Jon Stokes writes over at Ars: “At some point, I’m going to write my very last e-paper/e-ink article for Ars. After almost a decade of thin, flexible, low-power displays being “three to five years away,” I can finally see that the time for e-paper’s mass-market debut is almost upon us. A case in point is Fujitsu’s new FLEPia portable tablet, samples of which are now available in limited supply as of this past Friday.”
> 8 colors refresh in 2s; 4,096 colors refresh in 10s
Considering people are annoyed with the 1s refresh times of the Sony Reader I think 10s for a 4096 color page is completely unreasonable.
Personally I think even 1s is unreasonable.
holy crap, that is frigging slow!
Isn’t this technology still relatively new, and not even 1st gen for the masses just yet?
Not to mention it’s 4096 colors, correct?
So reading a b/w book shouldn’t be more than a second or less…Or am I just misreading completely?
>Not to mention it’s 4096 colors, correct?
I’m not sure that this matter a lot, most of book I’m reading are black&white and I don’t care.
OTOH, it takes me not more than 0.1s to flip the page of a book, and I’d be quite annoyed with the 1s refresh time of an e-book..
This technology could be really cool if it was cheep enough. Sure refresh could be a problem for a PDA but for lots of things e.g. a book reader a ~1 sec refresh would not be an issue. For posters and things like that a refresh rate in the hundreds of seconds might be acceptable. I for one look forward to cheep re-printing paper, how cool would that be.
While we are at it though controlled fusion will really rock as well (although not as much as Duke Nukem Forever (which will only work on e-paper display technology, delaying release for another 5 years))
as all tech, the price will come down and the quality will go up given time. but how much time will be needed is a open guess…
No, it’s still too slow. 2s is too slow. I’m not looking for animations, but sometimes you need to flip through pages, and 2s is flat out too slow to do that.
While the large format is “ok”, I think for consumers it’s simply too big. At that size it won’t be “handy” at all. It may well also be rather fragile, given its size.
Having fallen asleep while reading many times, the device will need to survive a fall from the couch to a hardwood floor.
I currently read books on a old palm pilot with a dead backlight (the i705 with built in wireless to a defunct network — fire sale prices on eBay). This is actually quite usable for books (i.e. pure text). It’s durable, and the charge (for me) lasts almost 2 months. It’s also disposable — if it implodes, I’ll just get another cheap, used, Palm Pilot.
My only complaint is that it’s not comfortable to read one handed, as the page up/page down button is in the center at the bottom, so I’m essentially holding it by “pinching” bottom. If it had pageup/down buttons (or even just a next page button) on the side (either side assuming a flippable display), it would be much more comfortable to read.
Maybe I’ll write a book reader that will take a screen tap as a next page, and perhaps I can use my thumb to tap the page.
Agreed.
It’s not just flipping through pages either. Imagine if you’re editing a document, and you’ve got a 1s (or more) lag on everything you type, deleted or paste.
That would drive me absolutely insane. I’m a huge fan of this kind of tech, but I think this specific device is just a waste of time.
This type of display will never be good for editing. It’s for reading only.
What about highlighting and annotating? The odds are likely people will want to be able to do everything they do with normal books and more on such devices. No doubt that’s why they include a touch screen.
Hopefully this tech does get better (meaning faster), because in terms of power consumption and readability the advantages are clear. But the slow refresh times just won’t cut it for tasks like reading web pages, which I think the e-paper-based devices of the future will need to handle if they are to compete with the next generation of ultra-portable laptops and other portable devices.
what ebook reader are you using? TealDoc and Palmfiction both let you ‘rotate’ teh display. I use palmfiction on my treo. awesome program.
If you rotate the display, you can hold the unit sideways and its much more comfortable for flipping pages since your thumb will be right next to the up/down buttons while holding it sideways.
I’ve never liked e-paper. You cannot touch it, hold it, write notes quickly on it, scribble ideas on the back of it or hand copies out without requiring people to firstly have a compatible device, have it on, connected to yours for a duplicate and then opened up. To me, a piece of paper photocopied 100x is far more reliable.
For me, a PDF is good for emailing later, but in a meeting I just cannot bring myself to think that people will be open enough to the idea of all scrolling an electronic piece of paper in a meeting. At least not at the moment with existing old school generations who use a computer the minimal requirements.
