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eBook will Succed

0 comments | Saturday, April 28, 2007

While reading a recent post by Mike Elgan I felt a strong sense that he was wrong. Ever since I first heard of eInk I fantasized about having one book that would stand on my bookshelf and it would contain all the books that I have read and will read in my lifetime. It is understandable that such device will not show up anytime soon but I also know that I will own one. Currently they are thin plastic case with one "page", slow refresh rates, mostly in black and white and not long battery life for a "book". The most advanced eInk device by my account is Iliad iRex.

It sports a WiFi, 256 Mb of internal memory, USB, MMC and CF expansion slots, 400 MHz XScale Processor and a touch sensitive eInk screen. Just by writing this make my mouth water. Of course all of this takes toll on the battery but even then it can operate for 21h on one charge. This operation time is optimistic and in reality is less than that. Developers, please fix this, eBook should not be limited by such inconvinience. Implement alternative sources of power like solar, motion or even temperature difference sources of powering the little gadget.

Mike Elgan in his article argues that people buy books because they like the feel and touch of paper. They collect books, love to turn the pages and i general are book worms. I must admit, I also enjoy a good book and like the personal touch each and every book brings with it but to say that people like reading long texts or books off a glowing computer screens is nonsense, let alone reading such texts from mobile phones or PDAs. As for sunlight readability, try reading from your notebook on the beach, eInk has no problem with sun and at most we can say that the sun is its allay.

eBooks are in their infancy and it may look like they are not superior to traditional books but this way of thinking is wrong. Large adoption of eBooks is still a few years away but it is coming and with it a shift in paradigm.

And Yes, we love books but it is time for them to enter the 21st century.


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posted by NccWarp9

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