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mdlbear...if you work in a paper-based industry. Sony's new e-ink-based book reader, the LIBRIé (article, with picture, here) is a pointer in the right direction. One of my coworkers brought one back to the lab from Japan. Forget about the facts that it's only available in Japan, costs $400, and has a totally-broken DRM system that makes books evaporate in 60 days. Just look at it!
It is about the size of a paperback book -- the article linked above says "126mm x 190mm x 13mm thick and weighing approximately 190g. The 800 x 600 screen resolution is 6-inches of electronic ink plastic film, capable of displaying four shades of gray." It's lighter and thinner than a paperback. The screen resolution is 170 DPI which, with the anti-aliasing available from the 2-bit pixels, is every bit as readable as a paperback.
OK, move forward a couple of years. There's not much electronics in this thing -- comparable to a high-end calculator, maybe. Nowhere near a mobile phone or a PDA. The screen's expensive because it's brand-new, but it's a simpler and more rugged structure than LCD (in part because the substrate is plastic, not glass). Let's be conservative and assume the same scaling law as hard drives -- a price*performan ce half-life of one year. That puts it at $100 in two years, and $25 in four or five, with an A4-sized unit more like $100 at that point.
At that point, you're looking at something that's a lot cheaper than the stack of paper it would replace, and we're not even factoring in the Sony's added features like bookmarking, marginal notes, and audio. If I worked for a company that publishes text on dead trees right now, I'd be quaking in my boots.
It is about the size of a paperback book -- the article linked above says "126mm x 190mm x 13mm thick and weighing approximately 190g. The 800 x 600 screen resolution is 6-inches of electronic ink plastic film, capable of displaying four shades of gray." It's lighter and thinner than a paperback. The screen resolution is 170 DPI which, with the anti-aliasing available from the 2-bit pixels, is every bit as readable as a paperback.
OK, move forward a couple of years. There's not much electronics in this thing -- comparable to a high-end calculator, maybe. Nowhere near a mobile phone or a PDA. The screen's expensive because it's brand-new, but it's a simpler and more rugged structure than LCD (in part because the substrate is plastic, not glass). Let's be conservative and assume the same scaling law as hard drives -- a price*performan ce half-life of one year. That puts it at $100 in two years, and $25 in four or five, with an A4-sized unit more like $100 at that point.
At that point, you're looking at something that's a lot cheaper than the stack of paper it would replace, and we're not even factoring in the Sony's added features like bookmarking, marginal notes, and audio. If I worked for a company that publishes text on dead trees right now, I'd be quaking in my boots.
