Why is e-ink still so bad and still so expensive?

Why is e-ink still so bad and still so expensive?

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>bad
>looks almost identical to text on a paper
>expensive
>$40 for a decent e-reader
??

unless your sight is seriously impared and you are dirt poor, it's neither

I have an old 300 dpi paperwhite and it’s pretty good. Text definition is fantastic. If they find a way to make the background really as white as paper, then it will rock. Not sure how the current gen ereaders are

because pdf's don't support dynamic layouts and there's no 8.5x11" readers

Because you wear glasses and you are poor.

And why are ereaders available for purchase in so few places?

People don’t read many books. They are naturally less popular than tablets. Besides tablets are so popular in part due to parents buying them for their kids. And what kid will ever want an ereader?

Needs a external input for hdmi/displayport or vga and a VESA compliant mount/stand.

Epaper/Eink monitors WHENN??

kindle dx 9.7 inch. ive read like four textbooks on this thing so far.

its pretty slow at flipping but ok for casual informational reading

I bought a Nook Glowlight 3 to avoid Amazon's bullshit and though it has thicc bezels I've read far more often since I've gotten it. It serves its purpose. You could probably find better e-readers for cheaper though

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u wut mate!?

>thicc bezels
more like reading a book from a window

I went to the store the other week and saw a Nook. That shit's amazing, what drugs are you on?

I don't give a shit about e-readers, but I DO want an e-ink screen like the Nook, in 13.3" so that I can replace a laptop display with it.

Imagine the fucking battery life. And you could take it outside in DIRECT SUNLIGHT and it would look even better

Unfortunately "fast" and "color" are the two things that eink sucks at due to being physical pixel flipping rather than signal level changed. I'd kill for something like a Thinkpad x61 with a color 60fps eink display, modern ULV guts, and 20 hours of battery.

>I DO want an e-ink screen like the Nook, in 13.3"
here ya go bud sony.com/electronics/digital-paper-notepad

This

patents.
i think theyre expiring soon, so there will be better things coming out after.

The onyx boox max2 has HDMI input so you can use it as a monitor. The carta panel has good refresh rates for eink too.

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Fpbp

Literally ought to be the future of computing. Color a shit. Eink would make the eye strain epidemic go away overnight.

$800

Do you own one, what formats does it accept? Is it like the Sony one that only reads pdf files?

I might buy one, but have to be sure before blowing that money on a Chinese brand I know nothing about.

All ink is expensive, when was the last time you bought toner?

Toner isn't ink moron

Don't own one, have used one though. It's android so you can run and read anything, it even has a headphone jack for media playback. Also Onyx is primarily Russian.

EINK LAPTOPS THAT ARENT SHIT WHEN???

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i fail to see the bait

I don't care about color though

It looks like the panel it uses is the ES133TT2
I can't find any in stock anywhere though

Carta panels are hard to find. Controllers for them are even harder to find.

You must be the moron then

The better question to ask is, despite all the claims in this thread suggesting eink and ereaders are something neat, why ereaders and eink managed to make a massive bump in the industry for a couple years (up at like 70% of all book sales, if I'm not mistaken) but has now fallen off almost entirely to less than 20% of all tablet and book sales?

The tech is neat, but people don't like it. In other words, despite some evidence suggesting this isn't the case, eink and ereaders are demonstrably a faddish meme.

"why should I read PDFs on a dedicated tablet when I can just do it on my phone or laptop?"
As opposed to
"why shouldn't I use an e-paper laptop if the only thing I care about is having a week-long screen-on battery life?"

The eink (+ secondary goods/services) market has been pretty shitty due to shitty business practices. Everything is expensive and loaded with DRM. Why pay $10 for an ebook when the real thing costs the same or less and doesn't need WiFi to read? Add on the price fixing, heavily patented hardware and otherwise anticompetitive nonsense and you end up with an expensive, low quality market that nobody buys into, turning a niche market into a dead market.

I really want a decent price Linux, long battery laptop with an e-ink screen for computing/developing.

sage

>"Sony's smaller, cheaper Digital Paper tablet reaches the US"
>$600

So why should this cost the same as an iPad Pro?

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I got a Kindle 8 for Christmas. After hassling the representative at Amazon to remove offers for free, I still dislike the fact that I can't grip the book by any other side than the bottom.
Thicc bezels would've made my experience a litle bit better.

>fast
>color
Weren't these things made to read books? A thing where you spend a non-trivial amount of time on one page?

E-readers last for a while and tech hasn't moved anywhere in past years. My mother still uses Kindle 3 and aside from the battery, it still works the same way as it did day 1. I would pay good dosh for a good color e-reader for comics and manga.

