Is Amazon Harming the E-reader Category? (teleread.com) 200
An anonymous reader sends a story from TeleRead which argues that Amazon doing harm to the e-reader category of devices it helped create. The company has been aggressively pushing adoption of its Kindle Fire brand of tablets, dropping the price for the cheapest model down to $50. Compare that to the basic version of the e-ink Kindle: $80 if you don't want it cluttered with "special offers." If you care enough about an e-ink screen, you might still buy it, but most of those people probably already have e-readers. The general populace, when looking at the tablet's color screen, app ecosystem, and access to forms of entertainment beyond books, will probably consider the tablet a no-brainer.
This is in Amazon's best interest; if you buy an e-reader, you're only going to be buying books for it. If you buy a tablet, they can sell you videos and software, too. Amazon has succeeded in pushing several competing e-readers out of the market. They also refuse to experiment or innovate on the design; there have been no significant changes since the Paperwhite's backlighting technology in 2012. Given that ebook sales are no longer growing explosively, this could be a sign that the e-reader category of devices is stagnating.
This is in Amazon's best interest; if you buy an e-reader, you're only going to be buying books for it. If you buy a tablet, they can sell you videos and software, too. Amazon has succeeded in pushing several competing e-readers out of the market. They also refuse to experiment or innovate on the design; there have been no significant changes since the Paperwhite's backlighting technology in 2012. Given that ebook sales are no longer growing explosively, this could be a sign that the e-reader category of devices is stagnating.
It's a niche product. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's a niche product. (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm with you. When Amazon discontinued Kindles with buttons, I bought a couple of spares for when the one I'm using dies. I was only using a Kindle in the first place because my older e-readers got broken over time, and Amazon was the only one who still made a reader with buttons. Now there are none.
Re:It's a niche product. (Score:4, Informative)
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Huh. That's news to me -- they must have come out with it since I stopped paying attention. It's awfully pricey though. Most of the drivers of that high cost (still has a touchscreen, is glow-in-the-dark, etc.) are things that I don't want. I don't mean "things I don't want to pay for," but rather "things I want to avoid." I *would* be willing to pay more for the higher resolution, but not double the cost of my existing Kindle.
Can you disable the touchscreen so that if my finger brushes a
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I'm still using my Kindle 3/Kindle Keyboard because it has a matte screen, readable in almost any light, and one doesn't need to poke at the screen to turn pages. With cellular and Wi-Fi turned off, the device has a long battery life.
The funny thing is that we see basic, effective devices hit the market, like early Palm PDAs, e-readers, and other items which may not have a ton of bells and whistles... but do a single task very effectively. Then, they start getting stuff added, and wind up just being like
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The new Paperwhite from 2015 has a bezel button for page turning in addition to its touch screen. After I got used to the (page-turn-buttonless) Paperwhite (2013), I really have no complaints about it.
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yeah, i'm not sure what i'll do when my kindle-DX finally dies.
has buttons, AND a proper sized screen.
Re:It's a niche product. (Score:5, Informative)
The dedicated ebook reader is for people who - you guessed it - read books.
Thats it. My wife is on her second kindle, and she was happy with the first one, I just couldn't think of another Christmas gift and figured she'd like the paperwhite.
The sales rate may be that the E-readers simply are very good products with a much longer use cycle. They don't get OS updates, or need new features. They do what they do, and do it well, and you can read books today perfectly fine on a first generation EReader.
Dead tree books (Score:5, Interesting)
I've never been fond of e-readers. I like the feel of the book in my hand. I've tried a few (starting with the Sony way-back-when) and moved to a kindle. I ended up still buying paper-books.
Maybe it's my age (upper 40's), maybe it's nostalgia or maybe it's something else entirely but I ENJOY it more when I'm really flipping pages.
My kids on the other hand have no trouble. My son likes paper books more but has no issue reading from his kindle-fire.
Note: I've over 3000 books dating from the 1930s to present. And that's after donating about 1000 to the local book-bank for hospitals. Oh how I miss hitting the many used book shops that used to exist.
