unless I want to carry 500 texts around with me (hasn't happened so far), I'll be sticking with paper for my books and LCD for my calendar.
(c) 2003-2005 Russell Beale
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