By Jo Best, 15 May 2007 12:25
NEWS
LG.Philips LCD has created what it claims is the first colour A4 'e-paper'.
The hardware company has now created a flexible 14.1-inch colour display - around the same size as an A4 page - following on from a black and white version which it created last year.
The display uses thin-film transistors arranged over foil, allowing the paper display to return to its original shape after being bent despite being only 300 micrometres thick.
According to the company, the e-paper will still present viewable images even if bent.
Several organisations have been looking into the possibilities of flexible displays, including e-paper fans Plastic Logic, while others have predicted there will be digitial newspapers available from next year.
Microsoft's chairman Bill Gates has also suggested paper could be on its way out, predicting that soon all news will be consumed digitally.
Speaking at a recent event, Gates said reading is going to go completely online: "Today for people who read newspapers and magazines, even the most avid PC user probably still does quite a bit of reading on print but as the device moves down in size and simplicity, that will change."
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1. Graham Coles
Not convinced paper is on the way out in the near future.
People said the same thing back in the 80s. The electronic office is here, no more paper; except, of course, the nine dozen instruction manuals that came with the hardware and software, and the hundreds of pages of printed e-mails, memos and junk faxes produced daily.
Go into an office or newsagent now and see what the electronic office has achieved--almost exponential growth in printed material!
Unless portable devices:
- Cost about a tenner.
- Have built-in secure wireless connections that can download newspapers from outside a shop.
- Can run indefinitely on a single AA battery (recharged regularly by the built-in solar cell of course).
then lets face facts, paper is here to stay for the duration.
(By the way, can I patent that 'invention'?)