Jinke announces 6 and 9-inch SiPix panel e-readers
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted January 9th 2010 8:01AM
posted January 9th 2010 8:01AM
We're certainly not wanting for e-readers this week, although we are definitely wanting for one that's compelling enough to shell out good money for -- which is fine, because company's all over God's green Earth seem to be working overtime to give us one. Take Jinke -- the company's switched from E Ink to SiPix panels for the A6 and A9 readers, both of which are planned to sport multitouch, 16 levels of grayscale, WiFi a/b/g, and optional 3G -- as well as the usual compliment of formats (FB2, EPUB, PDF, most image formats, and MP3). The former is a 6-inch (600 x 800) device with 2GB of storage, an SD slot, and an accelerometer. The Jinke A9 features a 9-inch (1024 x 768) panel, and up to 4GB storage. Both the A6 ($275) and the A9 ($330) should be available in March.
Ha! It was just Kindle, Nook and Sony in 2009 and its just Jan 9 of 2010 and we're already flooded with new eReaders (and PMPs and Tablets). All I'm waiting for is the iSlate/Jan 26! :)
Nice, but people will still buy Sony and Amazon.
The PMP shut down many a music store, will the e-reader mean the same for the bookshop?
@TacticalTimbo
Yup, as time goes on, for the most part, providing more people buy eReaders, those corner book stores should be closing down. Unless those stores are carrying some older, hard to find, out of date books, why bother to keep them. Of course, there'll always be those that grew up with paper books and just love the smell and feel of real paper. They'll refuse to read books that are digitized because they're the purists. There will still be those that have to have real books on their coffee tables or thousands of real books in their dens just to show off. It would be sacrilege for some wealthy guy to just have one eReader with the knowledge of hundreds of books when he can have shelves stacked with books that are first issues or rare copies or whatever.
I think the publishing industry should digitize everything they can get their hands on. To hell with real books, they get dusty and moldy and cause allergies. Give me the entire public library on a hard drive so I can go through a bunch of books whenever I want without leaving the house. A 1TB drive can replace thousands of books and I'm all for it.
@Average White Boy
Don't forget to mention that most people like to own their books. That crap Amazon pulled with 1984 WILL happen again. That's something that can't happen with tangible books. It saddens me to see that we're moving into an age when you don't own content, but are licensing it.
@Brianj
Plus you'll loke smarter with shelves full of books.
Why an accelerometer? No HDD to park if violently moved about during operation, perhaps it's to support E-newspapers to that we can interactively share our opinion of political news!! :-)
@breeman: Probably for switching between landscape and portrait mode.
Sorry.....just don't see these things lasting a whole lot longer once lean and mean tablet's start hitting the scene at price points the same as and lower then these things.
Just my opinion.
@Showbiz I thought about that, and it might eventually be the case. However with those bright, full colour screens and beefier hardware battery life will be a lot shorter that with an e-reader; maybe it won't matter when batt tech moves on (whenever that is). Also the e-readers screen is designed to be easier on the eyes for long reads.
@Showbiz I see e-readers replacing tablets, or at least what we understand tablets to be. Currently what defines an e-reader is the e-ink display. It has to be something easy on the eyes with no backlight. Whether it can do stuff other than read books is not what defines something as an e-reader. So as the display technology advances and they get faster screen draws and color, they will add more features to the readers. So eventually it will be tablet like multimedia displays with e-ink that are fast enough to display video, etc.
I personally don't ever see illuminated slates replacing e-readers. e-readers have been developed specifically because backlit LCD was inadequate to read on. In other words people have been shunning LCD as inadequate to move over to e-ink (even with all it's shortcomings), while there are a lot of techy folks who seem to think it is the e-ink that is inadequate to LCD.
Great. And I thought the Joo Joo tablet was a bad name.
Please tell me this wasn't made in China.
*facepalm
@Wesscoast
天啊。。 到底是中国公司耶～～～ 津科
Jinkees!
A company's found company in its company's companies.
There, isn't there going to be an e book reader priced below $150?