The premise is that reading long-form books on laptops or computers is not very popular. OLPC is just another laptop with LCD screen.
E-ink display technology must be expensive to license. You can buy a protype kit from eink.com for $3000-$4000. Kit uses Linux. Kindle also uses Linux and has source code available.
The reason people don't like reading book on laptops is basically because most people use Windows, and fonts look pretty bad under Windows.
"fonts look pretty bad under Windows"
Fonts look pretty good when reading a PDF file in Adobe Reader on Windows.
Short-form reading is popular on computers. So you are implying Macs have better looking fonts. So is long book reading a killer app on Macs?
I can see how a small tablet form factor allows people to curl up and read a book with a nice cup of coffee. A laptop is just too big and clumsy to do that.
"Fonts look pretty good when reading a PDF file in Adobe Reader on Windows."
Excellent point. I guess that shows that Adobe's people are more talented than MSFT's.
I like what you say about a small form factor for "curling up". I think scrolling is also awkward on devices. I remember trying to read books on a Palm device-- not enough words per "page" and much scrolling.
Seems to me an eye-following device might not be such a bad thing......
I agree. The basic premise is that the smaller form factor you can hold in one hand, the lack of scrolling, and the E-ink make the Kindle much more like reading a book than a laptop does. I doubt it has much to do with fonts. It is more about the size, the flicker and the static one page at a time model.
Commenting by HaloScan
