Libra 2 Discontinued

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Penny

Windows Vista had a poor launch and was an inferior product to XP in many regards. However, it paved the path that led to arguably the greatest OS of all time Windows 7. In fact, many people just skipped Vista and went directly from XP-->7.

That's not historically true. None of it. I was involved in sales/support/installs of Windows for decades. I could write 1000s of words with references. You could switch off Vista eye candy and have it very like XP or Win7. Win7 was really SP1 of Vista. Not a new version.
Some computers advertised as Vista ready were not even good for XP and terrible for Vista. Win7 was not the best MS OS ever.

Originally Posted by Penny

Same situation here, no one is holding a gun to your head and forcing a purchase of the current model.

Where is the 7″ mono?

Originally Posted by Penny

I'm also not stating that the current version of Kaleido is better at displaying BW text then Carta.

It's not even close to Carta or Carta 1200 for sharpness, contrast and usability in ambient light.

Originally Posted by Penny

However, the fact that everyone is acting so surprised and disgusted that the Libra2 was discontinued is mind boggling. Three obvious down sides to having both models:
1. Logistical nightmare to produce both models,
2. Squeeze gross margins(think economies of scale)
3. Creating artificial competition between their own products for the same market share.

1) Not true.
2) Not true
3) It's not the same market. The Kaleido is only really good for comics. The mono eink is much better for novels.

What about the Clara 6″? New models in mono and colour. Some tiny companies compared to Kobo have plenty of models.

Originally Posted by Penny

Clearly Kobo believes that the Kaleido technology is the better path into the future. As the technology continues to get better, it will outpace Carta capabilities at a wide margin.

I doubt, unless run by accountants panicking about Amazon.
The Kaleido replaces Triton, which was basically an LCD type filter on eink. It's a compromise using printed coloured dots smaller than the pixels, so only does poor colour. It's a mono eink screen with a 2 x 2 pattern, so 300 dpi gives 150 dpi colour but only about 4000+ shades of pastel and murk because the panel has 14 greys, black and white. Because the dots only cover part of the pixel you can drive it as if it's 300 dpi, but certain dot spacings and patterns will give false colour, so there is an "anti-rainbow" setting which limits mono to 150 dpi.

The idea is about 5 years old and been in products more than 3 years. Kaleido eink can't come close to the same panel without the printed dots.
ACeP is a different technology and about x10 too slow for ereaders and eink is already x10 to x200 slower than LCD & OLED.

LCD could abandon mono (it's still a mono panel) because graphic panels with enough dots for a reader or computer always needed a backlight. They don't bother quoting a mono resolution, or providing drivers as the 3840x2160 can be on a 12″ panel that's really 3840x6480, 11,520x2160 or 7680x4320 mono pixels. QLED is actually LCD with red and green "quantum" dots and clear for blue, with a blue LED backlight. LCD has 120 to 1000 levels of "grey". Actually it's always transparent. It works by the fact the liquid is crystalline style rods that are rotated by an electric field. So if it's fed polarised light it appears to go clear (backlight) or dark.

Colour only eink would be the death of eink readers. Too small a niche.

[lumping-sugar66]

It's not just Libra, It's Clara 2E as well. Just a month or so ago I sent my Clara 2E for a warranty swap due to charging issues. I hope I won't find myself in a similar situation again and they'll send me a colour one as a replacement. No one who just reads normal books has anything to do with colour and I don't want to pay the price of having a second filter dimming the screen. Ugh!

The Canadian website has no listing for Clara, Libra 2E. But there's a "Kobo Clara BW", not sure if this is the same device with a new color and branding, I'll do more research.
https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ereaders

Edit: It's not. According to "https://blog.the-ebook-reader.com/2024/04/16/kobo-clara-list-of-differences-between-4-models/" The notable difference between 2E and BW is the use of E Ink Carta 1300 screen instead of E Ink Carta 1200 screen, promising better contrast..

[Quoth]

Yes, the Clara BW is a genuine replacement for the Clara 2E. Which is why I mentioned Clara.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Penny

Same situation here, no one is holding a gun to your head and forcing a purchase of the current model.

