The Asus Eee-Reader: I don’t get it
By Joe Wikert
Have you seen the leaked photos of the upcoming Asus Eee-Reader? If you missed it, here’s a short article on CNET with a picture. OK, I get the lower price. Sure, that’s something the market is clamoring for as the Kindles, Sony Readers, etc., are destined to be nothing more than nichey luxuries as long as they’re $300+.
But what’s with the two-panel hinged display? Why take a relic of the print book and force it into an e-reader? Think about it. There’s not a single time in the past year where I’ve said, "gee, I really wish this Kindle had a second display that hinged onto this one." Never.
Why? First of all, I can only read one screen at a time. OK, things get more interesting when you can have full color with hi-res so that images pop. Um, that’s not the current state of the Kindle (or Sony) technology though, is it? So a second screen is just there, waiting for me to get to it. Oh, and btw, it costs more to make. And since this new device won’t be using E Ink display technologies, it’s basically a pair of LCD screens that suck more juice from the battery. What’s there to like?
They talk about using the second screen as a virtual keyboard. Anyone who owns an iPhone will tell you the thing they like least about it is the virtual keyboard. Heck, even the chicklet Kindle keyboard is better than a virtual one. (Wow, did I just say the Kindle has an interface feature that’s better than the iPhone’s?! That’s the only one, btw.)
The article goes on to talk about how the device will have speakers, a webcam and a microphone built in. Sounds great, but isn’t this starting to smell a lot like a netbook? Asus has been in the netbook space for a few years now and they’re just tweaking their product a bit and calling it an e-reader.
I’d rather just have a netbook. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned in 2009 it’s that the dedicated e-reader doesn’t have much of a future. Sure, they’ll still be around in a few years but the real action will be with the multi-purpose devices like mobile phones and tablets.
September 14th, 2009 at 10:48 am
Being an iPhone owner myself, I can say you are right about the annoyance of using the virtual keyboard but I think this is only because of its size (a fragment of the iPhone screen).
A virtual keyboard the size of that Asus gadget screen would be something totally different, not to mention the tablets yet to come (which will have to rely on virtual keyboards as well).
Anyway, I agree on all the rest… That thingy is just a capped notebook with double screen
September 14th, 2009 at 11:24 am
Someone at ASUS must have thought, the more like a book, the better. I’ve always liked the idea of a virtual control surface independent of the screen, which I consider more flexible (the controls could alter depending on what you’re doing). But I really don’t see why it needs to be another viewing screen.
September 14th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
I’ve thought two separate things:
1: “Gee, I wish I have something to protect the screen that was built in, so I didn’t need to buy an extra cover just to keep the screen safe.”
2: “Gosh, I wish the page on my DX, when tilted sideways, split into two screen, so I wouldn’t need to move my head back and forth every line.”
Maybe the ASUS engineers thought the same thing.
September 14th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
Here’s where the dual screens come in handy:
- comics/manga. Traditionally these have used compositions that spread across the two-page spread.
- magazines. Also noted for using two pages for compositional power. Consider for example Sports Illustrated might want a full-’page’ action photo, with some text on the facing screen; they might also want the occasional big impact of a photo spreading across both screens.
- newspapers. These can benefit from the (noted in article) use of one screen as a table of contents and the other as article page, facilitating quick perusal of the day’s news.
- textbooks. Especially science textbooks, will enjoy pictures, charts (zoomable, I hope) and even multimedia on one screen, with accompanying and explanatory text on the other.
and finally, the #1 (IMO) use of that second screen:
- ADS! Yes, now magazines and newspapers (and even etexts) can put the text on one screen and a full page AD on the other — not totally obtrusive the way a barrier ad would be, that you must click through to reach the text you want to read, but still there, right in front of your face, grabbing your interest, and helping defray production expenses.
September 14th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
For me, this is a Day One purchase, and I normally don’t do DO when it comes to gadgets. I hate e-ink. I think both the Kindle and Sony readers feel cheap and the interfaces are sub-par. And, because I like to read before bed and hate keeping my husband up I require a light. Frankly, if I wanted to use a book light in bed, I’d buy a book light for a regular paper book. Backlighting, for me, is a must have.
