Are paper books doomed?Some companies are hoping to resurrect the dream of electronic books, an idea which has been left for dead by most people since 2003, when Barnes & Noble shut its e-book store and Palm sold its e-book business to a Web site. Some diehards at Sony SONY Standard Oil of New York (common, but untrue; it's an urban legend) still, believe that, if properly designed, the e-book has a future. Their solution is the Sony Reader The 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 (below), a small, sleek In the Dungeons and Dragons fantasy role-playing game, the Sleek is a Magical Beast. It resembles an Ermine. It seems to have no other desire aside from biting victims and running off. , portable screen, now sold in stores for $350. E-books may have flopped the first time around, but you can't deny that they offer some intriguing in·trigue n. 1. a. A secret or underhand scheme; a plot. b. The practice of or involvement in such schemes. 2. A clandestine love affair. v. advantages: You can add dozens of books to your luggage LUGGAGE. Such things as are carried by a traveller, generally for his personal accommodation; baggage. In England this word is generally used in the same sense that baggage is used in the United States. See Baggage. without the extra weight, adjust the type size, and no trees are destroyed. Is that it, then, for the paper book? Is it doomed? Not anytime soon. The Sony Reader will make certain niche groups very happy. The masses, however, may continue to prefer the more established portable-document format: paper books. Those never run out of power, cost about 2 percent as much, and don't break when dropped. --David Pogue [10/12/06] |
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