I love my Kindle but at this point I wish someone would do something other than use e-ink. At CES I saw 10 different eReaders and they all looked exactly the same - only they didn't have the Kindle Ecosystem. I think everyone's reliance on e-ink to the exclusion of all other technology is going to stagnate the ereader market. This is the only reason, I'd even consider getting an iPad because I like the idea of touch and color eBook reader.
@malexandria1 : There are many new screen technologies in development. A few will start to appear in consumer devices this year but hopefully in only 2011 we will start to see high contrast, fast refreshing, colour e-ink-like screens and in 2012-2013 they will even become affordable. :)
@Tuxie So can I please just have slightly higher contrast, and maybe slightly faster refresh and higher resolution, and still affordable, in 2010? :)
The base technology is fine - it's a book, I'm not three years old, I will happily read it in b/w. (note this does not apply if they start extending the reader to do all sorts of other crap... but so long as reading books is all it does, that's gold. Er. Well, not literally, literally it's still grey... you get the picture.)
E-ink displays look very good, certainly better than backlit monitors for reading and the fundamental zero power usage for long-term display is great... but... I agree with mal that improvement in this technology seems to be very, very slow. (By now I would have expected we'd have higher resolutions, faster refresh, and better contrast.) Disappointing :(
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I love my Kindle but at this point I wish someone would do something other than use e-ink. At CES I saw 10 different eReaders and they all looked exactly the same - only they didn't have the Kindle Ecosystem. I think everyone's reliance on e-ink to the exclusion of all other technology is going to stagnate the ereader market. This is the only reason, I'd even consider getting an iPad because I like the idea of touch and color eBook reader.
@malexandria1 : There are many new screen technologies in development. A few will start to appear in consumer devices this year but hopefully in only 2011 we will start to see high contrast, fast refreshing, colour e-ink-like screens and in 2012-2013 they will even become affordable. :)
@Tuxie So can I please just have slightly higher contrast, and maybe slightly faster refresh and higher resolution, and still affordable, in 2010? :)
The base technology is fine - it's a book, I'm not three years old, I will happily read it in b/w. (note this does not apply if they start extending the reader to do all sorts of other crap... but so long as reading books is all it does, that's gold. Er. Well, not literally, literally it's still grey... you get the picture.)
E-ink displays look very good, certainly better than backlit monitors for reading and the fundamental zero power usage for long-term display is great... but... I agree with mal that improvement in this technology seems to be very, very slow. (By now I would have expected we'd have higher resolutions, faster refresh, and better contrast.) Disappointing :(