Sony Reader

he Sony PRS-500 Reader is an e-book reader for the U.S. market. It uses an electronic paper display developed by E Ink Corporation, that has 166 dpi resolution, four levels of grayscale, is viewable in direct sunlight, requires no power to maintain the image, and is usable in portrait or landscape orientation. Like real paper, it may be difficult to read from in low-light conditions, as the unit has no backlight. The reader uses an iTunes Store-like interface to purchase books from Sony’s Connect eBook store. It also can display Adobe PDFs, personal documents, blogs, RSS newsfeeds, JPEGs, and Sony’s proprietary BBeB (”BroadBand eBook”) format.The Reader can play unencrypted MP3 and AAC audio files. Unlike its close cousin, the LIBRIé, the Sony Reader offers no way for the user to annotate a digital book due to lack of a keyboard.

The digital rights management rules of the Reader allow any purchased eBook to be read on up to six devices (at least one of those 6 must be a PC). Although you cannot share purchased eBooks on other people’s devices and accounts, you will have the opportunity to register five Readers to your account and share your books accordingly. At this time Sony has no plans to introduce time-expiring books in the U.S.

The Reader was announced in January 2006. By September 2006, it was available for order from the Sony online store. It competes with other Epaper devices— the Amazon Kindle, iRex iLiad, the Jinke Hanlin eReader, and CyBook by Bookeen.

Since 1 November 2006, Readers have been on display and for sale at Borders bookstores throughout the US, according to posts at MobileRead.com. Borders had an exclusive contract for the Reader until the end of 2006. From April 2007, Sony Reader has been sold in the US by multiple merchants, including Fry’s, Costco, Borders and Best Buy. The eBook Store from Sony is only available to U.S. residents or to customers who purchased a U.S.-model reader with bundled eBook Store credit.

e-ink

E Ink is a type of electronic paper manufactured by E Ink Corporation. It is a proprietary material that is processed into a film for integration into electronic displays, particularly for E-book devices such as the Sony Reader, the iLiad, the Cybook Gen3, the Amazon Kindle and the Readius device from Polymer Vision

The principal components of electronic ink are millions of tiny microcapsules, about the diameter of a human hair. In one incarnation, each microcapsule contains positively charged white particles and negatively charged black particles suspended in a clear fluid. When a negative electric field is applied, the white particles move to the top of the microcapsule to become visible to the reader. This makes the surface appear white at that spot. At the same time, an opposite electric field pulls the black particles to the bottom of the microcapsules where they are hidden. By reversing this process, the black particles appear at the top of the capsule, which now makes the surface appear dark at that spot.

To form an E Ink electronic display, the ink is printed onto a sheet of plastic film that is laminated to a layer of circuitry. The circuitry forms a pattern of pixels that can then be controlled by a display driver. These microcapsules are suspended in a liquid “carrier medium” allowing them to be printed using existing screen printing processes onto virtually any surface, including glass, plastic, fabric and even paper.

Cybook Gen 3

book Gen3 is a 6 inch e-Reader, a sort of PDA specially designed for reading e-Books and e-News, or listening to MP3 music or audio-books, produced by French company Bookeen.Note : the name of the company, Bookeen, sounds exactly the same as the french word “Bouquine“, which comes from the verb “bouquinner“, which means “to read”.

Electronic Paper

ectronic paper, also called e-paper, is a display technology designed to mimic the appearance of ordinary ink on paper. Unlike a conventional flat panel display, which uses a backlight to illuminate its pixels, electronic paper reflects light like ordinary paper and is capable of holding text and images indefinitely without drawing electricity, while allowing the image to be changed later.There are several different technologies to build e-paper, some of which can use plastic substrate and electronics, so that the display is flexible. It is considered more comfortable to read than conventional displays. This is due to the stable image which does not need to be constantly refreshed, the large viewing angle, and the fact that it uses reflected ambient light. It has a similar contrast ratio to that of a newspaper and is lightweight and durable, however it still lacks good color reproduction.

Applications include e-book readers capable of displaying digital versions of books and e-paper magazines, electronic pricing labels in retail shops ^[1], time tables at bus stations ^[2], and electronic billboards ^[3].

Electronic paper should not be confused with digital paper, which is a pad to create handwritten digital documents with a digital pen.

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