The Kindle, E-Ink and You.
“Print is dead” is becoming more of a business strategy than a turn of phrase these days. It seems that whenever there is a hiccup, or in this case an epileptic fit, in the economy the publishing industry usually takes a fair bit of damage. It’s a very precarious business and new technology is not only shaking the tightrope, it’s also cutting away the safety net. Of course there are a lot of good reasons that people will continue buying books over their electronic counterparts. The most common one that I hear is that “I just like having the book.”, and I agree. There is something about owning the physical object that nourishes you a bit more than those bland bits and bytes. I love the smell, the design, the weight. However, I am also running out of room in my apartment for people and I find myself buying less books because of it.Enter e-ink. The main points that make e-ink so fantastic is that its actually ink. An e-ink screen is actually made up of little capsules that can represent black or white. By using positive and negative charges to activate the ink you can represent any black and white image. Color e-ink is available also but has it’s draw backs which I will address in a moment.
The physical ink property allow these screens to have a fantastic contrast ratio while consuming very little power. The battery on the Kindle is said to last weeks. The draw back of color screens is that they consume more power and I believe that at this point in their development take up more space so that the devices lose their slim profiles.Personally I don’t see myself owning a kindle. I already lug around a bag full of gadgets for recording, reading and communicating. Usually I carry a small book on me or simply use the free Stanza app in my iPhone to read material from Project Gutenberg. Something like the Touch Book that I wrote about previously seems like a device that I could really get behind. This goes double now that Amazon has released the Kindle application for other devices. Still though, if I am shelling out the cash, I really want the paper.
