On: Author Steven Johnson on what e-books are missing: "Skimming."

[ThomPete]

If the CPU usage isn't a problem then that seems pretty easily solvable. I can certainly see how it could work.

But I take it's the processing part that's the problem?

[farnsworth → ThomPete]

I think it's more just the screen update speed. You can flip pages about as quickly as the screen will update, which is fairly slow. Also, the visible page area is much smaller than a normal book, especially a textbook or a journal, and you can only see one page at a time. It makes for slow skimming and sort of tunnel vision that causes a loss of the visual structure.

[sek → farnsworth]

Sounds like a task for the GPU.

[dangrossman → sek]

A faster GPU won't make the e-ink microcapsules rearrange more quickly.

[sek → dangrossman]

I heard from the kindle gen 4 announcement that the processor rate has influence on the refreshing speed.

[sek → ThomPete]

It's a memory problem afaik and on the Kindle it's a display problem.

On the PC nothing should prohibit you from doing this. I don't know how much memory a whole 500 Site E-Book takes, but my 8GB should be enough.