Will e-Readers save the world?

I am the type of nerd that can’t handle papers. If I get papers I don’t know where to put it and finally I will forget that I ever had it or can’t find it when I need it. Sometimes however I print large volumes of paper for use in my work. Large volumes are not very convenient to read from the pc-monitor. Paper is much more relaxing for the eyes.

The world consumption of paper has increased 400% in the last 40 years. Close to 4 billion trees or 35% of the total trees cut around the world are used in paper industries globally.

An e-Reader is a device that is used to display documents. There are a bunch of e-Readers available such as Amazon Kindle,  Sony’s e-Reader and Fujitsu’s FLEPia. Currently they all suffers from either being too small or too expensive and of course the black-and-white displays, except for FLEPia which has color, are limiting as well. Another problem that some e-Readers have is a very low refresh rate of the display. You have to wait several seconds for the screen to turn page.

In general, Kindle of today is just not good enough to replace paper. I know that many are using Kindle but they are in the first wave of users. The forgiving type: Wow! Look I can load documents and read it! Cool!
Kindle displays documents in black and white and the format is too small. The price, however,  is almost OK: ~$350.

The latest FLEPia has a color display, still a little bit too small and way too expensive! Most new e-Readers, including Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s e-Reader, use electronic-paper technology that is easier to read than conventional displays. But e-paper still suffers in comparison to conventional liquid crystal displays in terms of refresh speed and vividness of color. FLEPia is LCD-based and first in the industry with color display. FLEPia may still have a way to go.  1000€  is just too much. I think that people will hesitate to buy when the price is on the same level as a good laptop.

I expect new types of e-Readers to come soon with A4-format and really thin. One candidate is Plastic Logic that announced an e-Reader to be launched in the beginning of 2010. It is a black and white device. If the price is right, such as 200€, this will be a success and I am sure that it will be easy to get back the invested money, fairly quickly. I mean paper cost, ink cost, printer maintenance and other. E-Ink, the company behind Kindle, has announced development of a new e-Reader. The preliminary plan is  late 2010 and then it is a color display but the price tag is unknown.

The cost per printed paper is something between 20 cents to 1€ depending on how you calculate it. If the cost for an e-Reader is less than 200€ it is easy to get back the investment fairly quick. That should mean much less paper used worldwide. Even if it takes a while to change peoples mind there are some really good business cases not only in office environments. For instance within manufacturing of complicated products and products with many variants, all over the world loads of paper is used during the assembly. The assembly instructions are following the product along the assembly line.

The feeling of a real book have its own merits especially an old one. I regard this as an art form but for how long will that be the standard book? How long will we have newspapers on paper every morning? Will we have newspapers at all? BTW, I stopped reading morning papers a long time ago.

A lot of forests to save and of all trees used by man, it is the process of making paper that is the most environmentally unfriendly technology.

Eventually the e-Readers will give a reading experience as comfortable as paper with non-scattered displays and easy to use interfaces. Maybe e-Readers will not save the world but they sure will be a good help.