The Nexus 7: Google ships a tablet [LWN.net]

The Nexus 7: Google ships a tablet

Posted Aug 1, 2012 11:32 UTC (Wed) by hummassa (guest, #307)
In reply to: The Nexus 7: Google ships a tablet by khim
Parent article: The Nexus 7: Google ships a tablet

eInk readers are not competing with tablets. They compete with paper books. If kindles get cheap enough to manufacture, 5 to 10 years from now, Amazon will send you one for free whenever you want. Hell, they'll send it to you even if you don't want it, AOL-style. Because the content is king -- it will be the really expensive part. And when your iPadXV have two weeks battery time, kindle equivalent will just stay charged forever.

Don't get me wrong. I HATED CRTs and LOVED LCDs since day one. But for reading 5-10 hours in a row, eInks are really better than LCDs/OLEDs and for that reason, and for the facts that they are cheaper, that readers extremely dislike not knowing how the book ends [and having nothing to read] during a long trip, I think the eInk product is here to stay, with a different market from LCDs/OLEDs, sure.

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The Nexus 7: Google ships a tablet

Posted Aug 1, 2012 12:54 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (4 responses)

eInk readers are not competing with tablets.

Why not?

They compete with paper books.

Sure. But all these devices compete with TV/VCR combo for the user's time. And TV/VCR reduced books market quite severely even if it was not actually possible to buy and read books with TV/VCR. Today tablets offer one outlet which can deliver video, audio and textual content. I don't see how dedicated book readers can survive in this context, sorry.

If kindles get cheap enough to manufacture, 5 to 10 years from now, Amazon will send you one for free whenever you want.

Kindles are cheap to manufacture only when they are popular. When volume goes down virtuous cycle becomes vicious cycle and pretty soon it becomes more expensive to manufacture e-ink based tablet then equivalent LCD/OLED based one. eInk is probably not yet passed it's peak, but it's pretty close to it. But in the future… 10 years from now e-ink will be in the same position as HP-48GX is today: it still will be popular among some people and you'll be able to easily find one on eBay, but they will not be manufactured anymore.

The Nexus 7: Google ships a tablet

Posted Aug 1, 2012 18:02 UTC (Wed) by rahvin (guest, #16953) [Link] (3 responses)

You do realize how terrible the comparison is with LCD/CRT to LCD/eInk right?

CRT's were heavy, power hungry (energy inefficient) and massive objects. A 22" CRT would have been more than 100lbs and around 2 feet deep. A single CRT occupied almost half a standard desk, and consumed about 70 watts of power which was almost entirely converted to heat. (In my experience when the LCD transition happened office spaces often had fluctuating temperature levels because the HVAC systems were designed to compensate for the daily CRT heat load, so after the transition you ended up with rapidly cycling temperatures all day long until they came in and re-tuned it all for the reduced heat load.)

A equivalent 22" LCD is about 7-10lbs, 7 inches deep and uses around 20-30watts of power. On top of those <sarcasm>minor improvements</sarcasm> you also have in general better resolutions, better refresh rates (less eye strain), less heat output, better color reproduction, digital image transfer and about a dozen other improvements over CRTs. In fact about the only area where CRTs were even better than LCDs was the ability to do multiple resolutions (only the best CRTs can still compete) and better blacks.

LCD's displaced CRTs because they were better in almost every aspect, as soon as prices came within reason they began to dominate almost immediately. In my experience everyone wanted LCD's just to get back all the desk space they lost to the CRTs. I can remember all the exclamations on the returned desk space vividly.

I think that comparing the CRT/LCD transition to LCD/eInk isn't even in the same ballpark. Ask an voracious reader that's tried both which they prefer to read on and I've yet to hear a single one say they prefer the LCD. I agree that ultimately most devices will be LCD, but eInk will likely remain around until they develop a technology that matches the advantages of eInk (ultra long battery life, eye strain, weight and price). eInk has serious advantages for a specific market segment and as speculated by others if they get the price down to where the things are damn near disposable you will see them everywhere.

The Nexus 7: Google ships a tablet

Posted Aug 2, 2012 20:20 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (2 responses)

On top of those <sarcasm>minor improvements</sarcasm> you also have in general better resolutions,

I had 21" CRT monitor which was quite usable in 1600x1200 @100Hz mode (and maximum resolution was 1800x1440 @73Hz, thank you very much) back in 2000 (ViewSonic P810, to be exact). When LCDs with comparable resolution arrived?

better refresh rates (less eye strain)

Today… may be. but even today most LCDs still use 60Hz - and I had 100Hz twelve years ago! Avid games preferred CRT for years for that reason. Yes, 200Hz and 240Hz are becoming mainstream (mostly for 3D), but this happened years after death of CRT!

better color reproduction

Nope. Still not there. Best of the best come close to what CRT offered ten years ago for cheap. And still fail for darker scenes.

digital image transfer

Try again, please. CRT had digital image transfer three decades ago (and modern CRTs had modern interfaces like DVI, too).

