E-readers and critical mass discussion

[jefferiestubes8]

E-Readers have come a long way in 5 years.

$500. down to $100. for Eink monochrome E-Readers.

on Black Friday one of the top 3 E-Readers is being priced at $100.

a 33 percent drop on the price of a Barnes & Noble Nook Wi-Fi to $100.

http://www.electronista.com/articles/10/11/12/best.buy.black.friday.to.have.big.mac.deals.more/

This blog predicted it:

You can think of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos as the Crazy Eddie of the e-book business: Every time a rival gets close to the Kindle's prices, Bezos goes even lower. He will not be undersold!

Why e-readers will soon cost less than $100.
http://www.slate.com/id/2263787/
and wherever Barnes & Noble goes Amazon.com will follow...

monochrome screens are not the end of it.
Barnes & Noble's Nook Color uses an LCD screen not EInk technology which is harder on the eyes and costs $249.
but the Nook Color will also be able to view

e-books, magazines from Conde Nast and Hearst and PDFs. Using Quickoffice software, you can also view Microsoft Office files including Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

The Nook Color is a read-only device

The color screen enables a new library of “Nook Kids” children books, full-color magazine and newspaper subscriptions, and video playback if you’re in the mood.

http://printceo.com/2010/11/color-nook-ebook-or-half-a-tablet
At 249. still on the expensive side and the LCD screen gives eye strain when reading.

Amazon.com's Kindle says it will soon start selling screens that show colors -- not just the shades of gray users have had until now.

E Ink says the new technology can show thousands of colors, along with 16 shades of gray.

http://www.digtriad.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=150448&catid=176


Is this where the tipping point is? children's books in color & eventually color textbooks?

Next summer, Isabella will introduce the Fable, a combination tablet computer and e-book reader aimed at children.

full-color, 7-inch touchscreen

Nov.8, 2010
Color eBook Tablet For Kids: Fable Coming Soon

Let's see what happens with color E Ink technology in the next 12-18 montns.

This week the NY Times
said it

would publish e-book best-seller lists in fiction and nonfiction beginning early next year

.
Times Will Rank E-Book Best Sellers
November 10,2010

They are really reaching prices now where people can get them for $100. which is a magic number for consumer electronics. Look at DVD players for example from the last 13 years.

Let's discuss E-Readers & E-Books specifically and not tablet computers such as iPad, Samsung Galaxy Tab, Dell Streak, etc. which are all multipurpose tablets and not E-Readers with Eink technology that are easy on the eyes (non-fatiguing) and very low power consumption.

E-Readers for reading EBooks, Emagazines, ENewspapers.

 

[Goliath]

I'm inching toward buying an e-reader--mostly because I just don't have any more space for printed books, either in my office, or at home. A price of less than 100 dollars definitely makes them more attractive. I can't say I care all that much about colour, though.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Yeah, if I need color I've got a computer. I don't have an ebook reader yet but with these prices I could see myself having one in the next year or so.

 

[Shurik]

Amazon Kindle is the best gadget I've ever bought.

 

[J.T.B.]

I'm inching toward buying an e-reader--mostly because I just don't have any more space for printed books, either in my office, or at home. A price of less than 100 dollars definitely makes them more attractive. I can't say I care all that much about colour, though.

The space issue was a big factor in me getting one (Kindle 2) c. 18 months ago. I mostly use it for stuff I would buy in paperback, I still prefer to buy reference books and non-fiction I will be revisiting in hardcover (second hand, if possible). New titles were a lot better deal when I first got it, though, as they were almost all $9.99, but since the iPad came out the prices have gone up quite a bit, to the point they are close to the hardcover sale price. Which bugs me, because the production and distribution costs are so much less. Hopefully competition will drive them down again. It doesn't upset me too much personally, though, because I buy a lot of 99-cent public domain classics and collections.

I am a person who will read for hours at a stretch (when I am lucky enough to find time), and I find I much prefer the e-ink screen for prolonged reading. I have tried my brother-in-law's iPad, and it's very pretty but not as eye-friendly. The gray-and-black screen is kind of blah-looking, but so are most paperback pages and it doesn't bother me at all. Battery life has been outstanding.

I never thought much of the text-to-speech feature as it sounds really mechanical, but I recently tried it for an extended period while I was making dinner, and I found I quickly got used to the voice and even its sometimes off pronunciations. The feature is not available for all titles, I assume so as not to encroach on the audiobook market.

Anyway, I have been really happy with the Kindle so far, though I would rather have paid $70 less for it, but oh well.

--Justin

 

[Gaith]

I was at a Barnes and Noble the other day, tried a Nook, and was not impressed. The lower LCD color screen navigates very slowly across web pages, effectively negating that feature's main advantage. And I couldn't figure out if the e-ink display could be rotated for landscape browsing, but then I'm not sure if Kindles can do that either.

I'd love a Kindle DX, but since those are still some years away from hitting $100, I'll probably have to settle for one of the new Kindles sometime in the next year or so.

