On the technical side, the ereader has a few issues still to deal with: is the grey screen, which works well in bright light, suitable for what most users want? Is a colour screen required?

	The type of screen relates very much to the battery life, and everybody agrees we need a one day life between recharge and a bright screen (the gray one) generally needs more power.
	The E ink screens, with their monochrome type, are not well-suited to moving images and indeed not even well-suited to many of the fonts found around the globe.

So the first big issue for the e-book readers is ‘should they be designed to be book emulators or should they be looking to provide a greatly enhanced experience for the written word by incorporating music background sounds images’?

	So will ebooks need the ability to link and search? Do readers need WiFi and Bluetooth?
	Both add significantly to the cost of the device and how soon before you turn the ereader into a phone or computer?

This invites the question ‘how many devices is the average user going to have?’ Already most people have a mobile phone and laptops are commonplace. But are consumers going to add a specialised ereader and perhaps a colour tablet machine to their inventory?

Do people want a keyboard on the machine or are they happy to have a touch screen on which they can type?

And just how big do they want these machines to be? A mobile phone is excellent for navigation or reading small pieces of information, but is the phone really going to be the preferred device for reading significant blocks of text?

A new category-term is being applied to the technology: lean forward or lean back machines, depending on whether people need to lean forward when using the machine, for example laptops, where people have to concentrate. The less formal machines let you lean back when you use them. Machines, such as a tablet which people can hold out in front of them and enjoy when relaxing on a sofa are perhaps more appropriate for a newspaper or a television screen and perhaps an ebook.

In this context the development of the Epub 3 standard, which is going to be the new standard for ebooks, is very relevant. It will influence the way the hardware designers assemble their machines. The new format will allow them to do much more than the present version 2 which is standard on ereaders.

The next 18 months will see a great deal of experimentation relating to ereaders and it would be a brave investor who would bet on the final outcome. So we should expect to see many models emerge onto the market for the consumer to make their choice as to what they really want from this emerging piece of hardware.

 

There were about 50 different models of ebook on display. There were some firms from the Far East who were ready to make new models to order with a pick & mix menu for the size and facilities.