Comments on: E-books: The flexible future

First impressions of a new prototype e-book reader from Plastic Logic--one of the first consumer electronics gizmos designed to flex rather than break when bent.

[richard_gerbasi]

This is great. A few comments about the article though...for commuters using mass transportation this is much better than pulling out a laptop to review work related documents. With respect to battery life...how come none of these portable devices ever consider adding a supplemental solar cell. I would think that a device like this which would probably spend a lot of time sitting on a desk open to ambient light would be able to utilize a solar cell to help trickle additional charge to the battery. Even if it isn't significant enough to fully charge quickly, adding incremental charge would help alleviate the surprise burnout from not recharging. I'm not sure of the costs to add such technology but even so the experience it would provide may justify the cost.

[ProDigit]

I guess then the back of the panels needs to be filled with solar panels,or on the edges?
Also, then the reader will have to always lay on it's screen to catch light,since on the edges there's too little space to put enough solar panels to power the display.

The edges probably will be smaller in future versions, making it look more professional.

It is a professional reader, and although no prices have been announced, we can look at the market and estimate this reader to make an entrance of around $800,and probably dropping to $500 in the first 1/2 to 1 year.
With a solar panel on the back you'll be paying easily $250-300 more; the reader will become more heavy,less flexible (since solar panels are made out of silicon (glass)),and will be stained much quicker by greasy fingerprints.

Until they find a way to make flexible solar panels based on plastics, the chance of this being incorporated in the plastic logics reader is very small.

Those are my thoughts on the topic.

[Michael too]

I wasn't so sure about an onscreen keyboard, but how about marrying this with swype?

[Peter N. Glaskowsky]

On the solar-cell question:

For most portable electronics, there's just not enough area or light available to matter. In peak sunlight, a good solar cell can draw maybe 10 mW from each square centimeter. The back of a reader like this could have 20 x 30 cm of solar cells, which adds up to 6 W or so-- way more than you'd need. But... under ordinary conditions, you'd get much less. Indoors, you'd get maybe 1% to 0.1% of that peak figure-- 6 mW to as little as 0.6 mW.

Plus, solar cells add weight and significant cost, and designing the product to survive long periods of exposure to direct sunlight is also difficult and expensive. For almost all users, it's just plain better to put in a little bigger battery, or spend a little more to reduce the size of the AC adapter or reduce the unit's basic power consumption (lower-power design really does cost more).

Now, if there was a market for ebook readers for campers, maybe it would make sense to add a solar cell, especially if there was a power _output_ so the device could recharge other gizmos. But ordinarily, this isn't a good idea.

Oh, I should add that the reason solar-powered watches and calculators make sense is that they generally consume only microwatts of power (due to ultra low-frequency operation, subthreshold switching, etc.), so even with a small solar cell and indoor light, they work just fine.

[-fjtorres-]

I don't see this form factor/feature set as really being successful for business *or* consumer reading. All I see is support for the usual electronic *document* formats not ebooks. Markup and anotation and touchscreens are *document* features, not book-reading features. You folks in the media are going to have to start learning the difference between an electronic document; a fixed format PDF or PPT file and an actual reflowable ebook like LITs, MOBIs, and ePubs. Ot only starts with the metadata and goes from there.
Getting back to this nice bit of vaporware, the real natural market for this gizmo is academia.
Especially the university market; a robust PDF/PPT viewer with annotation capabilities would be a natural for classrooms and as long as the "days" of battery power add up to at least 24 hours students can recharge it daily with little issue.
As to pricing, "competitive" for this product isn't kindlw; its most likely iRex and its kin. And that means pricing in the $700-800 range which is perfectly fine for an academic environment (amortized over 8-10+ semesters of textbook buying its quite reasonable) but unacceptable for consumer reading.
Anybody who thinks a product like this is going to be introduced at Kindle prices for consumer reading is way out of touch with reality; that market in way too small for that price point. At least until the publisher clean up their act on pricing.

[ProDigit]

I agree with the price issue. However,I think the plastic Logics reader will be an item to have for artists,especially if they 'up' the touchscreen for painting. It'll probably find a place with comic book and manga lovers, as well as artists and students in university.

For business I agree. They have laptops for that price, which they can connect to a beamer in case they would want to do a meeting.

Business is a name for probably those businesses that have directors that are gadget freaks and want to impress their employees by giving a lecture using the device once,after which it will be laying in the closet for several months...

[jackdaniels472]

I think most people miss the point of the device.

It looks like it is intention is to replace paper in the office. Being a e-book reader is a secondary, if not ancillary, result of accomplishing this task.

Just think of how many print outs are done in the office.

If I was to bet who is plastronics partner, I would say Xerox. For contracts, this is awsome. Also, think of document that self destructs??? as to not leave a trail that a competitor or espionage can get a hold of?

Easily, this kind device, I would think the price tag for such a device would be around $1k to $2k.

Best,
JD

[kwnewton]

I agree with jackdaniels472 that this is NOT an ebook reader. It is made to fit in a briefcase, whereas my Kindle fits in my purse. However, if eReaders are like PCs, business will drive the market. If you recall, it wasn't word processing that kicked off the PC as a huge product, it was the spreadsheet.

That said, the PL technology is bound to have an impact on devices like the Kindle and the Sony eReader. Assuming PL is planning a smaller, "recreational size" at some future date, Amazon and Sony will have to look into fundamental design and manufacturing changes to compete. IEEE had an article about PL, too: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/feb09/7929

it's a brave new world out there!