The Race for a Better Read

Good news for the old media: a new crop of e-readers could soon improve on the printed page. Here are some of the contenders

Jonathan Sprague / Redux for TIME

CEO Mary Lou Jepsen designed LCD screens for the $200 laptop used in the One Laptop per Child program.

Attention, all you folks reading this on the Web: if you enjoy this piece, please send a dime to TIME magazine.

I doubt any of you will. Before old media can charge for our content, we have to figure out how to deliver it in a way the reader thinks is worth paying for. That was easier before the Internet, since reading on paper is a terrific experience. But over the past decade, as more content has shifted online, we've done a great job training the reader to believe that words on the Internet should be free. And reading on...

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