Mike Cane hits the target on color eBooks …

Truly, the first device that can do color eBooks will change things forever … There are three recent signs — as well as a total wild card — that point to possible dramatic changes in the eBook-reading hardware landscape. …

… The first is Samsung hitting the pedal hard on OLED screen manufacturing.

… The second development has been Hewlett-Packard demonstrating color eInk screens.

… The third piece of this puzzle: Amtek Rumored to Show Slate Netbook at CES 2009.

… The Wild Card in all this? … Pixel Qi, which brags it has revolutionary screens that will basically run on electrons by osmosis instead of the greedy sip-sip-sip of current technology.

Sad to say, this is one of Mike’s last blog postings — His incisive comments on eBooks will be missed.

Andrew Smith, at the Dallas News, writes on the same subject, in article — Why e-books will rule …

… Nearly all non-fiction books cry out for far more illustration than they contain, but the costs of adding pictures and charts (especially color pictures and charts) are prohibitive. That’s why you see so many non-fiction books with all the photos bunched up into a couple of glossy-page sections in the center. It’s the only cheap(ish) way to get the job done. Color E-Ink will change that forever. Nearly all non-fiction books cry out for far more illustration than they contain, but the costs of adding pictures and charts (especially color pictures and charts) are prohibitive. That’s why you see so many non-fiction books with all the photos bunched up into a couple of glossy-page sections in the center. It’s the only cheap(ish) way to get the job done. Color E-Ink will change that forever.

Scientific and medical books, which make heavy use of color illustrations, especially stand to benefit from the advent of color eBooks, maybe lowering the prices, which can break a student’s budget for print textbooks.