Maybe in the future, but the devices are just too darn expensive for what they offer. They’re a toy, too slow, too bulky and provide little value for money.
If I had to spend the money, I’d rather spend it on some recreational activity for my employees to take their minds off work and encourage team building.
That’s my take on it.
> They’re […] too bulky
17.5 x 12.4 x 1.3 cm @ 250g is more bulky than my dictionaries, encyclopedias and all 3 years of my subscription to a certain magazine, totaling to over 10 kg and several orders of magnitude greater volume? Don’t be ridiculous!
Really, there are so many areas where paper can never replace digital reader devices. Paper is just too darn inflexible and cumbersome for what it offers.
That’s my take on it.
True, but the opposite is the same too.
> > Really, there are so many areas where paper can never
> > replace digital reader devices. Paper is just too darn
> > inflexible and cumbersome for what it offers.
>
> True, but the opposite is the same too.
At the moment I can think of dozens of scenarios where digital readers are better, but only a handful where paper is better, namely:
– It’s inexpensive (although it’s more expensive to house a lot of paper than the same amount in digital form).
– It doesn’t break as easily (although it’s a lot harder to maintain offsite backups of the information).
– It burns well (although this can be a bad thing too, and even when it isn’t there are better things to get your fires burning).
– It’s small and light (in small sizes and quantities).
That’s about it. I’m sure there are more reasons, although I can’t think of any. In any case I’m certain that there are a lot more reasons why digital reader devices are better.
Yep, I can see your point but frankly, this has been spoken about and trumped for years now and it still hasn’t taken off. Remember the “paperless office”?
I still think there are compelling reasons not to use this technology yet.
> I still think there are compelling reasons not to use
> this technology yet.
You and me both. I’ve been eagerly waiting for over a decade for a reader device that wouldn’t suck.
> You cannot touch it, hold it,
Why would you not be able to touch/hold a display?
> write notes quickly on it, scribble ideas on the back of it
Quite the opposite. On a digital device there is more or less infinite (edit: actually not more) space between lines/words where you can add your notes (unlike paper where it gets really messy really quickly and you have to resort to endnote-type marks, arrows and/or really small text because of the inflexibility). Not only that, you could even share notes, display many notes side-by-side, select which notes are visible and which are hidden, change between inline notes, footnotes and endnotes etc. And of course cut’n’paste, which is often highly useful, is very cumbersome with paper. The same goes for trying to find something, and a lot of other tasks.
IMO it’s already obvious that paper is just so very, very inflexible compared to digital reader devices, and I’m sure we’ve barely scratched the surface.
Edited 2007-04-24 01:23
I think what has become obvious is that there are strong arguments both ways.
I still prefer a good pencil and paper to an electronic medium for many things. For example, if I need to sit down and derive an equation, I need to do it on dead tree material. Mathematica doesn’t cut it, tablets don’t cut it, I need to scribble illegibly on a piece of paper or else it doesn’t make sense to me.
No fancy e-ink display is going to change that.
> if I need to sit down and derive an equation, I need to
> do it on dead tree material. […] tablets don’t cut it,
> I need to scribble illegibly on a piece of paper or else
> it doesn’t make sense to me.
> No fancy e-ink display is going to change that.
I don’t believe you. What, exactly, do you think would make a “fancy e-ink display” inferior?
A good tablet&stylus could behave just as a paper&pencil, except with additional features (such as better eraser, “infinite” paper size, versioning, easy cut/copy’n’paste, zooming, easy pen color changes). You could even have it simulate the sound of a pencil moving on paper, it that is what makes it “make sense” to you.
> What, exactly, do you think would make a “fancy e-ink display” inferior?
First, you need good refresh time. 2s is absolutely useless. Taking quick notes is more than keeping information for later. It’s also a mental act that flips a thought around in your mind. If your mind is busy writing down the thing correctly because you need 2s to see a line you have just drawn, forget it.
Second, you cannot lay down several pages next to each other with any electronic device, at least not without shrinking them to unreadable sizes.
Real paper doesn’t have limited battery life. It also doesn’t need to start up or shut down, which is extremely important (we’re counting seconds here).
