This would look great if it wasn't made by SONY. They have a history of building devices that seem great, but on closer inspection it usually turns out that the user interface is horrible, overall usability is poor, and to use the device you have to install a proprietary piece of Windows-only SONY software that might be maintained and updated for a while — or not. So after a couple of years you might be left with no way to access your data.
After I had this experience two or three times I figured I'd stay away from SONY products.
I want to love SONY products. But for the past decade, it seems as if they actively try to piss their users off by building a perfectly good product and then crippling it with arbitrary vendor-specific lock-in.
Remember ATRAC for Minidiscs? If I recall correctly, Sony's first flash-memory music players tried to force you to use ATRAC instead of MP3.
I wonder if this lock-in makes sense in the local Japanese market and it's simply a matter of poor international understanding. Or if their local market gets similarly annoyed.
> If I recall correctly, Sony's first flash-memory music players tried to force you to use ATRAC instead of MP3.
Yeah, and they were even claiming "MP3 compatible" which was blatantly false advertising since you had to convert your tracks to ATRAC with Sonicstage before you could transfer your MP3 on your device. My ass still hurts. Sony, never again.
l remember having to dish out twice as much for memory stick and memory stick duo when everyone else has cheaper SD card support. Minidisc player was pretty cool but was a luxury before it because obsolete.
> and to use the device you have to install a proprietary piece of Windows-only SONY software that might be maintained and updated for a while
Let's not forge the Sony Music CDs which installed a rootkit on your computer to prevent you from trying to copy the CD. Where they went is just unimaginable.
> After I had this experience two or three times I figured I'd stay away from SONY products.
Even if it were not for that experience, the Sony Ebook Readers have been very, very poor and very slow every time I looked at their latest models. Sony is supposed to be a company run by engineers, but seriously I'm wondering if they know their shit.
Oh, they do (I know, I worked on software for Sony). But there are two major problems:
* There is no such thing as "Sony". It's just a marketing name. In reality it is a loosely-coupled group of companies, each of which has internal fiefdoms. There isn't much cooperation, efforts are often duplicated and groups compete with each other. So, for example, the particular business unit that created the E-reader device probably has little incentive to work with anyone else in the company: it is likely the software was developed internally by that particular group. While there are groups within Sony that are capable of producing excellent top-notch software, not all of them are that good.
* There is a whole culture of being proprietary and locking customers in. Just read the other comments in this thread to see examples of how Sony takes this to an extreme. And before someone compares this to Apple: Apple doesn't lock your data in, while Sony has often done so (an example: a sony dictation recorder that requires a Windows application to read the data and export it from a proprietary format into something readable). So even if they contract the software out, I'd expect a specification of a fairly tight system.
Sigh, poor Kodak. I was in their offices 3 years ago giving a presentation and the place was a boarded up ghost town. It was surreal to see how many floors were simply closed off.
That's why when I was looking to buy an e-reader I settled on a PocketBook. Yes, the Russian ones. It's the most-open e-reading device I've seen. You literally just plug it into your pc with a standard USB cable and it appears as a normal drive that you can upload whatever you wish to. Including normal binaries. There's no rooting steps involved or anything, it's plug-and-copy-an-ELF. It runs a normal everyday Linux.
There's a vibrant community (though you might need to be somewhat familiar with Russian) of all manner of customization possibilities and different applications you can install.
It also comes with snake.
When they start offering A4 devices, I'll definitely buy one (unless someone gets an incurable brain tumor and makes them closed).
I've got a PRS 950. Back when I bought it was really good. Bigger screen, supporting SD cards and reading ePub and PDF. The other options like the Kindle were very locked-up.
The PS2 was also the last Sony thing I purchased. Shortly after that, the music disc rootkit scandal became public, and I have never forgiven them.
Every so often, I see something like this by Sony that looks so cool, but then give it a pass because it is too expensive and because a forever boycott is forever. Later, I find out that I saved myself some minor amount of aggravation when Sony screwed up the software and/or user experience in some completely boneheaded way.
While it looks like a fun toy, I wouldn't be surprised if I woke up one morning and it no longer supported EPUB, with no warning or explanation.
Considering Sony just shut down their Reader platform I'd like to say: Dear Sony, fat chance. Having been one of the only heavy-weights in the eReader market that focused on a good ePub experience I'm disappointed the product didn't mature.
This just looks like a bad product migration to me and I will make sure to steer clear of Sony's niche products that don't make it more than a few years.