And if something happens to my Libra 2 and I want to replace it, there's nothing to replace it with - there's no 7'' black and white model.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by Penny

It's surprising how many people are criticizing Kobo despite their improvements and upgrades to the e-ink model. ...

The Libra Colour is not an improvement over the Libra 2 — not for folks who want the best contrast they can get. Apparently the Libra Colour has a significantly poorer battery life than the Libra 2 also.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Penny

It's surprising how many people are criticizing Kobo despite their improvements and upgrades to the e-ink model. Why would they offer an inferior product and purposely suppress the advancement of their e-ink technology? Historically, companies have always had to force the adoption of new technology, much to the dismay of legacy users. Floppy disks were replaced by USB/CDs, wired headphones transitioned to Bluetooth, the list goes on and on. The commonality is that these advancements had to be forced onto the consumers until they were able to make sense of the long-term vision. It seems like everyone here wants to stick with antiquated Carta e-ink technology instead of adopting the far more versatile Kaleido e-ink. If Kobo remains tied to Carta technology, they risk losing market share to competitors using the next generation of Kaleido e-ink.

Because when using Kaleido with plain old B&W text, the screen is considerably darker. It's also not as crisp and clear. So for the usage of reading a plain text based book, it's not going to look nearly as good.

Kobo's idea to discontinued the Libra 2 is really bad. If they plan to replace it with a LIbra BW and the new Carta 1300 screen, then they really should say so now rather then later.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by Penny

Windows Vista had a poor launch and was an inferior product to XP in many regards. However, it paved the path that led to arguably the greatest OS of all time Windows 7. In fact, many people just skipped Vista and went directly from XP-->7.

As you say, people kept using XP until Windows 7 came out. That's basically what several of us are saying about the current color eReaders. Wait until they actually match the quality of the earlier product.

With Windows (if you wanted to continue using it) you didn't really have a choice. Those who use eReaders still do have choices. BTW, Vista is why I moved to Linux.

There's also the matter of extra expense for a color screen that many (if not most) customers don't need or want.

Originally Posted by Penny

...However, the fact that everyone is acting so surprised and disgusted that the Libra2 was discontinued is mind boggling. Three obvious down sides to having both models:
1. Logistical nightmare to produce both models,
2. Squeeze gross margins(think economies of scale)
3. Creating artificial competition between their own products for the same market share.

Why is it a "logistical nightmare" to produce both products? PocketBook is a smaller company and they have no trouble producing both black and white and color versions of their various models. And Kobo will still produce both a Clara Colour and a Clara BW, why not the same for the Libra?

Competition between their own products? Maybe you look at it differently than I do but, for me, color readers are more for reading manga or PDF textbooks, completely unnecessary for novels or most non-fiction books. So I look at the color eReaders as competition against tablets, not black and white eReaders.

Originally Posted by Penny

Clearly Kobo believes that the Kaleido technology is the better path into the future. As the technology continues to get better, it will outpace Carta capabilities at a wide margin.

I think color eReaders are a long way away from the matching the quality of the Carta screens and Carta battery life. I think this is a premature move. As you said about Vista, most XP Windows users waited until Windows 7, completely skipping Vista. Some, like me, went to Linux and never came back. This may end of turning potential Kobo buyers into PocketBook, Tolino or Kindle customers.

We'll see, I guess.

[Penny]

Originally Posted by Quoth

That's not historically true. None of it. I was involved in sales/support/installs of Windows for decades. I could write 1000s of words with references. You could switch off Vista eye candy and have it very like XP or Win7. Win7 was really SP1 of Vista. Not a new version.

You in fact are the one that is incorrect. Performance benchmarking around Vista consistently failed when compared to XP. It required much stronger hardware to support questionable features such as Aero Glass which would still bottleneck the system due to GPU and RAM constraints. Additionally, there was the lack of driver supportand software compatibility upon release. These factors combined with the overall lack of user adoption was why the Win7 release date had to be expedited (Vista didnt even last 3 years...)

