Otherwise, the CES show floor is absolutely littered with electronic ink also-rans, hybrids, and new screen technologies looking to knock-off the incumbent Kindle, underlying E Ink technology, and Amazon juggernaut.
Bookeen's Cybook Opus is now definitely the best eBook Reader of its kind: thanks to the very latest E-Ink electronic ink technology, its screen offers the most comfortable reading experience, comparable to paper.
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There's a reason, of course -- the current e-ink technology is simply not built for web browsing -- the page refreshes a lot during scrolling, images don't look great and in the case of the Kobo, there's no pinch-to-zoom, so you've got to rely on an ever-present slider on the bottom to make things larger.
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Designed for portability, the Z340 combines a 14.0 megapixel digital camera with a ZINK-enabled printer using the ink-free Zero Ink Printing Technology from ZINK Imaging to deliver a 3x4'' print - the same size as the classic Polaroid photos that captured millions of special memories over the past 63 years.
In April 2004 E Ink's technology was approved for mass production of Sony's electronic books.
Wilcox laid off half of the company's senior-level employees and promoted middle managers with a strong grasp of E Ink's technology and the manufacturing process.
As well as being used for in-store signage, E Ink's technology powers Sony's e-book reader, and in April, Seiko, a watchmaker, unveiled a digital watch built around an E Ink display.
Home Dialysis Plus in Portland, Oregon has an all-in-one dialysis machine that is half the weight of NxStage's and uses ink-jet technology from Hewlett-Packard to continuously mix small amounts of dialysis solution on the fly.
Home Dialysis Plus in Portland, Ore. has an all-in-one dialysis machine that is half the weight of NxStage's and uses ink-jet technology from Hewlett-Packard to continuously mix small amounts of dialysis solution on the fly.
It is also ergonomically designed, made with Bookeen's HSIS technology (High Speed Ink System) as well as smart connectivity technology.
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But a fast-growing New York City company called T-Ink is pushing the technology into new realms, especially toys.
Friend's large molecules can be mixed into a solution and sprayed onto a screen, using the same technology as ink-jet printers.
It's also secured a partnership with E Ink to use the latest in ruggedized e-paper technology and is hoping to raise enough funds to make Popslate a reality.
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In addition to letting users dedicate different tasks to different screens, Mr Martynov suggested users might want to display important information such as an airline boarding pass or a map on the e-ink screen to take advantage of the fact that the technology only uses power to refresh - and not maintain - its image.
More than 20 million flexible plastic displays are on the market today, according to Sriram Peruvemba, vice-president of marketing for E Ink, the company that developed the low-power display technology for the Amazon Kindle and many other e-book readers.
Indeed, E Ink has identified 700 types of products that could use its technology, including power tools (which could show the amount of power remaining) and car key readers (which could report such details as the amount of gas left in a car and the vehicle's location in a parking lot).
To staunch the red ink, Novells board had recently installed Eric Schmidt, the youngish former technology officer for Sun Microsystems, as CEO.
Wilcox believes E Ink is out of the woods, and he is starting to tout its technology beyond the lab.
The technology generated a lot of excitement early on, in part because E Ink's founders had a tendency to overpromise.
With technology from Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, E-Ink recently demonstrated a prototype of a flexible page display that was driven by plastic transistors.
"I felt like I had this great responsibility to make sure this technology didn't get lost, " says Wilcox who, with E Ink's founders and senior management, owns a minority stake in the company.
The technology's versatility across all display sizes is made possible through cost-effective ink jet printing that requires no vacuum deposition.
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Among other things, it makes microflex circuits, a technology 3M nearly abandoned in the early 1980s, which tell Hewlett-Packard printers how much ink to dispense.
From innovative startups such as GO Corporation to some of the world's most successful consumer technology companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Motorola and Sony, pens have consistently yielded red ink.
But the technology is still improving, notes Mike McCreary, vice-president of research and advanced development at E Ink, a pioneer of electrophoretic displays based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
But whereas E-Ink and Gyricon require expensive custom-designed manufacturing facilities and new equipment to produce their displays, Ntera's technology is specifically suited for existing plant and equipment used by LCD manufacturers, which already dominate the electronic display market.
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