“Screen breakage is the number one complaint with today’s e-reader technology. Our display can take a lot of rough and tumble,” says Joe Eschbach of Plastic Logic.
Why don’t I believe that?
Perhaps because I’ve never once seen someone complain about an ebook reader screen breaking. Sure, I don’t work for a company making a much-hyped reader like Joe Eschbach does, but I do read a lot about ebook readers.
A common complaint is that they are ridiculously expensive, rivaled only by the ridiculous expense of the ebooks themselves. Also, they don’t really do anything except allow you to read things, and who wants to carry around yet another device that only does one thing, even if it does it better than anything else?
It sounds like Plastic Logic has some really cool technology, but a poor understanding of what the market wants, and how to serve it. A magazine-sized ebook reader is even harder to carry around than the smaller Sony Reader or Amazon Kindle, making one of the most common complaints even worse.
It’s disappointing that New Scientist actually took the time to publish this article, which reads like a press release from Plastic Logic more than a scientific article.
Article: Flexible electronic books to hit market soon – tech – 23 February 2009 – New Scientist.
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