Then there are security issues. Any device that is networked may give the wrong parties access to your documents. Of course, “it’s your fault if you grant everybody access to your documents”, so in the end, it’s up to the user to *think* about access privileges at all. This doesn’t happen with real paper: Keep it to yourself, keep an eye on it, and nobody will take it with him.
Then there’s physical robustness. Does such a device still work if I drop it from 1m height, or if I fold it very tightly? Paper does. If it’s broken, I mean really broken into >= 2 pieces, can I still recover data from it? If paper is torn apart, and it contained really important stuff, I can put the pieces together and hand-copy it to another sheet.
Paper also doesn’t need a user’s manual. It works intuitively.
Not mentioned yet, but relevant in practice, are bugs in the hardware or software on the device. Paper doesn’t have bugs.
E-paper or similar electronic reader devices are likely to include some sort of e-book DRM. In contrast, nobody can prevent me from putting a book onto a photocopier. It’s a lot more work than electronic copying, but it always works.
I could go on, but you get the point.
> > What, exactly, do you think would make a “fancy e-ink
> > display” inferior?
This question was asked in the context of it being or not being impossible to make equations on. Still, your answers to it as a generic question are OK, too.
> First, you need good refresh time. 2s is absolutely useless.
Of course, which is what I already wrote. There is a “rule” in UI design, which says that software must react within 0.1 seconds for the causal connection to work well in the user’s brain.
> you cannot lay down several pages next to each other with
> any electronic device
That’s a valid reason. However, I’ve seen devices that use accelerometers to simulate a viewport into a much larger, virtual screen. Also, e-paper will certainly become cheap to the point where everyone has many devices, and there is nothing keeping you from laying down several next to each other.
> Real paper doesn’t have limited battery life.
Neither does low-power e-paper with solar cells (assuming you’ll need light to operate both paper and e-paper).
> It also doesn’t need to start up or shut down, which is
> extremely important (we’re counting seconds here).
I agree, but there is no reason why it should take more than a second to boot e-paper. (The Iliad’s and Reader’s boot times are ridiculous, and completely unacceptable. I guess the FLEPias have the same problem.)
> Any device that is networked may give the wrong parties
> access to your documents.
No, it really depends on the device. It’s not really hard to make a really secure device, especially if you make one that won’t execute 3rd party code. Also, it wouldn’t have to be networked. Just plug in your (write-protected) memory card and use it completely disconnected.
> Then there’s physical robustness.
This I already mentioned, but I also said that it’s way easier to maintain offsite backups of information in digital form than on paper.
> Paper also doesn’t need a user’s manual.
Neither does e-paper once you’ve gotten familiar with it. I really don’t consider this type of one-time “intellectual investment” a significant con. If people learn to use e-paper devices from a very early age (the same age as learning to use paper) I believe the learning process would be more or less automatic.
> E-paper [is] likely to include some sort of e-book DRM.
Can be ignored.
> I could go on, but you get the point.
As I’ve said, normal paper has a some advantages over e-paper, but those are still dwarfed by the huge number of advantages e-paper has over normal paper. In any case, it should definitely not be impossible to jot down equations on a good e-paper device.
However, I think we can agree that the current crop of devices suck for pretty much everything, except for very few, specific tasks.
To put multiple papers side-by-side you still need a desk. If current trends are going where they seem to be going, the desk of tomorrow may be one giant touchscreen, which would still let you work the way you want, plus do a lot more. Meanwhile, the reader device would be most useful when you are on the go, just as with books today, only it would be more flexible since the number of pages would never influence your decision whether or whether not to bring particular reading material with you. And whenever in the course of your travels you came across a larger display, be it a monitor, a desk, or an entire wall, you could connect your reader device and make that space your new work area.
Of course, you’re absolutely right about the possible implementation problems, particularly the issues around DRM. Let’s just hope that by that time copyright law has been sorted out a bit better to handle such issues (i.e. limitations on the length of copyright ownership so that corporations can’t claim to own things indefinitely) and new systems are put into place for academic/library use (one idea: educational institutions pay a nominal yet sufficient fee per student (which they can pass on to the student in the cost of tuition) to finance the companies that put out textbooks and online databases, in exchange for unlimited, DRM-free access to all students of said university. Likewise, libraries could pay these same fees for a similar degree of free access. Of course, at that point in time who knows what the conception of a university or a library could look like, since it could all be done virtually over the internet… but I get ahead of myself).