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The Fire or other glossy tablets? Not so much. A dedicated e-Ink reader is a whole other thing. On my second one. The screen on my first one started dying after 4 years, so I got a Paperwhite last week.
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I'll agree that e-ink is much better than a regular display for reading on an e-reader. Tablets like the fire or ipad just bug me more. Maybe it's the glassy screen.
However, I still prefer the paper in my hands.
That said, my wife has been trying to move me to a reader for a while. Books take up quite a bit of space.
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I never thought I'd switch to an e-reader, until the day I started saying "when did these fonts get so small? I can barely read this". I have much less eyestrain now with tablet since I can switch to a bigger font. I'm sure I'll switch to glasses eventually, at which point maybe I'll go back to my books.
Books take up quite a bit of space.
Tell me about it, I have ~1000 in my library, mostly hardbacks, and it's getting hard to justify an entire room just for bookshelves. I mean, it's cool and all, but not so practical.
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My sister-in-law has a serious degenerative disease that has done bad things to her eyes. She loves her Nook, because she can increase the font size to the point she can read it well. She likes reading, but was unable to do so until we gave it to her.
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My dead tree "to-be-read" shelf holds a bit more than 100 books. It's stayed steady at that for several years -- I buy four or five or so new dead tree items a month and finish a similar number. My Kindle has about 5 or 6 hundred unread books on it. I buy half a dozen or so new e-books every month, and again, finish a similar number.
I like both. The Kindle is always with me, and I don't think of it so much as a book but more as a library. If I finish a book, the next one is right there. Some publisher
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I like to read outside, weather permitting, and e-ink works very well for that. I seldom read comic books (*ahem*, graphic novels) although I have several via Humble Bundle, so the tablets really don't buy me anything that e-ink doesn't do better.
I had to buy another good sized bookcase a couple of years ago and put it into another room, but it's overflowing now. I like having all the physical books, but I don't have any space to put still another bookcase...
I'm a *long* way away from 60. More than two w
Opposing preference— (Score:5, Insightful)
I am also in my 40s and have a huge library of books (including a roomful of books on shelves from my Ph.D. years). And at this point, I can't *stand* paper books. They're heavy, have slow page turns, are not searchable, can only be carried in small numbers, are difficult to use (no changeable font, low contrast, drop it and you've lost your page), take FOREVER to find (Not at the bookstore? And let's face it, what's at the bookstore any longer? Then you'll have to wait days for the book to arrive in the mail, no impulse buying/reading), use up space in your house, and so on.
I am basically ebooks only these days. I buy and read probably 3-6 ebooks a week. If it's not available electronically? I've probably bought four paper books over the past year, if that. I have to really, really want it to put up with paper and the inconveniences of buying/reading paper.
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"have slow page turns"
See there? That's one of the things I LIKE. Slowing things down. I have a quasi-useless super power: I can read ungodly fast. I can down a 300 page book in 15-20 mins if I let myself. But I don't ENJOY it any where near as much. How can I run through an emotional chapter in 10 seconds? Or something humorous? There's no time for reflection. I just 'digest' the material.
Maybe thats it -- I might just naturally start flying through the text on an e-reader.
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If you can read a 300 page book in 20 minutes then you're reading at something like 4500 words per minute and are quite possibly the fastest reader in the world if you're not skimming/speed reading.
And that's a potentially crazy good speed reading value as well. A quick google search showed 4251 to 4700 wpm for the World Champion from some organization though Guinness and other sources seem to have claims from 25,000 to 80,000. But even with the champion comprehension is under 70%.
And e-ink readers still ha
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Thanks. I'm not skimming or "speed reading" and 4500 is faster than I've tested -- but not by a lot.
