The Fujitsu Flepia is the first e-book reader to have a color e-ink screen, but it probably has the highest price of $1,025. That is probably a little too high for most consumers, even if they are tired of monochromatic screens. Fortunately, iRex has promised to make a high-tech color, writable ebook reader by 2011. For those of you not familiar with iRex, they are a Philips company spinoff who just completed a second version of the Iliad, an e-book reader with an 8.1 inch display, 256 MB worth of memory, and a $600 price tag.
One can only hope that iRex’s future color e-book reader will be lower in its price, but the company does promise a brightness level three times higher of most displays, thanks to their “subtractive color mixing”.
Subtractive color mixing is some new e-ink technology that sounds unique to iRex, and it will allow “print-quality visuals to magazines and other full-color publications”.
Too bad iRex doesn’t have an exact date when they plan on getting this color e-book reader on the market. I would really like to mark it on my 2011 calendar (not that I have one). Of course, by the time we get to 2011, every electronics company might be offering a full-color e-book reader. Then all those monochromatic Kindles and their derivatives will end up looking like a dial-up modems.
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