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Ask HN: Why are larger e-readers much more expensive than tablets?

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Re: Ask HN: Why are larger e-readers much more expensive than tablets?

#41

Post by thescriptkiddie »

donatj wrote: post #26
dalbasal wrote: post #22

I’m guessing, but I have to imagine production volume has something to do with it. Little e-reader screens for cheap devices like the 6” kindle are where the volume is. In any case, I’m kind of bummed that the e-ink/ereader market has sort of settled on the current state of affairs. What I’d really like to see is good e-ink laptops. First, because of battery life. I also think they could be great “focus machines.” A…

I don’t think they’d sell well at all in laptops. I don’t think the tech is far enough. The ~1 FPS performance and occasionally needing to flash the entire screen to clear artifacts are really poor selling points for productive work. Things like for example scrolling a document or moving a mouse pointer would be quite painful and streaky.

You can do a lot better 1 FPS that if you're willing to accept artifacting. I have a rooted nook touch with fast display mode enabled, and you can play games on it no problem.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rP2CVXzpK5s (not my video)

Re: Ask HN: Why are larger e-readers much more expensive than tablets?

#42

Post by yourapostasy »

peatmoss wrote: post #36
xmodem wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably also partially an economies of scale thing. Amazon used to sell a 10 inch version of the Kindle but discontinued it due to poor sales.

I bought the Kindle DX when I was in a masters program. I loved the screen. I did not love the PDF rendering speed. At times it could take several minutes to turn the page on a PDF. Basically, any PDF that had vector-based statistical plots would bring the poor thing to its knees. I wished at the time that there were a large screen PDF reader with modest computational umpf. Nowadays, it sounds like the Sony reader is…

These days the Calibre project embeds a number of great conversion projects and adds its own valuable conversion contributions to turn PDFs to e-reader formats and still do a decent job of preserving layout (a ways to go to match Acrobat's conversion of PDF to MS-Word, but steadily getting there). Take a look at how it manages with your selection of PDFs, and see if they work better on your DX if you still have it hanging around.

Re: Ask HN: Why are larger e-readers much more expensive than tablets?

#43

Post by dalbasal »

bunderbunder wrote: post #39
dalbasal wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re probably right, but are these insurmountable hurdles, or just problems that exist because no one has solved them yet? Someone has to start making them, and they need to improve over a couple of generations. At first, the software would need to navigate around any issues they can’t solve. Surely there’re alternatives to scrolling and mouse pointers, at least as primary UI elements. I mean, is a good email clien…

These characteristics are also annoying, but not "product-killingly annoying", for e-readers. So if they're going to be fixed, I'd expect them to be fixed in the e-reader space first, and then applied to laptops. Putting out an e-ink laptop before the tech is ready would just be throwing money in a hole. I just wouldn't expect what's going to be essentially a mid-'80s word processor (Xerox Memorywriter, not WordPerfe…

Why would the software be bad? The display is the only thing thats different in terms of hardware.

Besides that, circa 2000 hardware specs are embedded in £40 devices these days, even ereaders. Word processing has been fine for a long time. No need for bleeding edge performance, or even somewhat sharp.

Re: Ask HN: Why are larger e-readers much more expensive than tablets?

#44

Post by bpyne »

Speaking of larger e-readers, does anyone have experience with the Remarkable product?

At some point, I'm going to have to replace my 1st gen Nook and would love to have a device that I can write on as well. So, the Remarkable product looks great despite the price tag. But, I'd want at least a 10-year life.

Re: Ask HN: Why are larger e-readers much more expensive than tablets?

#45

Post by bunderbunder »

dalbasal wrote: post #43
bunderbunder wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These characteristics are also annoying, but not "product-killingly annoying", for e-readers. So if they're going to be fixed, I'd expect them to be fixed in the e-reader space first, and then applied to laptops. Putting out an e-ink laptop before the tech is ready would just be throwing money in a hole. I just wouldn't expect what's going to be essentially a mid-'80s word processor (Xerox Memorywriter, not WordPerfe…

Why would the software be bad? The display is the only thing thats different in terms of hardware. Besides that, circa 2000 hardware specs are embedded in £40 devices these days, even ereaders. Word processing has been fine for a long time. No need for bleeding edge performance, or even somewhat sharp.

So the only analogue I know of for a device that was designed for that kind of task, and used a display with those kinds of limitations, was word processing appliances like the Xerox Memorywriter.

And I also know that nobody actually liked working on those things; they just put up with them because because, at the time, an actual computer set up to do the same task could easily cost something upward of US$5,000 in today's dollars.

Re: Ask HN: Why are larger e-readers much more expensive than tablets?