I'm just worried about Sony's long term viability. They don't seem as competitive as they once were, and as you say, they have this not-invented-here culture similar to other old line companies that are no longer dominant (Nokia, IBM).
I feel strongly that Sony has been changing in the past year and finally getting in the game again with genuinely great products. PS4 (best console), Xperia Z2 (best smartphone), Project Morpheus (forward-looking innovation), and now this.
Ha, does that keep you up at night? I'm surprised any company, save Apple (for cultural reasons), produces this sort of angst in people. What's your emotional attachment to the long term success of Sony? Where does it come from (serious question)?
Well, Sony used to make cool products (the first Walkmans were cool. Even the first Playstation was cool. The Sony Trinitron TVs were fantastic. The Sony VAIO line of PCs were hotter than Macs back in 2000...) - but that time is long gone. Maybe it's nostalgia?
I think there are some major changes being made to regain this position and it is backed with some really cutting edge products, along with smarter financial decisions. I think the only thing they are lacking is the respect due to past mistakes, mistakes that have been removed from the line completely over the past year or are in plans to cut in the next few months. They plan to marked high-end only and it looks like serious thought in filling the need of better software and developers. I have no inside, but I would not be surprised if you start seeing HackerNews worthy projects popping up from Sony Developers in the next few years.
In 2013 (or 2012, not sure anymore), they made more money off their financial services than all of their combined product lines. That says how much Sony sucks at making products nowadays.
To be fair, that could also mean that the market for financial services is extremely high margin or has an extremely large potential size rather than being an indictment of Sony's product lines.
yep. i'd venture a guess that the screen will be plastic, and it won't have a built-in flip-cover, and no micro usb port so you can't manage the contents from a computer
Don't know about the screen or cover, but it does have a Micro USB port and transferring files is done through file explorer. Simple drag and drop stuff.
This looks fantastic. When the e-reader craze was going on, I avoided buying one because I wanted one pretty much like this. Most of my e-books are PDFs that display really well in a larger format device. My wife had a nook, and I tried it out for a bit, but the size/resolution made viewing PDFs designed for letter sized paper look just below adequate.
Is it wrong for me to also admit that ever since the "Root Kit Debacle" from Sony, I cringe a little at the idea of plugging a Sony product into my PC? Or am I just being paranoid?
It isn't paranoia if they really are out to get you!
But yes, I have been waiting for a device like this for ages. I tried a smaller e-ink device, but trying to view PDFs on that was painful at best. I'm even wondering if 1200x1600 resolution is good enough for scientific papers.
While Sony certainly deserved the infamy for letting the 2005 rootkit debacle happen under the Sony name, it's worth keeping in mind that it was Sony BMG – literally a different company from Sony Corporation, which makes consumer electronics, and also a company that hasn't existed since 2008, when Sony bought out the rest of BMG and formed Sony Music Enterntainment.
It was also nine years ago. We have to move on eventually.
2005: Sony BMG rootkit.
2006: Exploding batteries.
2008: Sony DADC is responsible for SecuROM.
2010: OtherOS removed; Hotz sued over jailbreaking.
2011: PSN data breach.
Also, they killed Lik-Sang just for selling across region boundaries.
(Un)fortunately they quite often make some fantastic hardware. I'm just disappointed that the whole horror of the various computer misuse/hacking laws weren't thrown at them for those CDs.
I agree, Sony has produced some excellent products and some of their laptop designs have made me very tempted to purchase their PC products in the past.
I own a few Sony products, but I tend to flinch a little with any Sony product that: (A) Probably has a DRM scheme associated with it (as most e-readers do, I assume this one does as well). or (B) Requires me to plug it into my PC and install Sony produced software.
It may have been a long time ago, but I tend to be one of those guys where trust is easy to establish, easy to break and serious loss of trust is nearly impossible to recover from. The Rootkit Incident was a serious loss of trust to me, so I'll steer clear for now. It's too bad, even at $1100, it'd be worth it to handle my collection of printed-to-pdf notes, documents and books.
> (B) Requires me to plug it into my PC and install Sony produced software.
That there, is a big turn-off for me. What business would Sony making a device like that which requires their own specialised software to interface it with a normal computer. There are standards for these things. The USB mass storage device standard is well-established already.
Indeed. As a PhD student that reads and annotates a ton of scientific papers, this really seems like something that could help me do my job much better.
