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Sony releases the Holy Grail: A flexible e-ink screen

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Re: Sony releases the Holy Grail: A flexible e-ink screen

#21

Post by thorntonbf »

Zikes wrote: post #3
logfromblammo wrote: post #2

At $8.95 apiece, $1100 can buy you 122 mass-market paperbacks. I certainly hope that someone can bring that retail price down a fair chunk, or this tech is not going far.

Many new technologies are prohibitively expensive, but we have to start somewhere.

Can we really call this new technology? I get it that it's a new iteration of eInk technology, but it doesn't seem that Sony is really taking advantage of any of the advances with this implementation. As much as I really want to get excited about this, I just don't see anything here that really does it for me.

As much as I think Amazon needs some competition, I'd love to see them take a swing at this concept with a Kindle - "Technical Edition". While I'd love to see some openness and extensibility via an SDK, I think if you get the price point right, it doesn't much matter. A sub $300 A4 or Letter sized device with the ability to read major document formats, annotate notes and maybe offer a digital note taking solution would be a dream.

But, at $1,100 this is nothing but a interesting but wholly irrelevant spectacle from a company that is rapidly trending in the same direction.

Re: Sony releases the Holy Grail: A flexible e-ink screen

#23

Post by jboggan »

scarmig wrote: post #19

Attach it to a keyboard. Screen is big enough to code at the beach. Isn't what I wanted Mirasol to be, but looks like a damn fine refinement of e-ink.

I really, really want a beach laptop. The ultimate accessory for Silicon Beach. I've looked into rigging up my own with leftover Pixel Qi demo screens and older netbooks but I haven't had the time. Someone please liberate us from coding indoors!

Re: Sony releases the Holy Grail: A flexible e-ink screen

#25

Post by logfromblammo »

necubi wrote: post #11
logfromblammo wrote: post #2

At $8.95 apiece, $1100 can buy you 122 mass-market paperbacks. I certainly hope that someone can bring that retail price down a fair chunk, or this tech is not going far.

This is not meant for reading paperbacks. A kindle paperwhite, at $120, is a far better choice for that. This is for reading and annotating documents, and generally replacing paper in an office or academic setting. Given then number of research papers I've printed out (thousands and thousands of pages), I can see a huge use for this. It may still not be cost effective, but is still much more environmentally friendly…

For research papers... maybe 50 pages including technical graphics? With a monochrome laser printer, we'll give a very high estimate of $0.10 per page, or $5 per paper. That's still 220 papers to break even, at least, and only one person can use it at a time, unlike the printer, which can be shared for the whole office.

My home printer is over 10 years old, and I still don't think I have spent more than $800 on it during that time, including consumables.

And I would recommend the Kobo Glo/Aura over the Paperwhite for paperbacks. The MicroSD card slot alone is worth it.

Re: Sony releases the Holy Grail: A flexible e-ink screen

#26

Post by shawn-furyan »

kliao wrote: post #10

wait, this device is literally flexible as in bendable like paper? that's what the article makes it sound like, but it doesn't seem to be true based on the product page: http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/cat-digitalpaper/cat-digitalpap...

I think that it's the display that's flexible, not the device. I suppose that you could potentially do a Chromecast style computer in a kind of bump enclosure at the bottom of the back of the display to retain flexibility (though I don't think that there's enough detail to determine if there are other issues with such an approach). They however seem to be using a traditional rigid enclosure for the prototype.

Re: Sony releases the Holy Grail: A flexible e-ink screen

#27

Post by tenfingers »

I actually want/need a digital sketchpad, and while I do read/annotate PDFs, this is not what I would do the majority of the time.

If this device would be hackable (run linux on it), I would find so many use cases for it that I could justify the price in a heartbeat.

Somehow, being a device from Sony, I expect this reader to be a piece of junk software-wise, to the point that I wouldn't be surprised that you need to convert the PDF into something else and use custom clients just to exchange files.

I hope I will be wrong.

Re: Sony releases the Holy Grail: A flexible e-ink screen

#29

Post by mdip »

As I've been reading the coverage of this product throughout the day, the price seems to be the biggest drawback everyone focuses on, and I agree that $1100 is overpriced for what this product is offering. I got the sense from several articles that $1100 would be way overpriced for any e-reader.

Because of the huge number of PDF files in larger paper sizes that I have, I'd happily pay $1500 for this if in addition to it's features it: 1. wasn't made by Sony, 2. was color (to about early 1990s Newspaper quality), 3. was unlocked (different OS could be installed, etc)

Re: Sony releases the Holy Grail: A flexible e-ink screen

#30

Post by breischl »

logfromblammo wrote: post #25
necubi wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not meant for reading paperbacks. A kindle paperwhite, at $120, is a far better choice for that. This is for reading and annotating documents, and generally replacing paper in an office or academic setting. Given then number of research papers I've printed out (thousands and thousands of pages), I can see a huge use for this. It may still not be cost effective, but is still much more environmentally friendly…

For research papers... maybe 50 pages including technical graphics? With a monochrome laser printer, we'll give a very high estimate of $0.10 per page, or $5 per paper. That's still 220 papers to break even, at least, and only one person can use it at a time, unlike the printer, which can be shared for the whole office. My home printer is over 10 years old, and I still don't think I have spent more than $800 on it du…

Fine, but you're leaving out the cost of the printer, too. And the shelves to put all the papers on, and the cost to dispose of (or recycle) them when you're done with them.
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