A related ability I have is to glance at a page and "find" what I'm looking for (if I 'kind of' know what I'm looking for) almost instantly. It comes in handy for research or reviewing technical material. Example: I went through a 800 page PDF on a particular bar-code reader looking for "something" that might explain an issue we were having where the hardware would fail to read the barcodes. Found it abo
Try Audiobooks? (Score:2)
"have slow page turns"
See there? That's one of the things I LIKE. Slowing things down. I have a quasi-useless super power: I can read ungodly fast. I can down a 300 page book in 15-20 mins if I let myself. But I don't ENJOY it any where near as much. How can I run through an emotional chapter in 10 seconds? Or something humorous? There's no time for reflection. I just 'digest' the material.
Maybe thats it -- I might just naturally start flying through the text on an e-reader.
I've found a quite deeper element to the audiobooks I "read" (and recently re-read having previously read on dead-tree). The narrator dwells on things I would have glossed over, taking time I would not - but it makes passages that much more interesting at times, and culminations of chapters more profound.
Plus you can do it while you're commuting/cooking/shopping - activities where you're otherwise not talking to people, you can now digest a book at the same time (I still can't listen to an audiobook while
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I have quite a collection of audio books. I've had an audible subscription years before amazon borg'd them. And I agree with you completely.
The only thing I've discovered is that a few of the books I "owned" vanished from their available titles and I can't re-download (license expired was the reason I was given). They basically give me a free book credit every time that's happened (4 times out of about 300 books).
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The only thing I've discovered is that a few of the books I "owned" vanished from their available titles and I can't re-download
That's horrible. I had no idea that licenses could expire even though you've "bought" the book.
I wonder what the contract wording is regarding licensing vs. "purchase" - can they use that word when it can go away?
Re:Opposing preference— (Score:5, Insightful)
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I hate technical paper books as much as you: they're outdated before you reach the cash register, the TOC and index aren't hyperlinks, etc. However, a Kindle is the worst possible device for displaying them - they're designed primarily for linear reading of stories from start to end. A Kindle is much slower to navigate than even a ground-up-tree version. I find that technical documents on web sites are far and away the most usable solution for reference materials, followed by books, followed by the Kind
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I enjoy a good paper copy of a piece of fiction or prose, but I will never buy another physical technical manual again. Trying to read one with the computer next to it is ridiculous. They can flop their huge selves over to the trash can as far as I'm concerned.
Funny, I'm the exact opposite.
Then again, the technical pubs I read are rarely optimal on a paperback-sized reader screen.
Worse, a lot of docs are web-based now and have really obnoxious borders and slide-outs that make them not only virtually impossible to read on a 7-inch tablet, but often cannot even be printed without contortions up to and including scraping and re-formatting. That's something that really bugs me, since a lot of projects I work on only need a chapter or so actually on hard copy for deta
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Indeed. I have loads of data sheets on my Kindle, and service manuals, etc. What I like is that you can have the relevant page of a data sheet open beside you for half an hour while you debug a circuit.
What I dont like is that the screen is too damn small. I want a bigger-than-A4 e-ink screen so can enlarge the schematic/graph/why till I can read the details I want, while still getting the big picture. Who cares
Lending? (Score:2)
I tend to read a book and then lend it to a friend. I find this almost impossible with DRM'ed ebooks. So much easier with paper.
Good luck lending those ebooks to a friend, or reading them by candle-light after a week-long power outage.
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My Paperwhite works very well without an internal light, although it does have one, and the battery duration is measured in weeks. Thus far I haven't bought many DRM'd ebooks so that hasn't been an issue. There is a huge amount of material out there that is available without DRM. And you can always strip the DRM if you really want to, although that is obviously a step you don't have to take with a hard copy.
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Good luck [...] reading them by candle-light after a week-long power outage.
I'm just thinking about the case of the power outage and the coming apocalypse: would my first reaction be "head to the library and save all the books in it?" "Head to the library and select the 100 books worth saving?" "Grab my Kindle and some extra batteries?" Or would it be "find my wife; grab the shotguns, ammo, water filter, and tent; loot the grocery store; and head north?"
It turns out the right answer is to buy the media based on what I actually need today, and what I currently find most convenie
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find wife, grab gear, move into library. Duh!
