Any plans on a letter-sized or A4 display?

[markt]

Depending on the price jump from 6" diagonal to 14", I, for one, would be most interested in seeing the availability of a letter-sized display for one of these.

By the way, while I'm on the notion of wish-listing... since you need to have an external light source to read the display for it anyways, has anybody given any thought to adding solar power capability to them so that it can (at least in part) recharge even while you are using the device normally, giving even longer battery life on a single normal charge?

(edit)... thinking about that latter idea a little more, I realize that the power output of small solar panels may not be enough to make any sort of signifant difference to how many pages you'd be able to flip through before draining the battery. I was just thinking out loud and thought it would be a really cool feature if it could be practical.

[christina]

We currently don't have those plans. But I will forward your thoughts to our eslick team for their references to future designing. Thanks.

[markt]

Thanks. The solar panel idea was sort of a wish-list thing, but the size of the display is simply a must-have for me.... I would love the ability to move from paper to this sort of technology simply because I utilize a lot of reference material on a daily basis and this would enable me to carry a lot more of it around with me portably than I currently can. The fact that this works primarily with PDF makes it even better for me because that's the electronic format I usually utilize (and usually have to print if I want a portable copy). But a 6" display is simply too small for my purposes... I would much prefer the ability to see a whole page at a time at its normal size so that smaller details are still legible and I can view the whole page at once without having to pan around the page. If you make a future model with a larger display, I'll definitely be picking one of these up as long as they aren't prohibitively expensive (like the fujitsu flepia).

[christina]

Thanks for your inputs. I will let our team know this.

[Daphni]

Hello,
I am also anxiously waiting for a letter size display. If I can carry around a lightweight display, I don't have to carry my briefcase full of music and I can listen to the music on the way to church. I would like the whole choir to have these available if they are ever introduced and they are interested. That way no lost music, no rustling papers, lots of practice options.
Thanks

[Erik_Bryant]

I just wanted to let everyone know that there would be a significant price increase between a 6 inch screen and a letter size display. Right now, there may not be a market for that since netbooks are so popular. My 2 cents...

[markt]

How significant? More than double? Yeah... that would be significant and probably spell the difference between my getting it and not. That would be most unfortunate, because I don't particularly want to continue to use paper... but if I found a smaller display usable, I would own a reader that's already available. I do not. What I would want in an electronic reader display is certainly technologically possible, the only potentially unknown factor being the exact price at which it would be practical to commercially deploy. You suggest that there "may not be a market for that", but I know I'm not the only one who feels the way I do about a letter-sized display.

I'll stay tuned.

[Erik_Bryant]

My guess is that it would be $600-$700. As you may know, Plastic Logic is coming out with a letter sized reader, but it keeps getting pushed back and won't be out until at least 2010. What I mean by "may not be a market", means a mass market. Many people won't have that much money to spend on a device that cannot nearly do as much as a laptop, and with $700, you could buy a nice laptop.

[markt]

$700 for an 8.5x11 display would be doable for me... at the extreme high end of okay, but still doable. I had actually heard of Plastic Logic's reader not that long ago and had initially held out high hopes, but it is also too small, having a form factor for the whole unit of 8.5x11" but the actual display area only has a 10.7" diagonal instead of 14", meaning that full page material must be reduced by about 25%

The laptop's actual biggest disadvantages are that the battery is only good for a couple of hours and the displays aren't usually very readable in bright light. Further, I have never found any laptop display to be comfortable to read for prolonged periods. I suspect this is because such displays produce their own light and shove more photons into my eyes than what my pupils are otherwise adjusted to by ambient lighting, but I cannot ascertain this for a fact.

So for me personally, $700 would work... and I strongly suspect that there is a business segment of the market that would be willing to pay that much for a full sized display as well. Plastic Logic's making a stab at this market with a 10.7" diagonal display... but I'm still waiting and wondering who will be the first to make a competitively priced 14" display?

[foxitupbaby]

I think it's worth stepping back and looking at the roots of the e-slick. The hardware is actually pretty standard hardware made by other companies and used in several products. What sets the e-slick as something apart is its low price and pdf support. FoxIT do not make hardware. They're using hardware out there that's already proven to be mass-marketable. A4 is sort of the holy grail for an e-book reader, but it doesn't make business sense for Foxit to invest in it while a) the price is so high and b) the things aren't even out yet. I'm sure Foxit will consider making A4 readers for us if and when there's a reliable production stream and the cost drops enough for it to make sense to offer such a thing.

Don't get me wrong - I would prefer to be buying a letter-size ebook reader than a 6" reader, but realistically that technology is still a few years out.