Edited 2007-04-24 17:28 UTC
One big thing is feel and friction. I’ve tried lots of devices and really tried to like them, because I really would love to have it work, but non of them come even close to the feel of pencil on paper. Most of the time they are far too slippery making it very hard to write small and to control the pen.
> [e-papers] are far too slippery
Fortunately this is quite easy to fix.
As a quick fix you might want to try to take one of those overhead projector films that are roughed so that you can write on them with a pencil. Cut out a suitable piece and place it on your screen. Ta-daa, instant friction. I also have some clear friction-spray, so I could use that if I wanted to. Films and sprays wear out quite quickly, but can be replaced easily. There are also hard screens that last for years and years.
Personally I quite like it when the screen is a bit slippery, although the screen on my flybook mini-laptop was a bit too slippery. I prefer friction similar to some of the more smoothly gliding pens on paper.
Tried those clear sticky friction screen things back when I had a palm pilot. They don’t work. The feel is still nowhere near as natural or comfortable as pen on paper.
Saw ‘The day after tomorrow’ recently – in one scene, a survivor is determined that the Gutenberg Bible he is cradling will not go into the flames – “the printed word is the beginning of rationality…” or something the like. I wonder who would be clutching their PDA or SmartPhone come such a global disaster…
Seriously, there is a debate to be had here about the cognitive aspects of screen-reading (and not just a moral panic barrage of ‘we are all dumbing down’). Some brief interesting points of view from a knowledge purveying perspective, if you like, as well as a cognitive/action one one can be found at:
http://www.poynter.org/resource/120458/EYETRACKhandout.pdf
and
http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usability_news.html
The alternative would be to keep going with or go back to Virtual Retinal Display technology
http://www.cs.nps.navy.mil/people/faculty/capps/4473/projects/fiamb…
> I wonder who would be clutching their PDA or SmartPhone
> come such a global disaster.
Well, I would certainly keep my memory cards with me at all times, and probably also a small device that is able to read them.
> Virtual Retinal Display
I think the VRD has a fixed focal length. In that case using one of them for long periods of time would probably seriously degrade your eyesight.
This debate is pretty pointless. We’re comparing something that exists today and has been shown to work for thousands of years (paper/stone tablets/clay/papyrus/etc) with something that doesn’t exist yet but we think could exist. It’s like comparing a standard manual driving car/horse drawn carriage/motorcycle to an automatic vehicle that automatically drives where you want it to go, avoids accidents, networks with other cars come up with the most efficient driving path that reduces congestion, and is able to over any terrain between any two points without any intervention from you.
I’m sure anyone would agree that the idealized e-book and the idealizied auto-vehicle is far superior to the clunky alternatives we have today and could replace them in every way, but they don’t exist yet and there’s no guarantee that it’ll ever be possible to produce something so idealized that it can be superior in
every way. History has shown it just doesn’t happen. Despite the “obvious superiority”:
* of the TV, the radio is still around.
* of the internet, the TV is still around.
* of cars, people still walk and bike and go on horses (or ever horse drawn carriages)
* of snow-mobiles, people still use dog sleds in the artic
* of jeeps, people still use camels and horses in the desert
* of the phone and email and video conferencing, people still walk over and talk
Given this, I just don’t see e-paper displacing regular paper.
Edited 2007-04-24 18:57
> * of the TV, the radio is still around.
> * of the internet, the TV is still around.
> * of cars, people still walk and bike and go on horses
> […]
> I just don’t see e-paper displacing regular paper.
Not completely, but more and more. The best (or least inconvenient) tool for the job and all that.
This is a very impressive, very early product. Is it ready for mass consumption? Nope. Does it show promise? Yep — tons. Is it something that needs work? Of course. Show me any (modern) invention that’s perfect, meets all needs and is cost-effective. I think anyone would be hard-pressed to come up with one.
All I know is, if the price comes down, and the refresh rate improves, I’m all over this thing — it looks and sounds pretty amazing.
How many people remember the first portable (not laptops!!!) that had LCD displays? Remember how dim and slow they were compared to the ones available now? Give this technology a chance. It may be that something even better will replace it, but for now, this is still pretty cool.