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For any book you'd care to search, hell yeah ebooks. I usually read books during travel and/or on vacation, in both cases I've found "disposable" books better than an electronic gadget I'll try to not break or lose or get stolen or get sand or water in the connectors. Usually they're 500+ page fiction bricks, they get battered and bruised and dog-eared as I please and nobody would care to steal it if I go for a snack or a swim in the water and they're a slow-paced leisure for when I want to chill out but no
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It also depends on how you are reading.
E-Readers are great when weight is a concern (i.e. traveling), or if you need search.
Otherwise, there is nothing wrong with dead tree books. They, in fact, have many practical advantages : they are cheap, robust, last for centuries, require no power source, transferable, etc...
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I've never been fond of e-readers. I like the feel of the book in my hand.
Same here...there's just something about having an actual book in your hand that no e-reader provides.
I've tried e-readers and "eh" they're okay, but I'll take a real book over an e-reader every time.
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Same here...there's just something about having an actual book in your hand that no e-reader provides.
Familiarity.
That's all it is. It's nothing intrinsic.
Well, apart from the infinite battery life.
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I've never been fond of e-readers either, but because I read ebooks - the only kind I buy today - on an iPad. It's an e-reader, and it's also everything else you can use a tablet for.
It's the Ownership Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's the Ownership Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
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Note that many Amazon ebooks have no DRM, so you can load them into Calibre and do whatever you want with them. DRM is mostly for big publisher books, not small publishers and indie writers.
But, yes, given the choice between paying $12.99 for a DRM-ed publisher ebook, or $9.99 for the paperback... it's not hard to choose.
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> it's not hard to choose
I'll take the ebook every time. Thankfully, ebook DRM is pretty weak, so I've been able to strip it from every book I've bought.
Initially it used to bother me when a paper book cost less than an ebook, but I've pretty much let go of that now. Being able to search a book makes it more valuable and so it's worth a smallish premium to me.
Re:It's the Ownership Stupid (Score:4, Informative)
Illegal? Maybe, maybe not: http://gizmodo.com/its-perfect... [gizmodo.com]
It might be illegal but I don't have an ethical problem with stripping DRM from books I purchase.
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I do this as well - the tools exist to make this pretty simple.
I use a Calibre plugin to strip the DRM, and simultaneously I have Calibre convert the Kindle books to ePub form. Both the ePub and the Mobi files go onto our media "server", which is regularly backed up to a couple different places.
Previously, I'd used a droplet app that came as part of Apprentice Alf's tools - but I like the Calibre one-stop solution better.
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But technically it is illegal to strip off the DRM, isn't it?
That's a very fuzzy question. It's commonly accepted that it is in the US, under the circumvention paragraph of the DMCA. but a couple of paragraphs later, there's an exemption specifically allowing stripping of encryption for purposes of cross compatibility - file format conversion, from Kindle to epub, for instance. And there's a long standing fair use right to do so for archival purposes.
So far as I know, this has never been tested in court.
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Or, just wait 12-18 months after a new book comes out to purchase it then de-DRM it with Calibre & the appropriate plugins. Given that I have a HUGE backlog of books I want to read, I can always find something else to read.
Thus I do not get ripped of by the exorbitant new ebook prices (seriously, eBooks more expensive than paperbacks?!?!) nor suffer from any potential Amazon take-backs or DRMed books.
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seriously, eBooks more expensive than paperbacks?!?!
Actually, with the new contracts between publishers and Amazon that let publishers set the price of their ebooks, it's not uncommon for the ebook to be more expensive than the hardcover version.
General theory is that it's deliberate. Publishers make more money on an ebook, but the only thing they really have to offer to authors these days is their control of most of the print market... so they appear to be trading short-term profit for longer-term author r
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They're not making their money off of me in any rate. I refuse to buy those overpriced ebooks. I don't have room for any more books, am unable to resell them (English language books in France...), so I just wait for the ebooks I want to fall under 5€. 5€ is a fair price for an ebook without any production costs...
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Yea and for the really lazy like me, Amazon provides you your @kindle address. So you can a number of common format documents to your kindle just by e-mailing it. You are free to obtain these from anywhere you like.