> eink and ereaders are demonstrably a faddish meme
I disagree. Find it pleasurable to read my Paperwhite 2015.

Problem is that Amazon are assholes. Prices for books are ridiculous, DRM and country-lock are bullshit, digitalization of some books is atrocious. And those faggots removed the free internet and constrained it to Wikipedia and Google translate.

Once I started simply pirating my books, it became a pleasure. Also, jailbreak and additional format support were neat.

I'd gladly buy another one if it has better display and not riddled with DRM bullshit.

/thread

>>$40 for a decent e-reader
Such as?

>reading books

Grandpa.

Eink on non-book formats has a stupidly slow refresh rate and that's fine for lots of cases but they only make devices for niche shit and the most possible general cases.

patents
can't wait when they expire, there are so many cool uses for e-ink

Is it hard to go around all that Amazon lock down?
Then is it just drag and drop a pdf?
I have a shitload of medical books and I wonder if it's worthwhile reading on a kindle instead of printing them or reading at a tablet

>Is it hard to go around all that Amazon lock down?
Depends on a version. Newer ones might not be broken without hardware intervention.
>Then is it just drag and drop a pdf?
It's that way from the very start for supported formats. My Paperwhite actually works just like a thumb drive when connected to the PC. No MTP bullshit.
>I have a shitload of medical books and I wonder if it's worthwhile reading on a kindle instead of printing them or reading at a tablet
You can always convert them into recognized format and simply dump into the "documents" folder on your device. I can't remember the name right now (something like "Calibre") but there is a great free program that works on every platform and allows you to convert e-literature.

Reading PDF is not great though. Larger ones can make the reader crash and it's not very convenient overall (at least they kinda fixed terrible contrast).

For some it's pretty good so, such as picrel.

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These guys get it. It's comfy, affordable, purpose-built technology that is plagued by shitty make-a-quick-buck business practices and atrocious DRM.

All you want out of these things is good screen contrast/brightness, sturdy-ish design, compatibility with most formats (or ability to convert and drag/drop), great battery life and optional SIM card slot for on-the-go internet (with appropriate website conversion). It's not like these are FTL-age functions, jailbroken Kindles can do most of these.

I understand that the DRM is in place due to piracy but "hurrdurr Kindle store" and country lock is not the way to go.

youtube.com/watch?v=9aEYT79-vuo

There's a new sheriff in town

>Kindle is

Just buy a tablet lol

Just learn reading comprehension lol

I would have gotten one but I mostly read pdf textbooks

>800 dollars
Wew. That's a lot of money for a manga reading monitor.

Here's an example of it suddenly deciding that Missy is an issue.

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>Works like a flash drive
Is there a specific setting for this? Fucking wish mine worked like this.

>Is there a specific setting for this?
I don't think so.
Did they fuck it up in newer versions?

I'll need to check when I get home. I have used primarily calibre to transfer everything so far, perhaps I've been an idiot and just not missed the option to simply drag and drop files onto the device.

Basic kindle

Is it good for manga? Also is it a botnet?

I have a Kindle Oasis and use it with Calibre. It's very nice. If I get an EPUB-File I convert it with Calibre to AZW and transfer on the Kindle. I use a tablet for PDFs.

Go back to /a/ and as long as you don't connect it to the internet and use calibre it should be fije

The real problem is that full page-format e-ink PDF readers are so heckin' expensive. Things have improved a little bit since the sony digital paper was the only thing on the market, but all we have now is DPT S-1, Onyx boox max, and goodereader 13.3, which are all still around $700. I figure such a device could be sold for

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Yes. For that it's wonderful.

but think of how much nicer manga-reading would be, not to mention reading scientific papers. I could finally read scientific papers outside, under a tree. Not having to keep a stack of ratty, printed papers around or read them inside off my laptop would be revolutionary for me.

literally more useful than iPad pro. The only trouble is that it fucking requires proprietary software on your laptop to even connect the DPT S-1 to wifi. See video below:
youtube.com/watch?v=Zp6ZJxBiaZg&t=2s

I've been trying to decide between Onyx and goodereader. I was leaning towards goodereader, but HDMI does make a big difference. What are your thoughts on the boox max?

>freewrite

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lolol SAME xD

>reading pdfs on a tablet
Enjoy your glasses in 5 years

>Not knowing what free writing is

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The software is hipster shit, the hardware is pretty neat though.

The Boox Max2 is better. Better display panel, better digitizer, bigger battery, newer android version, more RAM, more internal storage, faster cpu.

