Ebookcentric

What is an E-book reader? (or why use a dedicated E-book reader?)

Ever hear of  ‘technology convergence’? It’s all the buzz. Your average mobile ‘smartphone’ can probably provide the functionality of more than a dozen seperate units of yesteryear.  Many young people don’t wear watches these days, well think about it, why would you? It only does one thing! However, what is less well understood is that the argument for converged technology only applies to small pocket size devices. The argument doesn’t necessarily work when we reach devices of tablet size. Sure, they can combine a few functions, which can be useful, but it may be master of none. Its not a good PC (poor I/O, low performance), it’s not a good watch, it’s not a good telephone (too big) etc. etc.

This is where the savvy realize that if you really just want the best device to read books on, the device must provide the most comfortable evironment. For example, a screen that looks like paper, can be easily read in sunlight, does not strain the eyes by glaring emitted light at you all the time (after an entire day in front of a computer we might prefer some kinder way to read a screen). So, Tablets and PC’s can do the job of becoming an e-reader, but for some needs a specialized e-reader provides so many more advantages, including:-

• A reflective display that is kind on the eyes and works in sunlight
• Battery life typically weeks, not hours between recharges
• Light weight and compact design (lighter and thinner than a paperback)
• Can hold your library of thousands of e-books
• Unit design of buttons for easy page-turns and optimised for reading operations.
• Remembers exactly where we last were
• Can download new books without hassle

So when we go out, or go to bed, our smartphones will be near to hand but the e-book reader will be the one item that neither a tablet, a PC, or a phone can do very well.

What is the Difference between an E-Reader and a Tablet / Pad?

Nothing is simple, and certainly the use of the word ‘Tablet’ can cover a range of species from laptop-computers with keyboards and touch-screens, right through to a Smart-phone.

So lets deal with Tablets. A better name for the the sort we are talking about here is ‘Slate’ or even ‘Pad’. This consists of a self-contained portable device with a touchscreen, no physical keyboard and a build in rechargeable battery. In terms of processing power and RAM it is often less than an equivalent notebook computer, but more tham most Smart-phones. A Slate may only have a solid-state storage system (eg inbuilt, and plug-in flash memory) but not necessarily a file-system that allows the user the same kind of flexibility a PC would provide. Slates have a lot in common with smart-phones except they are larger and thus the screen is more usable. There are lots of application programs for slates which can make them appear to do most things a PC can do, but perhaps in a more vendor packaged/controlled way.

E-readers on the other hand share a similar form-factor to Slates, but conceptually are quite different in approach. Being designed primary for e-reading, they are designed for low power operation and high usability. So the battery lasts for weeks, even months, the screen only uses power when its changing (that’s right, the screen stays ‘on’ all the time, even when the device is off). They don’t get hot and can be read in bright ambient light, and don’t glare at the reader. At present the technology only gives monochrome displays with limited grey-scales, but colour displays are on the way. This low-power LCD technology, which presents remarkable clarity and contrast has been called ‘e-ink’ and there are at least two different implementations from major panel manufacturers. However, don’t expect the flash and glitter of highly responsive animated TFT LCD’s with capacitive touch screen overlays. Low power means slow changing and not terribly suitable for animations. Fine for reading, but not much use for playing action games.

The low-power design considerations of e-readers also can spill over into performance issues. Should you wish to view a 20MByte .pdf file, you might have to wait a few seconds for it to be rendered. Worse, because .pdf’s are dynamically constructed (or ‘rendered’) from instructions, scrolling through pages can be slow. Even worse still, certain e-readers have been known to ‘give up’ on complex or large .pdf’s altogether.

However, thankfully most e-book formats are not .pdf. The books themselves come in a variety of specialised formats that allow the e-book reader to maximize the potential to display it well. That said, a 6 or 7 inch ‘e-ink’ display might be fine to read a novel, but could be frustrating when displaying a two or three column article or a technical book containing tables and diagrams. A 9 or 10 inch display  e-reader would do better for these jobs.

So, where does this leave us on e-readers and slates? Clearly compact e-readers win hands-down in the stakes of taking a novel to read around with us in our bag (or actually a whole library). The larger e-readers can better deal with wider formatted texts and can display ‘whole pages’ better, when as in .pdf a whole page is rendered at once, without resorting to zooming and scrolling around. For the more challenging technical .pdfs and books, then there is no getting away from the attributes of speed power and colour offered by slates.

As of right now, E-readers do not have touch screens like Tablets and Smart-Phones; as the new technology of e-ink doesn’t yet support it. But who knows what e-ink technology will be able to do in the future?