Please, if any of you manage to get your hands on one, I would love a hands-on review with a lot of pictures.
The price is really high, that's true, but I can see top people in academia or enthusiasts like me adopting it.
I'm a sucker for being able to write notes by hand, and when I tried out the surface pro 2 I was pretty blown away by how nice the handwriting felt. Also seems to be in the same price range, and you end up with a full blown PC (which may not be what you're shooting for). One more thing that I liked is how natural it was to use one note to make notes, cut a part out, and move it around. When I'm sketching ideas out, or learning math stuff, it's always nice to be able to move a snippet over really quickly.
I also used to review and edit a lot of training materials that were being designed, and I was using an ipad 2 with PDFExpert, which was pretty great for that, but I always hated how crap the ipad was for writing things with a stylus or a finger. If I could go back and do it again with a surface pro 2, I would in a heartbeat.
I tried other larger form factor e-ink devices like the Kindle DX and such, but if the screen wasn't big enough to fit the entire page on the screen at once, it didn't matter how big the screen was. The device just ended up being too slow. I liked the ipad because I could swipe around, highlight, circle things, make notes, etc.
Obviously the battery life on the surface pro 2 wouldn't be in the same universe as this thing, and it's bulkier, but just thought I'd throw it out there. Kind of rambly, heh, YMMV
I have a DX in the closet, and even if the screen is big enough, it's still too slow.
The other huge problem with the DX or any other e-ink reader so far is the lack of note-taking. I hoped the DX would be good for academic papers, but it just isn't.
The hardware is lustworthy, though the resolution could be higher, it's just a shame there's no SDK. The buttons on the front look very old school Androidish.
> The hardware is lustworthy, though the resolution could be higher, it's just a shame there's no SDK. The buttons on the front look very old school Androidish.
I have a 10" e-ink device with 1200x825px which is perfectly fine for A4/letter-designed PDFs, so I'd say the resolution should be fine. I also have a 10" notebook, and the readability is considerably worse at about the same resolution, so I guess e-ink resolutions are not really comparable with lcd resolutions (the pixel layout is quite different: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3090/2286311679_f98bdba47f_m....).
Don't know about the GP, but I have an iRex DR1000 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Reader_1000) which was perfectly sized for reading A4/letter papers. But it is bulky and has no wireless connectivity.
I noticed that the battery life is 3 weeks. Given the size of the product (not large), it's safe to say that they get that battery life by doing as little as possible. It may be that they don't have enough processing power to run any sort of apps, or if they did, it would drain the battery so much that it would ruin the device.
With that said, it would still be cool to try. It should at least be able to support a calculator.
Nah. Nook Simple Touches can be rooted and run Android just fine. As long as wifi is off (thus disabling the vast majority of app background syncing / periodic updates) it easily lasts a couple weeks. For that you can run a surprising number of apps just fine in a ridiculously-limited available RAM space. I can't imagine this would be anywhere near as slow as a NST, so it should be able to do just about everything except play 3D games and visit crazy-bad websites.
As long as you don't busy wait and only update the parts of the screen that change it's not too hard to write software which doesn't impact battery life too much.
EDIT: To add, obviously minimise network connections. And if you do need them, batch them.
The test model I used for a month only needed one charge, it works a lot like the black and white kindle and the document stays static on the screen and the device only really turns on when you write on it or turn pages.
I'm looking for a relatively paperless legal workflow, and I have been surprised at how hard it is. It's hard to pull out a laptop in a meeting to take notes, if only because in a 1:1, you are often in someone else's office and don't have a desk handy. I've been looking at the Livescribe for digitizing handwriting, but to date the software has been shitty. The new version that integrates with iPad/OneNote seems to be a step up, though.
The problem with the iPad, however, is that it's not good for marking up documents. It's great for reading legal cases, but not for marking them up and taking margin notes. Personally, I'm one of those people that gets a lot more out of having paper in my hand and scribbling on it than I do just reading something off a computer screen. I'm really intrigued by this product: http://www.thedigitalink.co.uk/products/capturx-markup-for-p..., which lets you print out PDF's onto special paper so that when you write on it with a digital pen, the markings are reintegrated onto the digital copy. Unfortunately, it's really expensive!
Also, 10" is on the small side for what's ideal. A standard piece of paper is 13" diagonal. I've been looking at the 12.2" Samsung, which also has a digitizer, but Samsung's Android skin is just god-awful. It's a shame nobody makes a 12"+ Baytrail Windows 8 tablet with good battery life...