In my case its often plain text files form Archive.org. Lots of great public domain classics there, and the Kindle is a excellent device to read them on!
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Many authors, indie and otherwise, use DRM. It is applied when you check the box as you submit the book. As for price, that too is decided by the submitter. There are many high priced indie books available on Amazon and elsewhere. Don't conflate who it's *for* with its use by volume.
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Mmm. Let's assume they can make the lifetime of a book reader 40 years (an assumption I'm *very* skeptical of.) I have 500 books on my reader. I'm carrying around hundreds to thousands of dollars of content which will be gone if I leave it in a restaurant or a taxi? I can't transfer it to another device?
I don't think so. All my ebook content is on my computer in a Calibre data store. I "own" the books I buy, not Amazon (I don't actually buy ebooks from Amazon, only dead tree.)
Your estimate of 1/4 the
Re:It's the Ownership Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
It's like you think that once you buy a physical copy of some media, you have an indestructible copy of it that will last you the rest of your life. I have no problem buying books or music or movies from iTunes or Amazon's stores. I've bought multiple copies of the same CD or DVD in the , only to have to get another one when the copy I was using got scratched by kids, pets or mishandling or just plain lost or stolen. I buy digital versions of all of music and movies now, and I don't even care that I don't 'own' the media. To me, the benefits vastly outweigh any perceived drawbacks.
Also, as someone else already noted, many (most?) ebooks from Amazon 'ship' with no DRM, and can be loaded into Calibre and changed to different formats and device fairly easily.
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I only buy epub for my Kindle. :)
Me and Calibre strip out the right-justification and covert it to a format the Kindle can read.
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B&N has been making it very difficult to get to the actual book files, unfortunately. I consider this very unfriendly of them.
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Good Lord, no! There are certainly hypothetical downsides to Amazon's model where they manage your books, but the big draw is that you can seamlessly share books across all your devices. For instance, when I'm waiting somewhere unexpectedly, I can pull out my phone and sync automatically to the current page of my current book. After I get home and start reading on my Kindle, it syncs again to the latest page, all completely seamlessly.
In a worst-case scenario, even if Amazon goes under, as long as you've
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You can always re-deliver any content you've previously bought via Amazon's eBook store. The Kindle works as a USB mass storage device when attached to your computer, so you can run backups of your own.
No (Score:2)
Wait, was there supposed to be discussion on this? Ok...
Welcome to every niche product, ever. It's like asking if Apple killed the mp3/flac player by making phones. If you're market is 1% or less of the mass-marketed product, you really can't expect to get rock-bottom, high volume pricing. Does it suck? Sure, if you're an aficionado of the niche. For everyone else they just odn't have to pay for two devices.
Not so sure (Score:3)
Amazon recently upgraded the paperwhite Kindle. Amazon recently (well, last year) released a premium $200 version of the Kindle. Amazon recently released a Kid's package for the Kindle.
I Love them both (Score:2)
I love my original Kindle e-ink and the Android 7" tablet I bought later to supplement it.
First up - I'm a programmer, so I read a fair amount. That said, I'm un-employed so I prefer to read on the cheap. Years back I drank the Cool-Aid and bought an e-ink Kindle. I still love it, though I don't use it often, because these days I often need to read web pages.
When I "buy" a book, I can DL it onto my PC, the e-ink Kindle, my Android tablet (and since I love my mom, her ipad too for some books). That's a prett
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As it is, I've no interest in either just a tablet or just an e-reader.
What I'd really like is a tablet version of the Yotaphone: https://yotaphone.com/us-en/ [yotaphone.com]
LCD on one side, eInk on the other.
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Not necessarily working (Score:3)
I bought a cheap Kindle Fire HD ($189) on sale a little over a year ago, and paid extra ($15) to get rid of the ads. I use it to mostly to surf the web, which I do from a sideloaded copy of Firefox. As for ebooks: I buy directly from O'Reilly's website. O'Reilly's books are DRM-free and available in many formats, including the Kindle's preferred .mobi format, and in O'Reilly's case I'd rather the money go straight to the publisher without the middleman. I'll grab a freebie title from Amazon now and then when they're offered. Otherwise, I buy digital music from Amazon occasionally, but having their branded tablet hasn't changed my buying habits at all. For me, they just subsidized my tablet back when 10" tablets were all $400 and up.
