November 17, 2008

Amazon 101: The Economics of the Kindle

This post comes to you, courtesy of kdawson, via Slashdot:

"Just how many books a year would you need to read before the cost of Amazon's Kindle e-Reader is justified? The answer is not so cut-and-dried. If you're a college student and all of your texts were available on Kindle (possible but unlikely), you could recover the cost of the reader in a semester and a half. For consumers to break even in that time, they would have to be in the habit of buying and reading four new hardback books per month — if the convenience factor wasn't part of the equation. At two books per month, breakeven would be in three years."

Here is the spreadsheet if you want to play with the numbers.





Thanks kdawson!

November 2, 2008

Another e-Paper ???

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday October 27 on Slashdot:

Samsung and Unidym Showcase Their Carbon Nanotube-based Color E-paper

Samsung Electronics and Unidym have demonstrated the world’s first carbon nanotube-based color active matrix electrophoretic display (EPD) e-paper. The revolutionary color e-paper was demonstrated on a 14.3 inch display. The e-paper device jointly developed by Samsung and Unidym uses a carbon nanotube (CNT) transparent electrode developed by Unidym. CNT is a novel material that has extraordinary electrical, thermal, and mechanical properties.




Interestingly, the new film is electrically conductive while remaining almost completely translucent and only 50 nanometers thick.

"The company also mentions that the EPD [electrophoretic displays] has important advantages over conventional flat panel displays. EPDs have very low power consumption and bright light readability, which means that even under bright lights or sunlight, the user would be able to
view the display clearly.

Furthermore, since the device uses the thin CNT films, applications can include e-paper and displays with thin, flexible substrates. Power consumption is lowered due to the EPD's ability to reflect light and therefore able to preserve text or images on the display without frequently refreshing."

One breakthrough after another ... looks like the e-paper and display technologies are on a tear now to conquer consumer markets and mainstream applications.