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Did you see Sony's second-generation Digital Paper and realize you found your dream e-reader? If so, you'll get to do something about it very soon. Sony has announced that its latest 13.3-inch E Ink tablet (the DPT-RP1) will reach the US sometime in June, when it will sell for the previously announced $700. As mentioned in April, it's really about a lot of incremental improvements: you're most likely to notice the higher resolution (1,650 x 2,200), but the thinner, lighter design and NFC unlocking will also be helpful. The centerpiece remains the ability to read and annotate documents in exceptional detail -- this is aimed at pros and students who need to plow through complex documents like research papers.
It's doubtful that you'll see the new Digital Paper sitting at your local big-box store. You'll likely have to go straight to the source or find a specialized reseller. We've asked Sony if it has plans for mainstream sales and will let you know if it has something to add.
Source: ArsTechnica
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday May 30 2017, @01:54PM (5 children)
The refresh rate is about 0.5 Hz so its not really suitable for most UIs
The "ideal" UI would be the e-ink pretending to be a USB or (wifi)ethernet or whatever interface printer. This is obvious but is never done so there must be a patent holding back progress.
"Print to my letter size e-ink tablet" is almost too obvious as a user interface.
You could run into some fun with shuffling documents and document titles, but I believe that could be worked out eventually.
(Score: 2) by joshuajon on Tuesday May 30 2017, @03:01PM (2 children)
Except ebook formats have lots of bells and whistles that you wouldn't get in that scenario. Like font size adjustment, annotations, search, etc. You can load pdf files on an ereader but they suck to read compared to epub format [wikipedia.org]. I would like to see the tablets presented as just usb mass storage that had documents dumped on it, but until then Calibre [calibre-ebook.com] is pretty good.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday May 30 2017, @03:12PM
Maybe. My printer doesn't have font size adjustment and I'm good with that. I've had an ereader of one kind or another for more than a decade I go way back to the "rocket" ereaders and annotations are just an accidental activation. There tends to be no good UI to access them so they're kinda write only.
I don't see why the printer driver has to care too much about search, although it should be possible to implement given a smart enough "printer" driver talking to the e-ink. Another feature I don't use in e-reader form because the refresh rate tends not to be very good although I'd use that on a desktop.
Agreed Calibre is pretty awesome. A cross between owncloud and calibre running on the device itself as a webpage would be a tolerable "second best" compared to e-ink masquerading as a printer driver.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday May 30 2017, @04:29PM
Pshaw. You want control over YOUR device you paid for with YOUR money to read documents of YOUR choosing? My, aren't we demanding. What else do you want, the fuckin moon?
On a side note, I do something similar with google drive and a tablet. I can save/copy the pdf to drive or print from chrome to drive as a pdf and read it on my phone or tablet.
(Score: 2) by damnbunni on Tuesday May 30 2017, @03:36PM (1 child)
That basically IS the user interface for the Sony e-paper tablets. They only display PDF, so you just print to PDF. They come with what amounts to a printer driver that automatically copies pdfs to the tablet.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday May 30 2017, @04:12PM
That's pretty cool. The above is pretty much what I was thinking of. Ideally "magically" "wirelessly".