Cluttered? (Score:5, Informative)
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Also: The ads on the e-ink Kindle are more like a screen saver, and more than once I've gotten a book by an author I like on sale because of them!
And on the subject of kids - one of the best aspect of my Kindle Touch is that my kids aren't interested in it, leaving me to read in (relative) peace...
Saturation (Score:2)
The market for ereaders is saturated. So Amazon has to try something else. Luckily they still sell normal Kindles.
And about the buttons: I have the last buttoned Kindle and I was sad to see it go. But I guess I can get used to a touch screen.
What about colored e-ink? Is that just around the corner like it was in 2011, or is there some progress there?
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Yes. Unless e-ink performance dramatically improves, there's really no reason to buy a new reader to replace my Kindle... meanwhile, tablet screens have improved enough that I now mostly read there, rather than on the e-reader.
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Yup. Just around the corner.
Nuclear fusion is 30 years away. It has been 30 years away for about 50 years.
I'd expect color e-ink to be just around the corner for quite some time.
Qualcomm's Mirasol was sounding like the answer, but it seemed to drop into a black hole quite some time ago.
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Thanks! It is as I feared: nothing new has happened. Hopefully people are still researching it.
Do the market segments really overlap? (Score:2)
Personally, I have no interest whatsoever in buying a Fire tablet, but I love my Paperwhite. TFA only makes sense if the market segments for tablets and e-readers overlap substantially. Maybe they do, but it's not necessarily so.
It's all about taste (Score:2)
I've owned a couple kindle fires and a few kindles. At this point my remaining kindle fire is a game machine for my daughter, my wife has a paperwhite, and I have a voyage. I specifically opted for the e-reader experience because i wanted a standalone reading device with a backlit screen and e-ink. I read on my ipad for a long time and it just isn't as comfortable on the eyes.
Point being: People will buy what they want based on their personal taste and needs/desires. What Amazon did isn't "hurting" their e-
either way you're locked in ... (Score:2)
What the ebook world needs is a universal, non-intrusive, DRM system (if such a thing can actually exist) or no DRM. Then we'd had the digital audio situation in which most stores just sold you mp3 or other non-DRM'd format and thus you can choose the device where you consume that media.
There're some nice ereaders outside of the Kindle but they're harmed by the shortage of legal content
Re:either way you're locked in ... (Score:4, Informative)
Most ebooks sold by amazon aren't downloaded in a DRM'd format. And I hope you're joking about the difficulty of getting ebooks from other sources, Project Gutenberg has tons of stuff and many publishers seem to have stores. I just use the USB cable that came with my Paperwhite to connect it to my computer and then drag and drop my ebook files to the ereader. I would presume that most other ereaders work in the same fashion.
Still got a kindle (Score:2)
Even with the super cheap kindle fire I got a Kindle reader for my kid. I don't want it to do apps or video or anything. Only books.
Who cares about the e-reader market? (Score:2)
I don't see why we should care about the "e-reader" market; the market for e-books themselves is far more important. The sales are still growing, if not as quickly as they were.
(Also, despite all the ribbing Amazon gets for them, the "Special Offers" aren't the least bit intrusive. They appear on the "sleep" screen and about the bottom 1/3" of the Home screen. They are not visible when you are actually reading, which is what most people spend the most time doing.)
Betteridge's Law (Score:2)
Like the MP3 player, an e-ink device is a niche application and will always exist, even when other devices can integrate other functions for the masses.
E-reader v. Tablet (Score:2)
if you buy an e-reader, you're only going to be buying books for it. If you buy a tablet, they can sell you videos and software, too.
Which is exactly why I got a Kindle instead of a Kindle Fire. I knew I'd never use it to read if I got the Fire.