As rcentros wisely stated, folks at the time had much more constraints around being bounded to an OS. Switching to Apple or Linux would be a much more costly expense. News Flash!! Kobo isn't the only supplier of BW e-readers on the market. If you aren't happy with their current model feel free to check out a Pocketbook or a Kindle.

Additionally, people in this thread are having trouble understanding why it would be a logistical nightmare to produce both models so I'll happily break it down. Even though the devices have an identical external look, the internals are anything but that. Has anyone considered that apart from a screen there is a whole different set of electronics to enable the (much stronger) battery and support of the stylus pen???
The production line doesn't just support an interchangeable switch between the Libra models. To put it simply, in order to produce a unit of the Libra2, a unit of the Libra Color would need to get sacrificed. Along with the time and labor to reconfigure the production line.
This would lead into my next point of economies of scale. Kobo's most profitable path is to lower the cost per unit as much as possible. This is done by bulk ordering parts from their manufactures as well as being efficient on the production side. I'll leave it to you guys to do the remaining math on the best strategy to increase profitability.

[Penny]

Originally Posted by Quoth

That's not historically true. None of it. I was involved in sales/support/installs of Windows for decades. I could write 1000s of words with references. You could switch off Vista eye candy and have it very like XP or Win7. Win7 was really SP1 of Vista. Not a new version.

You in fact are the one that is incorrect. Performance benchmarking around Vista consistently failed when compared to XP. It required much stronger hardware to support questionable features such as Aero Glass which would still bottleneck the system due to GPU and RAM constraints. Additionally, there was the lack of driver supportand software compatibility upon release. These factors combined with the overall lack of user adoption was why the Win7 release date had to be expedited (Vista didnt even last 3 years...)

As rcentros wisely stated, folks at the time had much more constraints around being bounded to an OS. Switching to Apple or Linux would be a much more costly expense. News Flash!! Kobo isn't the only supplier of BW e-readers on the market. If you aren't happy with their current model feel free to check out a Pocketbook or a Kindle.

Additionally, people in this thread are having trouble understanding why it would be a logistical nightmare to produce both models so I'll happily break it down. Even though the devices have an identical external look, the internals are anything but that. Has anyone considered that apart from a screen there is a whole different set of electronics to enable the (much stronger) battery and support of the stylus pen???
The production line doesn't just support an interchangeable switch between the Libra models. To put it simply, in order to produce a unit of the Libra2, a unit of the Libra Color would need to get sacrificed. Along with the time and labor to reconfigure the production line.
This would lead into my next point of economies of scale. Kobo's most profitable path is to lower the cost per unit as much as possible. This is done by bulk ordering parts from their manufactures as well as being efficient on the production side. I'll leave it to you guys to do the remaining math on the best startegy to increase profitability.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Penny

It seems like everyone here wants to stick with antiquated Carta e-ink technology instead of adopting the far more versatile Kaleido e-ink. If Kobo remains tied to Carta technology, they risk losing market share to competitors using the next generation of Kaleido e-ink.

Sorry to burst your bubble but a Kaleido screen is simply a coloured filter layer in front of a Carta display. If you pull the CFA layer out of the sandwich in the attached image, you have a B&W Carta display.

The real next generation of display is eInk's Gallery/ACeP screens. These have 4 different colours of particle in a microcup and by positioning the particles, you can generate more colours than Kaleido 3 is capable of and without reducing the display resolution. The problem is that positioning those particles is a slow process. It can take up to 1.5 seconds to rewrite a colour page in quality mode.

For the construction of the ACeP display, see this image from eInk's site:
ACeP microcup since the animated GIF gets converted to a jpg when I try using it as an attached image.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by Penny

It's surprising how many people are criticizing Kobo despite their improvements and upgrades to the e-ink model. Why would they offer an inferior product and purposely suppress the advancement of their e-ink technology? Historically, companies have always had to force the adoption of new technology, much to the dismay of legacy users. Floppy disks were replaced by USB/CDs, wired headphones transitioned to Bluetooth, the list goes on and on. The commonality is that these advancements had to be forced onto the consumers until they were able to make sense of the long-term vision. It seems like everyone here wants to stick with antiquated Carta e-ink technology instead of adopting the far more versatile Kaleido e-ink. If Kobo remains tied to Carta technology, they risk losing market share to competitors using the next generation of Kaleido e-ink.