This product seems to really tackle this niche. Apparently Sony is going to be showing it off this week at the ABA tech show in Chicago.
> which lets you print out PDF's onto special paper so that when you write on it with a digital pen, the markings are reintegrated onto the digital copy.
What I do is print out PDF's onto regular cheap paper, mark them up by hand, then run the paper through the scanner. Voila!
It would be neat to have some software that compares the scan and the original PDF to extract just the annotations, then add those as a layer on the original PDF.
I almost pulled the Trigger on a Surface Pro 2. The big problem for me,[1] is that the 16:9 aspect ratio is annoying for reading documents. A 12" 4:3 device would be a lot better. I'm very curious to see what MS has in store for this fall. A native Metro version of Word launching with Surface Pro 3 might seal the deal.
[1] Well the big problem is that the UI is an abomination, with the clunky obsolete desktop married to the slick, intuitive Metro interface. Having to flip between the two just to use Word is a sick joke.
>> The big problem for me,[1] is that the 16:9 aspect ratio is annoying for reading documents.
But isn't 16:9 more akin to a legal page than 4:3? ;)
>> [1] Well the big problem is that the UI is an abomination
YMMV, I guess. I'm primarily a Mac user, and I don't mind W8 at all. Keep in mind that the Metro version of OneNote is pretty bad. The desktop version of OneNote is leaps and bounds better. And because of that, you wouldn't have to mode swap to get into the desktop version of Word.
Also, I had one; think of the hinge. You can't use it on your laptop in a chair like a normal laptop. Check out the Samsung 700TC, it's 12.2 inches and has a removable 'Asus-like' keyboard with a real hinge. I haven't used it in a while(I'm really liking 8 inches for a tablet) but it was pretty good.
You can buy one of those iPad style cases for the Surface that make it easier to use when it's in your lap.
I think the Surface is basically for the segment who either use it on a table like a computer or an iPad when it's not -- like me. The good thing is that there are lots of competing products that satisfy other use cases.
If this thing supports epub as well it would be perfect. I have been looking for a full A4-sized e-ink reader for ages now but aside from my Kindle DX, (which has to be hacked to read PDF's and epub) there has been very little.
I am not interested in the note taking, although it may prove useful at some point, I want it as a large e-ink reader for technical books.
The hardware seems really great. Sony has a ton of experience in e-readers, I trust their capability to pull out marvelous hardware, and this is a product that feels a really valuable spot on the market.
Except, there is so few informations on the software.
It seems the supported sync service is worldox [1], as it's the only link in the sidebar and there is no explicit mention of any other solution. Does this means one has to contract this service provider just to wirelessly sync this device ?
Of course, no mention of an SDK or any third party integration.
As usual with Sony, the hardware seems perfect and the software an afterthought.
The user manual states, "By using the WebDAV protocol, you can access a specific network drive to synchronize documents
between the Digital Paper device and the network
drive, or transfer documents from the device to the
network drive. Connect to a Wi-Fi network
beforehand (page 38)." [1]
It looked like the guy giving the demo was very careful to not rest his wrist on the tablet. Writing without resting your wrist rarely gives good results, in my experience.
I wonder if wrist pressure confuses the tablet about where the pen is?
Just taking a guess here but that pen is probably passive and the screen is capacitive. Unless there's some multitouch capability in the reader that's just not ready yet, placing the wrist or palm on the screen would definitely screw up the pen pointer.
being able to rest your wrist on the device is vital. I find that to be the biggest anoyence on my galaxy note 3. However there is one app that Samsung includes where you can wrest your hand on the device and it does not start drawing blobs on the page but sadly it's not the app I want to use to take notes.
I've been looking for a second pen for my Surface Pro, but I can't get myself to buy the Feel because it doesn't have an eraser end. I find myself using the eraser all the time.
Yeah, sadface too. Because unless that screen has killer touchscreen firmware to reject stray palms and wrists it's going to be completely unusable for anything other than a reader.
I beta tested it and it was so slow and cumbersome that I gave up on using it because it just got in the way of trying to do anything.
It was super light and cool but it's so damn big and fragile feeling that it didn't feel safe putting it into a bag. It was just one more thing to carry around.
You had to connect it every time to transfer files on or off of it, could not even email it out. Supposedly the only service it was going to work with via wifi was Evernote. We asked for dropbox but that didn't seem like an option. Felt like the future in concept but more like using a palm pilot.