Different courses, different horses. (Score:3)
I don't need a new kindle (Score:2)
I love my kindle. It's one of the original models. I see no compelling reason to upgrade it. It's not like I need a feaster processor or more memory or anything. So if most kindle owners are like me, kindles won't be replaced very rapidly like the more power-hungry tablets. I think there are enough kindle users that the product won't go away -- it just won't have super high-volume sales.
And now that it's proven its worth to me, if I do ever have to replace it, I'll be willing to pay the extra cost over a ta
So, Is Kindle format Proprietary? (Score:2)
If not, where's the Kindle Reader open-source, like ones for PDF for Windows and other platforms?
I DO like some things in electronic form, 'cause I can store them for future reference. Books aren't just for entertainment, ya know.
Re:Amazon App tablets let you app apps! (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, yes. e-readers are limited functionality devices that take up the same amount of space as a tablet that can serve as a reader, and much more. Unless the e-reader offers something unique (e-ink...) that the tablet cannot (an e-ink tablet would be pretty crippled in the color display space, at least, commercially available e-ink as I have known about it thus far.)
OTOH, if the tablet can't do what the user needs -- for example, present a readable page in full sunlight -- then the tablet isn't impinging on a putative e-reader's earned-by-actual-capabilities market share, is it?
And if something can't survive in the market, it's now a question of do we have to have it? Because if it can't survive on its own, and we don't have to have what it offers, then who is going to step up and make the things? It becomes a buggy whip. Rightfully so.
Seems pretty straightforward to me.
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The first Nook reversed this and had a tiny color screen at the bottom to go with the main e-ink reading surface. All your navigation used the color screen, it could show thumbnails of covers, etc.
They dropped it after one iteration though. I guess it wasn't very popular.
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The first Nook reversed this and had a tiny color screen at the bottom to go with the main e-ink reading surface. All your navigation used the color screen, it could show thumbnails of covers, etc.
They dropped it after one iteration though. I guess it wasn't very popular.
It's a pain to use. Because ONLY the small strip of color screen was touch-sensitive, the web browser was almost useless and selecting books to read from the e-ink listing meant scrolling a lot. And, of course, the power-saver always switched it off just before you needed it again, but that's hardly a nook thing.
Still, it was a pretty decent reader and it could easily play music while you read if you wanted it to.
Re:Amazon App tablets let you app apps! (Score:4, Informative)
Given the trend in larger and larger screen sizes on phones (which I'm not a fan of but whatever), I wouldn't be surprised if the next iteration of their devices is 5.5" or higher.
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What it already does better than the Sony: it lets me read RSS feeds on e-Ink, and when I stumble upon multi-coloured graphics or photos in an EPUB, I can just flip it over and look at that on the OLED screen. Perfect!
It needs a lot more developers' love, though, because you do need specialized apps for displaying web
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I want an E-Ink reader. I have tablets available (don't use them), and I have my phone which is what I do use. The biggest reason I don't have an E-Ink reader is the software. Kindle sucks, Nook doesn't even have E-Ink anymore, Kobo... I've heard lots of negative about their hardware, mostly short lifespan so I've never even checked out the software.
Find an E-Ink reader that can run FBReader and I'll jump on it.
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Nooks with eInk are still available (I was in a B&N this week and saw it on the display). It's not what they put up signs advertising, but they def. have the backlit (togglable) eInk screen version.
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Nook does still have an E-ink reader, and, IMO, it's the best bang for your buck unless you're already heavily invested in Amazon's proprietary library.
http://nook.barnesandnoble.com... [barnesandnoble.com]
The specs are very similar to the latest Kindle, except the Nook supports the EPUB open format, while Kindle has their proprietary format of MOBI.
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... an e-ink tablet would be pretty crippled in the color display space, at least, commercially available e-ink as I have known about it thus far
I'm not absolutely certain on the exact specs, but here's an example of an always on color e-paper display in commercial use: https://www.pebble.com/pebble-... [pebble.com]
(I can't find a "hardware specs" sheet/page, but this page makes not of the e-paper: https://www.pebble.com/watches [pebble.com])
It's also used for their Pebble Time Steel and Pebble Time.
