You hear a lot about how great E-Ink display is going to be but devices that actually have the E-Ink display are so rare that it is hard to find anything written by somebody who has actually used one.

David Rothman of Teleread writes:

On my Librie, since sold, indoor reading was impossible for me unless it took place near a sunlit window or under a strong lamp.

See that one sentence tells me a lot. I often read right before bed to unwind after a log day - the last thing I want is a bright reading lamp shining in my eyes. In addition most the the lamps in my home have lower wattage bulbs in them to save energy and they are fine for watching TV with but not so great for reading - except with my back-lit Palm PDA or my eBookwise 1150 I don't need to have high wattage bulbs in my lamps.

Teleread reports the ILiad ebook reader might carry a price tag of about US$785! That is a high price for even a wifi equipped dedicated ebook reader considering that for $600 I could buy both a WiFi equipped Palm TX PDA ($299), that would work just great for ebooks, and a new iPod ($299) that will play music and video. Can you guess what I would spend my money on?

Come to think about it - I'm a Mac user, but I would be more likely to buy a Windows tablet computer for $800 - 850, if I could find one before I paid that for just an ebook reader.

TUAW is reporting about new touch inputs patent by Apple for a tablet-like device. One of the comments in that post speculates about a tablet that you could slot an iPod into.

Is this just a screen for watching iPod video, or a device with it's own computing power? Will it just be for games and movies or will it have PDA-like abilities or even full OS X computing power?

One way or another it looks like Apple is considering bringing out some sort of tablet device. Will this present opportunities for ebooks? I suspect it will.

It looks like Apple is developing some sort of tablet device. Here is an article (with illustrations) describing a new patent by Apple for a tablet device for gaming and documents.

It's no secret that the biggest reason Apple switched to the Intel chip from IBM was better support, power and heat issues in portable devices. Now that that transition is on the way I think it is a matter of time before Apple moves beyond the notebook computer into other portable devices that are larger and more capable that an iPod.

The uses for a Apple tablet:

Games - this is well illustrated in the patent (above.)
Video - bigger screen than the iPod. Feature length movies?
Documents - (see below)

The iTunes store has proven that Apple is very good at content delivery. Why couldn't they do for periodicals, newspapers and ebooks what they are doing for music and TV shows now? If the tablet runs OS X then both PDF and eReader software both run on OS X just fine. Additionally, I can also see Apple perhaps, coming up with some sort of proprietary reader for things like newspapers.

This is an exciting development. I think it is just a matter of when Apple releases some sort of tablet not if.

Source: MacDailyNews

There has been a lot of talk about the Sony ebook reader but not as much talk about the ebook store Sony will have to set up to sell DRM encrypted ebooks through. If you buy the Sony device and want to buy current ebooks you are going to be locked into buying from Sony.

To me this means the store and the reader are joined at the hip, and it makes the store almost as important as the reader hardware itself is. This means I personally will be very cautious about buying any device that has this sort of arrangement. Of course it has already been done. The folks at Fictionwise, rolled out their dedicated reader and ebook store eBookwise last year and it has been very good for me as a reader. But one of the big considerations before I bought the eBookwise 1150 reader was Fictionwise's good track record within the industry. They have stayed in business through the tough years after the Internet Bubble burst and have continued to expand. They know the ebook business.

Which leads me to take a wait and see attitude to buying a new reader. I think I am going to see what Fictionwise comes up with as a successor to the EB 1150 reader. I think they are almost going to have to come up with some device. All other things being equal, I would buy something that works with Fictionwise (or eBookwise) ebook stores before I bought anything from Sony or any other newcomer to the ebookseller field. That seems really important to me.

It is always interesting to read what people outside of the ebook publishing industry and readership think about ebooks in general and the new Sony ebook reader in particular. Good discussion at Threadwatch.

On a format note in that thread: there is some interest in the multimedia potential for books should Adobe fuse PDF with Flash.