Not wanting to use an less-suitable and still-new technology is not being a luddite.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Sorry to burst your bubble but a Kaleido screen is simply a coloured filter layer in front of a Carta display. If you pull the CFA layer out of the sandwich in the attached image, you have a B&W Carta display.

The real next generation of display is eInk's Gallery/ACeP screens. These have 4 different colours of particle in a microcup and by positioning the particles, you can generate more colours than Kaleido 3 is capable of and without reducing the display resolution. The problem is that positioning those particles is a slow process. It can take up to 1.5 seconds to rewrite a colour page in quality mode.

Yes, kaleido is never going to be as good as mono Carta and may not get much better. It's not even new technology.

Also ACeP while much better colour may never be fast enough for an ereader and might not ever be as good in ambient light as any Carta version for mono.

We may be close to "peak" eink. Carta 1200 is in reality little better than Carta. They seem to have maxed out at 300 dpi years ago and took them a long while to get from 227 dpi to 300 dpi for 10.x″ panels.

I like my Sage and Libra. I like the mono eink for a novel, but for anything else the Nxtpaper is far better. I've bought two 10.3″ ereaders and they are pointless. Nearly as pointless as my 9.7″ 150 dpi DXG (though at least it was a clearance sale).

I'll read novels mostly on the Sage. I can't see me ever using the 10.3″ eink models or buying a larger eink, or a colour eink. I nearly bought a Scribe and feel it was a narrow escape. Years before the 10.3″ 227 dpi models I almost bought a big Sony DPT. But they are too heavy, too slow, too walled and low resolution.
I'll likely get a Nxtpaper 14 or 14 pro for bigger stuff instead of 16″ 2560x1440 laptop screen.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Sorry to burst your bubble but a Kaleido screen is simply a coloured filter layer in front of a Carta display. If you pull the CFA layer out of the sandwich in the attached image, you have a B&W Carta display.

The real next generation of display is eInk's Gallery/ACeP screens. These have 4 different colours of particle in a microcup and by positioning the particles, you can generate more colours than Kaleido 3 is capable of and without reducing the display resolution. The problem is that positioning those particles is a slow process. It can take up to 1.5 seconds to rewrite a colour page in quality mode.

For the construction of the ACeP display, see this image from eInk's site:
ACeP microcup since the animated GIF gets converted to a jpg when I try using it as an attached image.

If only it was easy to pull out the CFA layer from the Libra Colour. Then we'd have a Libra BW.

[Aleron Ives]

Originally Posted by Penny

the fact that everyone is acting so surprised and disgusted that the Libra2 was discontinued is mind boggling.

We aren't upset that the Libra 2 was discontinued. We're upset that Kobo didn't release a Libra BW to replace it before discontinuing it. The Clara BW will take over for the Clara 2E after it gets discontinued, but there is no Libra 2 successor right now, and that's concerning.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

If only it was easy to pull out the CFA layer from the Libra Colour. Then we'd have a Libra BW.

It's printed on top of the top of the eink top cover and then the light pipe layer "stuck" on. Next is the touch capacitive parts, which on an integrated panel will be partly deposited on the light pipe layer (probably tin thin enough to be transparent.

So, not easy and some printed inks don't easily dissolve in anything. I did industrial control panel screen printing for a while and once the ink set it wasn't removable. The screens had to be cleaned at once while wet and washing off the stencil was a pain too. It was soft, rollered on, exposed to UV via mask and backing peeled off. Then the unwanted portions washed off (I think where UV was blocked by mask).

We usually charged for a screen too in case we couldn't clean it. We gave it up. Too much work for small runs of custom control panels.

They might be "custom ink jet" printing the CFA (the coloured dots) as they are small for screen printing, but ICs are using 2nm smallest detail photolithography by ASML using short UV light.