It's used on a watch face that can display a second hand, so I'm assuming it can do at least 1 refresh a second.
I doubt it'd be able to handle video, but that would be more than
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So would I. A considerable premium. I'd even accept considerably less-than-good color, as long as I could tell one thing from another. The battery life benefits alone would make it worth it to me. Reading in sunlight is also something I do, but I never seem to remember to have brought the e-ink Kindle along with me to wherever. So I end up reading in the Kindle app on my Galaxy Note 3 phone, which I like and am 1
Re:Amazon App tablets let you app apps! (Score:4, Interesting)
Non e-ink tablets tend to be glossy.
That may be good in moderate light to see movies, but is horrible to read.
And forget at sunshine.
I have an e-Ink Kindle, but that's been sitting in a desk drawer for the past 9 months as I've switched over to using a Nexus 7 tablet for reading since a tablet can do much more.
I don't read (even books) in bright sunlight, so that aspect of the e-Ink doesn't matter to me, the tablet works fine for everywhere I use it: at home in the dark, in the train, in the office. And if I want to switch gears and send an email, read an IM or browse the web, I don't need to switch to a different device.
Re:Amazon App tablets let you app apps! (Score:5, Insightful)
since a tablet can do much more
This is an excellent reason to have a reader specific piece of hardware. I use a first gen. paperwhite. Put aside for the moment that it's smaller, lighter and has a backlight that goes dimmer than most tablets making it better hardware for holding up in the dark for long periods. When I'm reading I DON'T WANT to be notified of the latest spam I just got. I don't need the option of browsing some web site and I certainly don't want to watch a movie or listen to music.
I want to read a book. This is a purpose specific device that is excellent at its job. I own a couple iPads, iPhone 6+ and a Surface. If my paperwhite died this moment I'd go buy another one without hesitation because to me there is no overlap in functionality between my book reader and those other devices.
When you're in the store and looking at that black and white e-ink screen and comparing it to the full color display of a standard tablet, there is only one winner. Add in that your e-ink reader only displays words vs. everything a tablet does and any reasonable person would decide a full tablet is a much better way to go. Should you get the chance, borrow a backlit e-ink reader and try it for one night. You'll find the reader is a completely different device than the tablet and those weaknesses are actually strengths.
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I understand your use case. For me however, e-reader (also Kindle paperwhite) is a clear win on any trip that I take.
If you fly for anything longer than 4 hours apiece then any sort of tablet will be useless, since I won't be able to rely on the battery to get me through the trip. One of the reasons, ironically, will be because it will be a tablet. I will inevitably want to fire up a game a sometime and that will drain the battery.
Also, if you go on a vacation and don't want to be bothered with a need to ch
Re:Tablets == insomnia (Score:4, Insightful)
Try Twilight [google.com] on Android - it will dim the screen and tint it red to help alleviate circadian rhythm interruption caused by full spectrum (particularly high end like blue and violet) light.
The best solution is "warm" light (dimmed incandescent or special LED but not CFL or white LED) and dead trees for before bed reading.
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Perhaps they "tend" to be, but I've never seen one with a reflection problem myself. My phone (phablet, I guess) isn't noticeably glossy.
My phone (Galaxy Note 3) is just fine to read on in moderate light. So's my iPad. It's a little heavy though, so I almost always use the phone.
I can read in sunshine just fine. I have to turn the brightness on the phone up to max, but when
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I know what you mean, but at the same time I have a hard time being angry with Amazon because they serve me so well.
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5) Color e-Ink has been around for a looong time but it's still not in any of the mainstream e-book readers. Why? I don't care that it's not as good as LCD, it's not supposed to be. But color does improve the experience when reading books with technical diagrams or illustrations.
I think the resolution on Color E-ink is still not good enough for prime time, and due to that the color range is also very limited. I agree it would be nice. One of the new Pebble smartwatches has a color E-Ink screen, and if you look at the pictures , shapes have jagged edges. Not very impressive.