#46

Post by _alias »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #20
bitlax wrote: post #16

Is anyone else looking for an inexpensive, 13-inch, read-only e-ink tablet for reading pdfs? If this exists can someone point me in the right direction? I feel like I can't be the only one who's been looking for this.

Inexpensive? No. But you're basically describing Sony's DPT-RP1: https://www.sony.com/electronics/digital-paper-notepads/dpt-... https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/4/10/15242238/s... It's $700. Also, it can take input from a stylus to annotate the documents on it. But otherwise it's what you want. I, too, wish there were cheaper options for this purpose - even if it was a thick, heavy monitor with a stand a…

Apparently the EULA oversteps. Gives sony the right to grab data from your pc when connected.

Re: Ask HN: Why are larger e-readers much more expensive than tablets?

#47

Post by dalbasal »

bunderbunder wrote: post #45
dalbasal wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would the software be bad? The display is the only thing thats different in terms of hardware. Besides that, circa 2000 hardware specs are embedded in £40 devices these days, even ereaders. Word processing has been fine for a long time. No need for bleeding edge performance, or even somewhat sharp.

So the only analogue I know of for a device that was designed for that kind of task, and used a display with those kinds of limitations, was word processing appliances like the Xerox Memorywriter. And I also know that nobody actually liked working on those things; they just put up with them because because, at the time, an actual computer set up to do the same task could easily cost something upward of US$5,000 in to…

Idk how fair that comparison is... The specs will be way better than anything consumer grade in the 80s. These would also be general purpose PCs, in the same sense that a phone is. They'd just be built with certain use cases in mind, like phones.

I think your first point on ereaders being a sufficient platform for iteration and working out kinks is accurate though. Scrolling and mousing we can work around. Typing, no. If the refresh is not fast enough for a nice typing experience... there is no workaround for that.

I still hope someone will make this. I really want one.

Re: Ask HN: Why are larger e-readers much more expensive than tablets?

#48

Post by bananicorn »

mcv wrote: post #40
JansjoFromIkea wrote: post #33

I don't really see the room for demand beyond 8 inches ever growing, largely because most bigger books are just far more complicated to transform to a digital format (e.g. textbooks with multiple sections on each page and tactically positioned images) ...but, Kobo in the last two years seem to have done pretty well with h2o and aura one models. I'd be very interested in seeing how the h2o in particular performs compa…

The reason for bigger screens is not e-book formats, but PDF. I've got tons of A4/letter-sized PDFs that I would love to read on A4-sized e-paper. But e-readers that size are unbelievably expensive. Colour would be nice too, but I guess that's impossible.

>>Colour would be nice too, but I guess that's impossible.

Well, not possible yet[0]. In a few years the technology might be refined enough though. I also heard that the refresh rate is in the range of minutes for now, but let's hope that'll change soon :)

[0]http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160524006209/en/Ink-...

Edit: added quote I was responding to

Re: Ask HN: Why are larger e-readers much more expensive than tablets?

#49

Post by Derbasti »

monochromatic wrote: post #37
dalbasal wrote: post #22

I’m guessing, but I have to imagine production volume has something to do with it. Little e-reader screens for cheap devices like the 6” kindle are where the volume is. In any case, I’m kind of bummed that the e-ink/ereader market has sort of settled on the current state of affairs. What I’d really like to see is good e-ink laptops. First, because of battery life. I also think they could be great “focus machines.” A…

That much latency would be annoying while typing.

White-to-black can be done quickly and without artifacts. Black-to-white and grey-to-grey can be done quickly, but produces artifacts.

Re: Ask HN: Why are larger e-readers much more expensive than tablets?

#50

Post by lj3 »

dalbasal wrote: post #32
donatj wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think they’d sell well at all in laptops. I don’t think the tech is far enough. The ~1 FPS performance and occasionally needing to flash the entire screen to clear artifacts are really poor selling points for productive work. Things like for example scrolling a document or moving a mouse pointer would be quite painful and streaky.

You’re probably right, but are these insurmountable hurdles, or just problems that exist because no one has solved them yet? Someone has to start making them, and they need to improve over a couple of generations. At first, the software would need to navigate around any issues they can’t solve. Surely there’re alternatives to scrolling and mouse pointers, at least as primary UI elements. I mean, is a good email clien…

Dasung has been trying to solve these problems with their Paperlike Pro for a few years now. They have the latency low enough to be usable, but the artifacting continues to be a problem. An even bigger issue is that e-ink has a patent on the technology, which limits how much R&D companies can do with it. After the patent runs out (this year!) we might see more innovation.
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