Sony Reader might be just the ticket to kick the e-book market into high gear

[mandy]

Electronic books have traditionally gone straight from the manufacturer to the remainders bin -- but the market has never gone away entirely, despite years of tepid sales and failed predictions.

Now a new device from Sony is generating buzz worthy of a Stephen King novel. Some people are even wondering whether the Sony Reader might be just the ticket to kick the e-book market into high gear...

The result is a display that looks far more like ordinary paper than a liquid crystal display, because the pixels reflect ambient light rather than transmit light from behind. There's no flicker, because the pixels are completely static (in an LCD or a cathode-ray tube display, by contrast, pixels need to be "refreshed" 60 times per second or more).

The E Ink technology also conserves batteries because current is used only when pixels need to change their color -- between virtual page turns, the Reader consumes no current at all. Its batteries will last for about 7,500 pages...

full article: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,7..._tophead_1