Screen and OS is more like the black and white kindles, it loads an image to the screen and records what you draw on it. It's not live or fluid. There was a distinct screen flash when it updated new content.
Onyx made something like that already; the software is terrible (although hackable) and there is no place to attach stylus to the reader, but it is only ~300USD
If they really wanted to go after the note-taking market hard, they should have created a way to have the "eraser" in the opposite end of the stylus rather than have to go through a menu system to modify notes.
For me then, it would go from "yeah, its kinda neat" to "I really ought to consider giving them my money for this"
The iRex Iliad had a big screen and you could write on it with a stylus. It ran linux and didn't use proprietary file formats, so was great for actually doing stuff.
BUT
The refresh rate on the screen meant that doing anything with the stylus was painful. It lagged way too much. I see nothing in the specs for the sony device that refers to this problem with e-ink, and no video demo. Anyone have better info?
eInk DPI and LCD DPI aren't really directly equivalent in terms of readability.
And this is a specialized device that seems much more suited to the type of work it's designed for than an iPad is. The iPad doesn't even support a stylus (except for the big nub stylus, which is really more of a stylized finger replacement).
The iPad Air is light enough - I use one all day.
The smaller size of the iPad is an advantage for portability.
The iPad battery is more than good enough for a full day of work, so the comparison is empty.
The iPad is highly usable in all indoor conditions. Bright sunlight is a problem for it.
That's only one advantage the Sony device has that matters, and it's a niche one.
It's thoroughly disappointing that they're sticking to PDF for this. In every other way, it looks like progress, but not supporting EPUB is a pretty long step backwards, imho.
"In addition to PDF source files, MS Word®, PowerPoint®, and Excel® files can be converted to the PDF format, then saved, viewed, and annotated on Digital Paper."
Don't worry, though, in addition to PDFs, you can convert other files to PDFs!
The demand is no doubt there. This needs to be executed well and priced well also. I'm going to bet it's neither. Sony is notorious for high prices. Also, who's to say the writing feels as natural as they're making it look?
The first ebook reader I bought was a Sony and it was great. I preferred it to the kindle at the time because it let me import any format file into it via USB. So I have no issues with the brand as others do. Sony has a solid presence though on the periphery of the eInk scene. My only concern with this device is input latency. Every eInk screen I've used that takes input has too high of a latency for annotation to feel as natural as pen and paper.
I remember when http://noteslate.com/ launched their site & demos and being excited, checking back weekly, then monthly, then realized that it was all a big cloud of vaporware.
I hope Sony actually goes through with this. I currently use an ipad mini & notesplus with a jot pro - it's a good setup and works well, but I still find myself reaching for legal pads half the time.
I waited and waited for NoteSlate to come out. So disappointed when it became clear it was vaporware.
I currently use a Surface Pro with OneNote (full version, skip the W8 app store version), and it's fantastic. I have actually stopped using the hardcover sketchbooks I normally carry around, and the Surface takes up space than those books.
StylusLabs Write is a pretty great app too, and it's available for most major platforms.
You might want to consider one of the smaller tablets that have a real Wacom digitizer, i.e. Samsung's Note / Pro series or Asus' new W8 8" tablet. I don't know about how good the Dell Venue Pro 8 is, since its stylus isn't a Wacom.
A device like this has such awesome potential, but I am so underwhelmed by Sony's execution.
$1000 +, closed to common eReader document types and no path to openness for developers.
Add in Sony's miserable record for supporting their customers after they move to the next flavor of the week and this is a great illustration of their march towards increasing irrelevance.
I bought a sony e-reader 5 years ago, it still functions fine. Sony did however give up their e-reader business in the past weeks, but they have transferred all purchased books to a different vendor, so I don't lose anything. And earlier when they discontinued their own proprietary DRM format, they freely converted all books to EPUB.
I have had no problems with how well Sony has supported me as a customer, despite their organization going through changes.
Didn't they just kill their e-book store recently?
Also, from the images it does look like it would be "e-ink" but I see no mention of it on the page. Is it really "e-ink" (like Kindle) or just "e-paper", which is just a transflective LCD (Pebble, Notion Ink Adam, etc).
"e ink" is a trademark of the E Ink Corporation. Other vendors of e-paper displays can't use the same name, regardless of what type of display technology they use.