Haven't touched my reader in months, I just read everything on my S8 with moon+

Because Digital paper is a new tech.
Its basically a compete between horrid Norwegian hipsters(remarkable) and the one Sony got, and other niche brand.

Its basically something that might become common in another 20-30 years, but as of now, its super niche, intended for professionals who basically have to resort to a carry bag just for notebooks and manuals.
So its either get the job to shell out cash for one, or stare at the early adopters in jealousy over fancy tech

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What are you talking about? Eink has been around well over a decade and is hardly niche. Displaying a pdf on one is entirely a software problem that isnt particularly complicated with open source pdf renderers.

What eink can do
And what eink does do now, is entirely different things user.
Its like how basic shit like CRM and digitalization didn't hit a lot of enterprises until at the least the mid 2000s, when they could have done most of it in the late 80s.
Just like how Thin clients are cockblocked badly by how Windows operates, and essentially had a entire dead decade.

You are also confusing Digital Paper with Eink, and forgetting the software mess of allowing a user to have a paint layer per page, per pdf, freely used.
Eink is currently at the stage where if a national state agency rushed out their own custom eink tablet, they could replace all their usage of school books with digital paper within a few years.
But they could not replace notebooks yet, because Digital Paper, the hand penmanship ON eink, still has many logistical and technological hurdles that need to be powered trough. And that includes getting past the margin price of Digital Paper as a niche product, vs €1 sketchbooks.

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They would have to seriously up the refresh rate and fix ghosting for that because typing with current levels of e-ink latency would be unbearable. But yeah, futuristic e-ink monitors would be god tier.

It's pretty obvious what happened when you look at the timeline. Smartphones and tablets became ubiquitous, and normies stuck to using them as on-the-go reading devices instead of getting an e-reader.

Sorry. This is how it works. It cannot be fixed since drawing on e-ink is about powering powder inside cells, it will never be as fast as LCD.
And it in fact uses quite a lot of power to do that. That is, watching video on e-ink would take more energy than watching on LCD, so no-one would implement it in general purpose devices such as smartphones.

If you wanna read... use a fucking e-reader, you dont need the rest of the laptop to read.

b8, but... Books look fantastic, cheaper. I paid 100 for mine several years ago and that's still cheap as FUCK today.

Is there an e-reader general thread? Or should I ask here?

Is this an digital paper display? I'd love manga on something like this if I could buy it.

I think what you want is an old fashioned LCD without a backlight. Like a gameboy without taking energy to emit light they can be pretty efficient. Like digital watches that are powered for years on a tiny battery.

no epub support

well then convert the epub with calibre
problem solved

na just buy a shit thinkpad

It is really great for the use case of looking at static text, for everything else it is absolutely awful, but that is the entire point of an e-reader.

I like my 80 dollar Kobo it supports any format you throw at it and even has a built in browser that I have yet to use. It's so simple too I just plug it in and drag n drop to folder and it scans and updates on the device. Looks just like a book and is a pleasure to read on. No joke I've used it about 5 hours a week and have had it for a month and since I've had it I've only charged it for a total of an hour only cause I plugged it in to move books to it. eink.com/product.html?type=productdetail&id=27 I was looking into hacking together a laptop since most of battery drain is from the screen I thought I could create a laptop that could last a week with a Weak efficient board just enough to run Linux. I like this screen size IDC if it's big. But choosing a board is outa the question cause their controller is running Linux with WiFi Bluetooth USB SD slot, is 12v 5 amps a lot? What's a reasonable sized battery I can hook to it and what would the battery life look like? I feel like I fucked up cause like a 40000 mAh battery is like 2 hours with this.

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>horrid Norwegian hipsters(remarkable)
The company does not inspire confidence, but you can load third-party software and it looks like porting existing programs has become a lot easier.
github.com/canselcik/libremarkable

You can buy it cheap used. Normies got screwed.

I have one but terrible battery life. Especially on linux.

So if i buy lets say the new paperwhite from amazon, can i just download an epub convert it and put it on the device?
Or i need to bypass some sort of DRM?

Good for basic bitch books.

Hard for books with translations/footnotes/heavily used appendix.

Honestly they need to get a lot better.

I have an Oasis and it's just drag and drop after conversion.

I have a Kindle 4, you just plug it in via usb and it works as a pen drive, as long as you use mobi or pdf and drag it to the right directory it instantly sees it.

Kinda upset that my Kindle 2 doesn't let me put manga on it.
But oh well, I got it for $15 on Crag's List

What do you mean that it doesn't let you put manga on it? Are you converting it to mobi?