Why I love Japanese

Actually, I don't care either way about Japanese. But the written forms of Japanese and Chinese are complex glyphs, not easily rendered by low resolution displays. And that's why there's a big push towards higher resolution displays in cellphones and pocket computers of all sorts -- so that the Japanese can read more than a few characters at once. This serves my desire -- a high res display for reading books.

Now, a standard mass market paperback is basically a stack of 6" x 4" readable areas. At 300 dpi, that's 1800 x 1200. 300 dpi is basic laser quality -- you'd see smooth fonts, and given a decent contrast ratio, would never get eyestrain. At 120 dpi, that's 720 x 480 -- conveniently, the same size as a widescreen DVD. It might not be paper-perfect, but it's certainly adequate for text display. Consider that a standard Palm screen is 160x160, and the top-of-the-line is 480x320.

Hitachi just announced an 800x480 2.9" color display suitable for portable devices.

Why I love Japanese

Actually, I don't care either way about Japanese. But the written forms of Japanese and Chinese are complex glyphs, not easily rendered by low resolution displays. And that's why there's a big push towards higher resolution displays in cellphones and pocket computers of all sorts -- so that the Japanese can read more than a few characters at once. This serves my desire -- a high res display for reading books.

Now, a standard mass market paperback is basically a stack of 6" x 4" readable areas. At 300 dpi, that's 1800 x 1200. 300 dpi is basic laser quality -- you'd see smooth fonts, and given a decent contrast ratio, would never get eyestrain. At 120 dpi, that's 720 x 480 -- conveniently, the same size as a widescreen DVD. It might not be paper-perfect, but it's certainly adequate for text display. Consider that a standard Palm screen is 160x160, and the top-of-the-line is 480x320.

Hitachi just announced an 800x480 2.9" color display suitable for portable devices.