Kindle Haters Rejoice! E-reader Screens Coming To Netbooks
If Pixel Qi has its way, the Kindle won’t have much of a leg up on netbooks for readability. The startup plans to implement its e-reader screens on netbooks everywhere.
Mary Lou Jepsen is a former OLPC CTO and is showing off the new Pixel Qi product at Computex Taipei 2009, which falls next week. The netbook screen is called the 2qi, a 10.1-inch device designed for use in “a black-and-white e-ink mode for reading text documents and e-books, and two color modes, designed for use indoors or in bright sunlight, that are more suitable for Web surfing and video playback.”
The E-ink mode turns off the back light to preserve the netbook’s battery life. Many consider e-reader screens essential for avoiding the eye strain of reading documents and online books on a conventional display.
Jepsen says the screens will be on netbooks by the end of this year – perhaps a snazzy holiday gift? Amazon can’t be happy with the development, as its Kindle e-reader will seem quite a bit less differentiated if the only difference between it and netbooks is its costliness, lack of a web browser, and form factor.
Pixel Qi COO John Ryan is proud of the energy efficiency delivered by the 3qi screen:
“What you’re looking at is a screen that’s entirely reflective… It’s just running like e-paper so that it’s running on the ambient light. It’s not fighting the office light , it’s not fighting the sunlight. That makes it better for reading but it also cuts the power consumption. The backlight in the screen is typically the largest power drain in any notebook computer.”
You can say that again. Netbook battery life is a sticking point for many loathe to make the shift from desktop to netbook, and 6-cell batteries are expensive. Will Pixel Qi revolutionize netbooks with its e-reader screens? I hope so!
Via PCWorld.
Amazon Kindle 2 Vs. The Netbook
Comparing netbooks with similar products is inevitable. Netbooks highlight mobility and accessability for a low cost, but they aren’t the only devices to do so – ultramobiles, smartphones, and laptops (to an extent) all emphasize these qualities.
So while it might seem a little strange to compare netbooks with the new Amazon Kindle 2 reading device, you have to admit they have a lot in common. The Kindle 2 is immensely portable, costs $360, and packs a heck of a lot into its tiny frame… just like a netbook. In case you don’t know much about it, the Kindle 2 is a 3G device specified for reading. You can download any of the “230,000 books plus U.S. and international newspapers, magazines, and blogs available” in under 60 seconds, read what you want, and store up to 1,500 items in the 2 GB hard drive.
A recent blog post by Karen DeCoster at LewRockwell.com discussed the Kindle 2 in relationship to netbooks, mentioning a few major problems with Kindle. Firstly, she mentioned that, though the Kindle 2 offers access to all kinds of media, “most of it is modern, junk fiction, or cheeseball non-fiction. There are some serious works of literature or non-fiction available, but it still has to be “popular” before that occurs.” Of course, if you’re a major reader of popular fiction, it’s quite possible that the device would be great for you.
She also mentions that Kindle seriously taxes you for news subscriptions; for example, the New York Times costs $14/month. Kindle can subscribe you to blogs, but mostly only mainstream ones. Unlike on a netbook with a web browser, access to blogs through Kindle can cost you around 1.99/month. It’s not a lot, but the numbers add up.
The $360 price tag isn’t horrible. Unlike nearly all netbook mobile broadband plans, Amazon doesn’t charge Kindle users monthly for 3G. There’s no browser on the device, making most of the point of 3G null, so the inclusion of the feature is only really meant for access to new things to buy.
DeCoster then suggests an alternative: netbooks. The particular model she mentions is the Eee PC 1000H, and we think she’s heading in the right direction. The Kindle device is sleek and pretty, but so are a lot of netbooks. For $360 you can get a lot more than just access to reading materials – you get word processing,the ability to connect with printers and any USB device you’d like, web browsing, and in the near future all kinds of other tasks. A costly device like this doesn’t deliver what it could, and netbooks are the way to go.
Of course, Amazon won’t flinch too much at that pronouncement – they’ve been riding the netbook wave to great benefit lately, with these successes culminating in their new online netbook store.
If you’re still interested, you can get the Amazon Kindle 2 here.
Via LewRockwell.