In fact about the only area where CRTs were even better than LCDs was the ability to do multiple resolutions (only the best CRTs can still compete) and better blacks.

No, the only advantage LCD had was space saving. This is significant (rent is quite substantial item of expenses in any office and home space is also not limitless) but everything else, literally everything else was worse when CRT went to the dustbin of history.

Years later LCD got most advantages back—yet even today it's still worse by some measures.

LCD's displaced CRTs because they were better in almost every aspect

Sorry, but this is revisionism. You are comparing today's LCD models with years old CRTs. And even in this comparison CRT often comes first! If you'll compare contemporary models from ten years ago (when LCD started pushing CRTs) you'll find out that virtually everything was worse on LCD - with only two exceptions: geometrical size and power consumption. And this was critical for success.

Similarly today general purpose tablets give you one—yet critical feature: support for color movies (you can count this advantage as two if you wish).

as soon as prices came within reason they began to dominate almost immediately

Right. And they did that long before LCDs achieved parity (let alone superiority!) in many aspects! All the “advantages” you cite above as a reason to buy LCD were in fact reasons to prefer CRT! And a lot of peoples did! Just not enough to keep CRTs around. When CRT was finally dead LCDs continued to develop and years later they finally achieved more-or-less parity.

eInk has serious advantages for a specific market segment and as speculated by others if they get the price down to where the things are damn near disposable you will see them everywhere.

Except they can't ultimately LCD and eInk have comparable production costs (comparable, not identical: yes, eInk is simpler, but this difference is constant, it does not change over time). And when they'll loose economy of scale battle (they are more-or-less there already) eInk will be dead.

The Nexus 7: Google ships a tablet

Posted Aug 3, 2012 16:26 UTC (Fri) by jackb (guest, #41909) [Link] (1 responses)

I had 21" CRT monitor which was quite usable in 1600x1200 @100Hz mode (and maximum resolution was 1800x1440 @73Hz, thank you very much) back in 2000 (ViewSonic P810, to be exact). When LCDs with comparable resolution arrived?

I blame the rise of HDTV for the seemingly permanent regression in monitor resolutions. 1080 interlaced vertical lines was "high" definition when compared to analog TV but is pathetic compared to the PC displays available at the end of the last century.

I finally have a LCD with a higher resolution (2560x1440) than the last CRT I bought over 12 years ago, but the price was rediculous.

The Nexus 7: Google ships a tablet

Posted Aug 4, 2012 9:30 UTC (Sat) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

I blame the rise of HDTV for the seemingly permanent regression in monitor resolutions. 1080 interlaced vertical lines was "high" definition when compared to analog TV but is pathetic compared to the PC displays available at the end of the last century.

Evidence does not point in this direction. CRT swang songs had even higher resolutions than what I cited above which were higher than HDTV! ViewSonic G225fB supported 2048x1536@80Hz! This was in 2005 when most LCDs had much less then HDTV resolution.

No, both CRTs and LCDs show typical parallel trajectories till the moment where CRT is dead. Yes, HDTV worked as a speed bump: it pushed jump to 1920x1200 (and then shrinkage to 1920x1080 to save money), but I don't think it was responsible for the fact that MacBook Pro with retina was only released this year. It just took time to reach these high resolution again after disruptive CRT-to-LCD switch.

What HDTV did (and what I really dislike) is sudden fascination with 16:9 aspect ratio monitors. These are now dominating even 4:3 monitors are obviously better for real work. But again: HDTV was a pretext, real difference was a drive to save money and HDTV only gave good excuse. Think about it: 16:9 monitors made no sense in CRT era (it's easier to make good CRT when aspect ration is closer to 1:1), but LCD have no such limitations and 16:9 are cheaper ! Only by about 10% (for the same diagonal), but if you'll recall how low margins for LCD producers are now…

The Nexus 7: Google ships a tablet

Posted Aug 1, 2012 15:03 UTC (Wed) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link]

eInk readers are not competing with tablets.

Of course they are. They may not be perfect substitutes, but there's a huge amount of overlap. If nothing else, they're competing for space in people's bags, since most people aren't going to want to carry both a tablet and an eInk reader with them regularly. Since the tablet does better as a replacement for the eInk reader than the eInk reader does as a replacement for the tablet, the desire for simplicity will select for the tablet. Unless eInk can advance to the point that it's a practical replacement for LCD and OLED screens, eInk devices are going to wind up as niche items.