Disadvantages of E-paper in Organizations

New technology always comes with kinks and bugs that need to be worked out before that technology can live up to its potential. Some of the disadvantages with using E-paper will diminish with time and feedback R&D, other disadvantages are inherent to the specific technology. This distinction is an important one. We have already looked at the pros or E-paper, now we will discuss the potential cons.

E-paper is riding on the crest of the new technology wave and the expectations we hold of its capabilities are bound to be too high. E-paper is certainly doomed to not live up to at least some of these expectations including; display capabilities, durability, and longevity. These possible limitations are ones that are most likely to start disappear after its introduction to the market, but are ones the first buyers will likely face. (1)

The display capabilities of e-paper currently have several restrictions including: refresh rate, colour display, and zoom and scrolling options. (2) The low refresh rate or electronic paper means that pages load slow and can’t be quickly manipulated like when viewing a pdf document on your laptop. Instead, text and images take a few seconds to change which means limited or non-existent scrolling or zooming options. Colour is the other hurdle that e-paper technology has to overcome to be a viable alternative option to normal paper. Although some companies, including LG.Phillips have shown E-paper capable of displaying colour, that colour is nowhere near the quality of printed paper or computer screens in terms or clarity, vividness and the number of colour tones available.

Obstacles with durability and longevity also pose problems to E-paper sales. People need to be able to trust E-paper to reproduce crisp and clear images and text for years after the E-paper is initially purchased. Currently E-paper tends to develop problems with its display after too much manipulation, similar to “burned out” pixels on LCD screens.

One more disadvantage that E-paper shares with other technology is its lack of tangibility. Paper is paper, and will still be there for you to read for a long time short of something like a fire destroying it. With E-paper as with computers the pages are stored digitally on some sort of hard drive. Can people trust that their data will not be erased if someone accidentally steps on their E-reader? Or sets a magnet on top of it? The loss of data because of a computer crash is something anyone who has been alive in this country for the last ten years can relate to. Some companies have claimed to have produced E-paper as study as real paper, but the true test will be how consumers find the E-paper`s durability. (3)

There is no doubt that E-paper will be snatched up and bought by many hungry tech consumers hours after its mass introduction to the market. Indeed many people on the cutting edge of technology are already able to purchase E-paper units. However some of these limitations may prevent the masses from fully embracing Electronic Paper until they are addressed.

1) http://thefutureofthings.com/articles/1000/the-future-of-electronic-paper.html

2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epaper#Disadvantages

3) http://www.eptsolutions.com/Db/ept/news/pdf/Sales_Leaflet.PDF