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

And I couldn't figure out if the e-ink display could be rotated for landscape browsing, but then I'm not sure if Kindles can do that either.

The Kindle does allow for text to be flipped for landscape reading. I got a Kindle a couple of months ago having waited for the price to come down to a range I was comfortable with - great gadget.

 

[J.T.B.]

And I couldn't figure out if the e-ink display could be rotated for landscape browsing, but then I'm not sure if Kindles can do that either.

The Kindle display can be rotated 90 degrees either way, or 180 degrees though I'm not sure how that would be useful.

--Justin

 

[Kemaiku]

I just bough an Amazon Kindle about a month ago and I'm happy with the model I have, won't be swtiching it anytime soon.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I like my iPad as an e-reader. I get all my books via iBooks now.

 

[Professor Zoom]

I'm a Nook fan myself. I don't have the same issues that Gaith does with the LCD screen, but then, I'm interested in using it as a web browser.

I really like it. Plenty of free books on the web, so I haven't even bought anything yet.

AND, when I go to a Barnes and Noble store, I can read an ebook for free 1 hour each day, so I can really sample, or hell, finish the whole thing.

AND, when I go to the store, sometimes they have free books for download...

Those are some of the reasons I chose it.

 

[cultcross]

I'm ridiculously pleased with my Kindle, I'm very glad I bought it. The screen is perfect for reading off, exactly like paper and no angle issues, it's the right size and weight for easy reading, and the page turning is set-up to be natural and fast.
Plus, the big draw of e-books in general - the availability of public domain stuff for free online that can then be read on an e-paper screen. I was reading A Christmas Carol only this morning. Still a favourite.

 

[Shurik]

I'm ridiculously pleased with my Kindle, I'm very glad I bought it. The screen is perfect for easy reading off, it's the right size and weight for easy reading, and the page turning is set-up to be natural and fast.
Plus, the big draw of e-books in general - the ability of public domain stuff for free online that can then be read on an e-paper screen. I was reading A Christmas Carol only this morning. Still a favourite.

Another great thing about Kindle is that you can send any PDF file to a special e-mail Amazon gives you when you buy Kindle and in a few minutes you get the file transferred to Kindle format. Works great on text PDFs ...

 

[Professor Zoom]

I'm ridiculously pleased with my Kindle, I'm very glad I bought it. The screen is perfect for easy reading off, it's the right size and weight for easy reading, and the page turning is set-up to be natural and fast.
Plus, the big draw of e-books in general - the ability of public domain stuff for free online that can then be read on an e-paper screen. I was reading A Christmas Carol only this morning. Still a favourite.

Another great thing about Kindle is that you can send any PDF file to a special e-mail Amazon gives you when you buy Kindle and in a few minutes you get the file transferred to Kindle format. Works great on text PDFs ...

to plug the Nook: You don't have to convert the PDF for the Nook. It does PDF and epub, and I think a few others. But, no conversion needed.

 

[cultcross]

well the kindle can do PDFs native too, in terms of displaying them, but what the email conversion does is turn it into a Kindle specific file.

 

[Shurik]

Kindle can handle PDFs, you just can't change the fonts in them like in regular text file.

 

[Snaploud]

I love my Kindle. It's been hugely helpful for collecting and reading long book series, and it gives me access to all of my dad's kindle files. My dad has similar tastes in books, and, prior to the kindle, it was always a pain trying to find older books in a series he had already purchased.

I don't understand why anybody would want the NookColor. It seemed like just a smaller ipad, and now I'm learning that it's only usable for reading (despite the relatively high price)

And I couldn't figure out if the e-ink display could be rotated for landscape browsing, but then I'm not sure if Kindles can do that either.

The Kindle display can be rotated 90 degrees either way, or 180 degrees though I'm not sure how that would be useful.

--Justin

I assume it would be most useful for situations in which a document was scanned into a pdf upside-down.

 

[Pindar]

I just got a Kindle 3, after my last holiday the books I took used up a ridiculous amount of space so I got one now they are cheap.

E-ink is fantastic, much nicer than reading from an lcd screen and no eye strain.

Plus my bookshelves are over-flowing the space saving is a huge benefit.

 

[OmahaStar]

For Christmas last year, I asked everyone around not to get me regular gifts, but to do gift cards to Barnes & Noble instead. I used those (stacking them, along with a few I'd bought) to buy the Nook, in January I believe.

It is wonderful. Sure, I can surf the web with it, but I have a computer for that. I want it specifically to read from, and it's perfect for what I want and need. I have well in excess of a thousand books on it right now, and (for me) it's better than reading from a paper book. It's easier to use, page turning is done with a finger swipe (convenient for holding with one hand while having lunch), and I have an entire library with me at any given time.

 

[Professor Zoom]

I just realized, no one has come into this thread yet to call e-readers an abomination and that we'll lose the e-books in some fashion.

Perhaps the tide is turning.