Reading Ernst Poulsen’s earlier tidbit about e-paper has driven me to speak up. Surprisingly, three times in the last week I’ve heard people mention that the trouble with e-paper is that is it only black and white and that it doesn’t support video.
I think it’s time to define the proper role of e-paper technology.
E-paper is reflective. It doesn’t light up in the dark like your video iPod (or Zune). I don’t know about you, but I don’t really have an interest in watching video on that kind of device when I have many other devices sitting around that already do that job very well.
Couple that with the fact that, in e-paper,you’re moving balls around in a fluid — as opposed to flipping lots of light switches on and off, which is basically what a computer monitor does. This means an e-paper reader which can display about 7,500 pages of text on a full battery charge would be drained in about four minutes just to display B&W video.
…That is, assuming it is even possible to swing around balls in a liquid 30 times per second — a feat I’m not entirely sure will happen in the next decade.
E-paper will play essentially the same role as an iPod: To take media that you normally consume sitting at a computer, and portably enjoy it away from that computer. This media is text. In that sense, it is a real paradigm-breaker. It works in direct sunlight, the batteries last a long time, and the resolution is excellent.
Now, if what you want is a portable slate form-factor device that supports video, audio, color photos, highlighting, and text annotation, youdon’t have to wait another minute for e-paper readers. The device you really want is called the Tablet PC. They can be had for under $1000 (barely more than some e-readers).
Tablet PCs do everything that people seem to want from e-paper and much more. They have wireless Internet connections, and they also serve as a fully functional computer.
So please consider the best uses of each media tool. Reading a book on the bus or at the beach is a perfect task to transfer to an e-paper reader. But if you want a good newspaper experience on a portable device, step up to a Tablet PC.
