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…
I wonder if the $1100 price is for the dev kit and not an actual retail product.
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…
YES! This replaces your legal/letter notepad your drag meeting to meeting, not your Kindle.
Apparently Sony's going to a legal-technology trade show to pitch this to wealthy legal firms.
It does not matter how much it costs now. Simple facts that it is possible and technology to produce it exists are important. Within a few years economy of scale and technology optimizations will bring flexible e-ink at affordable price.
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…
YES! This replaces your legal/letter notepad your drag meeting to meeting, not your Kindle.
If the pad and display was good enough to keep up with handwriting, I would be all over this at work.
I've worked with Laptop or iPad/Keyboard and I can make it work, but nothing beats a pen and folio.
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 a premium price that's partly for early adopters to show off, but when you can read and write Japanese on it (as shown in the product video) the deal is basically made. Lawyers will flock to this in droves, not least because it will be a deductible business expense. The color will be irrelevant to them and the Sony brand will actually be an asset, because they're less concerned about Sony's cool factor than the fact they're in no danger of going out of business.
I know, it's not the most hacker-friendly analysis, but this really is something innovative and will help teh technology towards becoming ubiquitous.
This looks awesome. I love the ability to write on e-ink. But is flexibility a feature or a bug of paper? What is the benefit of a non-rigid e-ink display for these types of use cases?
> But is flexibility a feature or a bug of paper?
This is interesting. I hadn't thought of it from this perspective. If perhaps, down the line of course, you could roll it up like a taquito then you could put it in your pocket.
I don't understand why a flexible e-ink screen is desirable if its cost doesn't approach that of paper – and it's safe to say it won't for a very long time. If it's (relatively) expensive, you want to reuse it, and so it will need a rigid enclosure. Apart from bending around shallow radiuses for gently curved displays and the like, am I having a failure of imagination?
Imagine you already deal with a great amount of paper by necessity. You can put it in a binder, bend it out of the way to get at physical documents behind it, use it as a live index to other things and so on. It would be perfect for lawyers in court, where you don't necessarily wish to have a laptop on the table r a device that you hold up, but you do have to deal with massive amounts of paper and would like an electronic tool that substituted/integrated as seamlessly as possible into that environment.