Notion adam ink VS apple ipad?

Posted on July 18th, 2010 in apple ipad

First of all, I must say that, I love/have Apple products like iPod Touch, which I feel, only Apple can make, (But we should not be blind followers of brands, as we are buying things to meet my requirements and not vice-versa i.e, create personal requirements for XXX company’s products)

Though it all depends upon personal choice, I feel Adam is far superior to iPad. the only area I feel iPad (may be) superior is Apple build quality. (Unlike the usual novelty of design in Apple products, iPad still uses the old 1024×768 resolution and aspect ratio – a little surprising).

iPad has already released, but I would rather wait and buy an Adam for the following reasons which a normal user like me cares most

1. Unlike iPad (which is just an LCD tablet) – Adam both serves as a ‘real’ Ebook Reader + LCD Tablet. (Since it has not been reviewed after a production release, not absolutely sure about this, but various sources on the internet mentions this. so I hope this must be true). some sources mentions that Adam has incorporated both the E-Ink display + LCD backlight display (wondering how they could achieve this). following is a video wherein Adam is shown in direct sunlight, and still, the text is readable, but an apple notebook shown next to it, becomes totally unreadable in direct sunlight – the differnce was amazing!) – the prospect that we can use Adam both as an Ebook reader and a tablet PC is amazing.

The video is here – http://techie-buzz.com/interviews/notion-ink-ceo-rohan-shravan-interview.html

There are lot and lot and lot of difference between reading a book on an Ebook reader like Sony EReader or Amazon Kindle (which uses a different screen technology eg. E-Ink than the regular LCD technology. In the former, we won’t feel any eye-strain unlike from an LCD screen. Another fact is that E-Ink display does not use electricity continuously for display as it is not backlit – more info about the technology is here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_Ink

The end result is that the charge retention time for Ebook readers ranges in weeks or in months but in LCD it is just hours. In E-Ink, the power consumption happens not during display but during page changes so the measure is not hourse but how many page changes eg. Sony EReader supports 7000 page changes on a single recharge.

So iPad can’t replace Ebook reader like Sony Reader or Amazon Kindle etc. and at the same time Sony EReader and Kindle are not regular tablets also. But what if we can replace both by a single device? Adam (promises that) we have the best of both worlds, it is like we have iPad and Sony Reader both in one piece, if Adam can achieve this, it would be an amazing convergence of technologies.

2. Multi-tasking – it is a simple and basic requirement of any user. it is just as basic and simple as a wish like listening to music while sending a mail etc. and without multi-tasking any OS is incomplete. Adam wins definitely on this point.

3. Multiple OS Support – the future is heterogeneity in features and support for Operating Systesms and anything which hampers this, should be avoided, as otherwise we will be ending up in propitiatory bondage.