And A Pack of E-Readers Nipping at Kindle's Heels

In case the growing number of entries into the e-reader sweepstakes is making your head spin, Channelweb has done us the favor of providing a roundup of Kindle's competitors. We've covered some of these, like the iRex, the Foxit eSlick Reader, and the Plastic Logic Watchimacallit (they haven't come up with a name yet).

Another bunch is described in Channelweb's survey. Going into the clubhouse turn Kindle is ahead of Sony by several lengths, then there's the rest of the pack, which includes such notables as the Jinke HanLin eReader, the Bookeen Cybook, the Netronix EB-100, the Fujitsu Frontech FLEPia, the Foxit eSlick, and the Polymer Vision Readius. Don't smirk. Today's tongue-twister could be tomorrow's household name.

The Readius, depicted here, fits into your pocket and sports a screen that unrolls/unfolds. "It offers 30 hours' worth of battery life (about 7,500 page refreshes)," says Channelweb's summary, "a five-inch display and 16 levels of grayscale." The display refreshes in half a second. As civilized humans haven't read from scrolls in about three millennia, the Readius has our vote for most thought-provoking. Any bozo can reinvent the wheel, but it takes a special mentality to reinvent the scroll.

Despite the large field, it's entirely possible that the winner hasn't even stepped into the starting gate. Somewhere in a garage or basement of college dorm, a geek is working on something that might, just might, change the game completely...

RC

An LCD Challenger to ePaper?

Slashgear reports a different approach to ePaper, this one produced by Sharp. It's an eight-color liquid crystal display that can freezes static images after the juice is switched off. Sharp foresees a variety of markets for it such as grocery displays: by hooking the screen up to a Wi-Fi, store managers can readily adjust prices displayed to customers. It could also be competitive with emerging e-book applications once the cost comes down and some other issues, such as temperature distortion and power consumption, are resolved. The technology doesn't sound competitive yet with eInk but given Sharp minds, that could change fast. Read about it.

RC