Astak's new eBook reader is almost as good at reading books as a PDA
Astak's latest e-Book reader, the Mentor, can't beat the Kindle's killer feature of an always on EVDO connection, so it's slicing the form factor and price in half. The Mentor features a five inch tall e-ink screen, 512MB of memory, an SD Card slot and runs on Windows CE 5.0 and reads all the standard formats: .doc, .txt, .pdf, .jpg, .htm and .rtf files, and the price will be an affordable $200.
But here's the problem: while $200 is about right for an eBook reader in the post-Kindle age, that five inch screen is scarcely bigger than the screen of a PDA, which opens up another thought process: hey, why don't you just pick up an old PDA off of eBay, download the phenomenal Pocket PC e-book program µBook and have a backlit, Internet-connected eBook reader in the exact same form factor for the exact same price? A platform, incidentally, that you can ably play X-Com on when you're not reading Proust in PDF?
Three New Astak Mentors Beat One New BeBook [Tech.Blorge via Crave]
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The reason is the e-ink screen. I have an old PDA, and I've read a few ebooks on it, but the monochrome LCD screen is lousy for that. There are shadows behind the letters on the screen and it makes it really hard to read after a while. (Oh, and it's got a 3" screen, nowhere near 5".)
A color screen is better -- which is why I'm happy to use my Samsung P2, which has an even smaller widescreen 3" display -- as an ebook reader for now. Even that gives some eyestrain in the wrong lighting. Depending on the device, many color PDAs are low-resolution or grainy. E-ink is the real "killer" feature - it saves battery life and is far superior for reading.
The 5" version of this runs Linux, while the 6" and 9.7" versions run WinCE. The larger versions have WiFi and touch screens (optionally?).
I'm afraid you have not dissuaded me from getting excited.
You have to pick one of these ebook readers up to appreciate the difference between reading on an LCD and reading on epaper - epaper is significantly higher res (800x600 compared to the old PDA standard of 320x240 or 480x320) and is easy to read in direct sunlight, where LCDs wash out and become unreadable. Then there's the battery life issue; PDAs will last maybe 5 hours on a charge, where ebooks will last long enough for weeks worth of reading. Sure, you can't surf the web or read in the dark the way you can with a PDA, but for people who read a lot of plain text, an ebook is actually a really great device to have.
I'm increasingly tempted to get an eink device - I almost never leave the house without a book and a bundle of printed .pdfs I need to read for work. Being able to carry those and aggregated rss feeds in a neat little device like this would be awesome.
But before I order one I want to see it in real life. Does anyone know where in London, UK I can go to see an e-ink display in real life?
For me, the main advantage of a Pocket PC is the backlight: I love reading in bed in the dark. I've picked up the e-ink devices, and while I'll probably get one at some point, I really will miss the Pocket PC as a way to do that. I've never found reading an eBook on a Pocket PC hard either, though admittedly, I turn the font size way up (although studies show that the less words there are per page, the better your retention rate is, so maybe that's not a bad thing)
I've just discovered that Borders UK recently started selling the Irex Iliad Book reader in a handful of branches. The press release claims thay they're available in the Oxford St and Islington (Angel?) shops; I'll wander along tonight and have a gander.
The Iliad is way outside my budget, but their ink system is very similar to other, cheaper, units'.
I went along and I have to say it's a lovely toy. It's hard to describe what the screen looked like. It did look like sharp and clearly printed text, but printed onto a matte white plastic sheet instead of rougher paper. So it looks a little different from a real book but I think I'd be comfortable reading off its screen for hours on end, something I can't say for any monitor or LCD I've seen so far.
I got chatting to the people who were demoing it to me, and they knew weirdly little about its capabilities. Apparently the whole staff had been given a short presentation on it, but either hadn't been told much or hadn't remembered it. It's a shame, because I'd like to see more book readers sold, to break the catch-22 of "no-one owns one so publishers don't care; publishers don't care so no-one buys them". With the poor marketing I saw for this expensive product, I can't imagine that happening with this launch.
Ok, that's it. I understand all the benefits of E-ink displays, and I love the idea that you can cut the power and it holds the image indefinitely, like real paper. I like that you can actually read it in daylight, like real paper.
HERE IS WHAT I DON'T LIKE, nor understand- why, why, why are e-ink readers always TINY? Is this shit worth it's weight in tellurium-doped platinum or something?
You pay 300$+ for a tiny little display.
Am I missing something here? Is there an A4 sized e-book reader? Even the highly touted Kindle has a screen only 3.6"x4.8" big. Is e-ink so expensive/rare/labor-intensive to make that every reader has to have such a damn small screen??? Or is it people WANT a small size factor?
I read lots of books. Most of those are speciallized industry/technical books, or old books with lots of illustrations. Especially books on watchmaking, with highly detailed, size scaled parts diagrams. I NEED SOMETHING to read them at normal size just to understand parts labels. Why can't someone make an e-reader for those of us who want to read these kinds of B&W books at full size?
The price of the e-paper screens are expensive, at least that is what everyone who should know says, however prices are coming down on these devices. Just this week both Sony and Amazon announced price reductions. Also, one of the reasons these devices are small is because research (by Bookeen) showed there are two markets for these devices 1. As a consumer product - for personal reading chores 2. a professional level device, for the corporate market and professional use. The consumer device is the 5 or 6 inch coat pocket size. The professional models are larger ( from 9 to 14 inches)to accomodate pdf's and textbook sized illustrations in something approaching A4 or 8.5 by 11 inch size. So far the closest thing to a professional model is the Iliad, although other vendors, like Bookeen, are planning to release a larger version at a later date, and Astek will be releasing a 9.7 inch (diagonal) model this Fall.