I guess this is why I’m still using the REB 1150.
Again, for reading in bed, netbooks just don’t work all that well. Neither does the iPhone, as my hand cramps up. I’m really looking forward to this dual screened device. I’ll get my reading fix, and be able to check my email too. The software keyboard isn’t enough of a deterrent for me to move to one of the god-awful e-ink devices on the marketplace.
September 14th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
A dual display device would provide for more reading surface, yet we should be able to close it for portability. Just as simple as that. I don’t think that is a matter of emulating dead-trees book form factor
September 14th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
Haptic feedback should come in handy with this
September 14th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
I think you are way off base. The two screens is a great idea, and one that I’ve been preaching to friends for years. Years.
In addition to the above allow me to repeat a few points.
The second screen can be a full sized keyboard when you need to do serious writing with all ten fingers.
The second screen can fold over to protect the both screens.
The second screen can be used as another page in a traditional book or it can display navigational or drawing tools.
If you don’t use dual screens at work, I don’t think you understand the two screen advantage. You can have a word document on one screen and an excel document on the other screen. You can be writing an email on one screen while reading data off of another document at the same time. It also makes creating Powerpoints much faster when you can create the slide while looking at the data at the same time.
September 14th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
Mr Pond has it.
The primary driver for dual displays is Manga; it is a massive market and, ergonomically-speaking a hinged dual-display reader would feel more natural than a landscape-format slate.
The description in The Guardian also stated that a book could be displayed on one pane and a web site in the other.
The form factor would also be useful in a classroom scenario (textbook on one, class notes on the other) and for cookbooks and for academic publications (footnotes and embedded annotations on one, core rocument on the other).
In other words, lets not be too hasty in branding it a luddite-appeasement; it is intended to be a *high-end* reader device and that means it is *not* intended for fiction/entertainment reading alone.
To me, this device is a good sign: somebody is thinking about ebooks as something more than a just a paperless pbook.
Now, to see what battery-life and pricing looks like.
September 14th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
@Bruce: “Gee, I wish I have something to protect the screen that was built in, so I didn’t need to buy an extra cover just to keep the screen safe.”
I’ve never figured out covers for expensive electronics. My $9.99 Casio fx-260 solar calculator has a little slide on cover for the keys and display. It reverses and slides onto the backside of the calculator when I use the buttons. That means the cover has to cost, oh, $0.20? Surely a $200 ereader can have a similar cover, four times the area or so, for maybe $1.00?
Adding a second LCD screen to do the same function seems excessive.
Puzzledly,
Jack Tingle
September 14th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
I get it and love it.
September 14th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
Think of the enormous amount of people in businesses who use documents in Letter/A4 formats. Frankly, it’s easier on a two-panels display…
September 15th, 2009 at 7:11 am
For reading academic/scholarly books two screens is a huge improvement. Text on one screen, endnotes on the other. Text on one screen, table referred to in the text on the other. Text on one side, the journal article being quoted in the text on the other.
There will be different types of e-reading devices to meet the very different needs of readers. That’s the clearest advantage that the e-book future has over physical books.
September 15th, 2009 at 9:19 am
Small LCDs are much cheaper per square inch than large ones. I don’t have the figures, but I’d bet a 2 4×7 screens cost half the price of a 8×7 screen. The hinge probably adds cost over two rigid side-by-side screens, but also makes it much easier to store the device in a purse. The hinge also disguises the line that would exist between rigid side-by-side screens. 20 years ago people were complaining about the tiny lines on Trinitron monitors; I’m pretty sure a line or thin white space between two LCDs would drive many customers insane.
September 15th, 2009 at 9:45 am
I also appreciate the visual power of the “splash page” image. However, that power is severely lessened when there is a visible break in the middle of a page-spanning image, and that’s what you get with this device. If you want to truly appreciate a splash page, it should be on a landscape-oriented page such as what you’d get from a laptop or tablet.
As I said, I’m all in favor of using one screen as a virtual control interface. But reading splash screens? I get annoyed now when I can’t flatten a printed splash page enough to see all of it in a seamless manner. No sale for me.