Photos of the new Sony ebook reader, via Ebook Community. Looks very nice. Also looks expensive.

I spoke earlier about ebook devices due to launch in 2006. The hardware all sounds fancy, but success lies in more than just the hardware - software and ease of buying ebooks, and price; as well as ease of converting my own content to be read on any device is key to my buying any device. It also needs to work well with a Mac.

What I would like to see in a ebook reader.

I currently own an eBookwise1150 and I am quite happy with the size and shape of it. Moreover, I have been pretty happy with the eBookwise store for buying my ebooks. Mac support, while not as good as that given Windows users, is adequate. As much as I like it, I would like a a higher res screen and the technology used in the 1150 is now very old.

eInk and ePaper are all fine and dandy, but I really like a backlit screen for reading ebooks. Both my 1150 and my Palm PDA have backlit screens and I cannot imagine reading without that.

I would love to see eBookwise come out with an under $300 high-res color backlit LCD ebook reader with roughly the same physical form as the 1150. I would especially love it if I could read PDF files on it without having to convert the file and reflow the text. If such a device also had Mac support equal to that of the 1150 I'd probably buy it.

This is pure speculation but I suspect eBookwise/Fictionwise is working on some sort of improved ebook reader. I hope it is close to what I describe in my wish list.

Price is important here - I think the big market in readers is in the cheaper range. I don't think anyone but a few hardcore early adopters will pay $350 for a reader and then turn around and pay the same price or more for an ebook as opposed to a paperback.

eBookwise needs to hit both the $100 - 120 AND the $150 - 300 price points with a range of readers for this to take off, just like there is a wide range of iPods at many different prices.

The following dedicated ebook readers are expected in 2006.

Sony intends to release an ebook reader and bookstore for the US market and is expected to announce the same perhaps as soon as Jan. 4, 2006 as per this BusinessWeek article.

iRex Technologies has the Iliad coming available in April of 2006. It is not clear if the Iliad ebook device will be available in the US or only in Europe.

Jinke Co. will have it's V2 ebook reader available sometime in the first half of 2006.

All 3 of these readers use electronic paper type displays which will show black and white with grey scales at fairly high resolution. Unlike an LCD display epaper is not backlit, so it reading in low light conditions will be about like reading real paper books, but it should be easier to read epaper in sunlight.

While the devices themselves are exciting the devil is in the details of how and where and for what price we can buy books and other reading content for these devices. I am very wary of the Sony reader given their track record of trying to make everything proprietary and crippled by DRM. Also it looks like all of these are going to be over US$300 in price which I think is way too high. I think the big market is in the sub-US$150 price range.

The other question for me is about Apple Mac compatablitiy. We shall see on that.

It will be interesting to see if any established ebook retailers cobrand either the iRex or Jinke devices or develop their own.

If you have questions on these or ebook readers that are already available post them here.

ADDED: MobileRead has a good comparison.

I was all set to buy in November...

When it was first talked about pre-release the Nokia 770 sounded like the perfect ebook reader for me: something that would let me connect to the internet and check news and email, on wi-fi when I took quick breaks while reading.

But after the Nokia 770 got released it got some mixed reviews: some people loved it and others found it had bugs, trouble connecting to the wireless internet access point, not enough memory and some other annoyances. Furthermore, at that time the one ebook reader software for that platform was not yet released. And some say you need sharp eyesight to read with it and, alas, my eyes are not as sharp as they once were.

For me, at the price of the 770, I want it to just work. No excuses. I have already been down the sorta-works-but-its-buggy with my Palm T5 and I'm not going there again for that kind of price.

I might consider it once they work the bugs out, and a OS upgrade is due out in 2006, but for now I think I will wait and see what the new eInk devices that are in the development pipeline, by other companies, look like and also see what eBookwise/Fictionwise comes up with for an improved reader.

Thanks to Teleread for the reminder.

Have questions about ebook reading devices? Ask them here.