Thanks, the idea of using a shared GNU Screen session is nice. This means that actually instead of an RPi and additional keyboard, the e-ink screen could simply be laid on a laptop.
I know this sounds like nitpicking, like complaining about the cup holder in a luxury car, but the stylus holder is just too ugly and an afterthought for a $1k device. Why they even bother to point out the design as if they were proud of it? Why can't they just use the palmV or many other push to eject design? That holder thing sticks out so much that I not only feel embarrassed to show it off, but fear it'll break any moment. And this is from SONY?
eInk based ebook readers have been around since at least the iRex in '06. My current jetBook in the same format as the Sony here even has 4096 colors. The thing that always kept theory from practice for me was the high latency when doing the actual annotations. 150ms is too much when writing and your pen is 3 strokes ahead of the display.
Is this reader any different? Just looking at the page, I don't quite get what makes it different and HN worthy?
The Bridgestone Aerobee was another device that seemed fit all the specifications for a electronic notebook. Bridgestone had teamed up with a Delta Electronics to bring these out but killed it.
I wonder why Amazon doesn't release a new version of Kindle DX (9.7" E Ink Display).
Its hardware is comparable to the old Kindle 2. The Kindle DX was withdrawn from sale in October 2012, but in September 2013 was made available again. An improved Kindle DX with touch support for $199 would be awesome. Color e-ink displays exist for years, add one.
The new Sony Digital Paper for $1100 is too expensive .
Seems good, but the honest competition to this would be all the other tablets with styluses.
Surface Pro, Galaxy Tab, Asus Vivotab Note. Each hit vastly different price ranges (Surface Pro ~$900 high-quality device, Galaxy Tab rounds out $500 mark, and Vivotab Note hits $300).
I doubt Sony can beat the Vivotab Note on price / performance, and I doubt it can win on flexibility vs Android or Surface Pro.
I want this so bad, I have a Kindle DX that's pretty good but I just want to be able to 'print' directly to it and have it automatically turn on and show it. This is getting there with the pen, I love that idea. They should have it sync back after you annotate it automatically. That's friction free.
What we need is a android tablet, combined e-ink and the power of a Samsung Note. Then we have a kindle reader (through the app), a note taking device and can also read something from apps like pocket and Evernote... at least I can dream about it.
Very cool. Except the "Click here to be contacted for more information about Digital Paper" leads to a "Contact Us" form. Do I use a "Contact Us" form to ask Sony to "Contact Me" whenever it releases this?
Some grep would be nice, and I don't mean the kindle touch search experience: tap, wait, tap search, wait, type, wait, type, wait, type, enter, wait, browse results, tap to scroll, wait, browse results, tap to scroll.
There is still a pretty significant delay between writing and the text appearing. Nothing like the prototype display Microsoft was showcasing some time ago.
finally! looks great and I hope sony doesn't mess this up.
and please make a external monitor version! preferably 24" so I can have a secondary monitor dedicated to word-processing.
even though refresh times might be slow for anything else having an e-paper external monitor for word-processing would make total sense from an ergonomics perspective. a lot of people spend many hours a day writing/editing text and e-paper is much more eye-friendly.
a) Would you please tell me where you found how much it costs and where I can buy it please?
b) I really need something like this urgently. $1000 isn't much, if it makes your life measurably easier. It IS expensive, but unlike tablets, smartphones, convertibles and notebooks this is something that directly effects my productivity.
c) I was hoping for foldable Mirasol or Electrowetting (EWD) displays in Q1 2014 since 2009 and it's still not there. These are the most promising display technologies that I know of, which are still hold back for reasons that I simply don't understand. It may have to do with the Display Technology Cartels, bad marketing, or no funding. I just wish to know why Electrowetting isn't mainstream yet. See here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bf1GjCaYzYg
The MirasolHD 5,1" display prototype with 2.560 x 1.440 Pixel had a pixel depth of incredible 577 ppi and you could use clearly see everything at direct sunlight.
Here's an old video I found: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDoVzKd9H4U
PS: It makes me quite sad and disappointed that we still don't have this technology:
>still hold back for reasons that I simply don't understand
I'm speculating, but in general the only thing that holds good technology back is an inability to scale manufacturing to the point where it is profitable.
Indeed! To expand a little, can I also download a text from Gutenberg public domain classics, convert to pdf (via LibreOffice for instance) and read on this machine along, as you say, with all the public domain articles and books I have in the same format?
After I had this experience two or three times I figured I'd stay away from SONY products.