eReaders: post Christmas
CNET reports that the Kindle is the item that has most often been given as a gift from Amazon.com. I thought it was interesting that Amazon said it was the “most gifted” rather than the thing that people wanted to buy for themselves.
My mother asked me about which was better, Sony or Kindle. After a little research, I had to say I preferred Sony. You didn’t seem to be wasting your money on a lifetime cellular connection – and “lifetime” only means until it dies, which can mean anything.
Kim got me a Sony pocket e-reader. I was able to download David Weisberg’s history of CAD, and load it up on the reader, shown to the left. Mr. Weisberg made this book available for free, asking only a charitable donation to the Cancer League of Colorado. It is in PDF format, and works well on the pocket reader. I also downloaded a King James Bible in PDF, mainly just to see if I could. I could put my own books on PDF and put them on here (uses a USB wire). Other people have also thought Sony made a better product than Amazon.
I enjoy reading from the e-reader as much as I enjoy reading from paper books. There is a little inconvenience factor with the e-reader, but then there is also the fact that I can fit so many books into such a small space, so it makes traveling with books great.
The form factor of the readers makes me believe that laptops are going to continue to evolve toward slates, especially with all the buzz around touch and multitouch. And with the readers ranging from $200 – $500 or more, the price point overlaps somewhat between readers and netbooks. And with Apple’s new tablet coming… who know what that’s going to do. Slate computers have not sold well, although I think they are a great idea and the future of mobile computing. I mean, the UPS guy uses a ruggedized slate. Great application, and I’m surprised that hasn’t caught on. It will be silly if it takes Apple creating a tablet to make it cool. That will be the last straw for me. I will buy one of each of Apple’s products and live stream a David Letterman-like st
Interestingly, the e-reader display is not backlit, it requires a little pop-up reading light for reading in the dark. The light is integrated into this folio type cover, with the switch showing in the lower left of the photo.
Anyway, on this blog we’ve had some discussion about paper vs electronic documentation, copyright issues, and a little about e-readers. Now that I have my own reader, it’s easier to put it all in a little perspective. I think its nice to have an e-reader that you aren’t locked into a service with. I can read anything in PDF, or can go through the Sony library.
Some of Google books are available in PDF. Classics that are in the public domain. I’m glad that Google has been restrained to at least follow the law. Simply because information exists does not mean it belongs to Google. I’m not a content pirate – stealing copyrighted stuff really bothers me, but at the same time, I don’t want to have to pay multiple times for the same thing. I already have Moby Dick in paperback. If I buy it now in a protected e-reader format, what happens if I buy another e-reader in a few years? Do I have to buy Moby Dick again? I’m with Bono on this one. Stealing content only hurts the creators. Until a time comes when corporate sponsors pay creators directly and then give away the content to the masses, the masses need to pay for written word, music, visual art, and other forms of copyrighted stuff. If you created something original that took time, effort, skill, talent or any other trait that makes you unique, why would you just give it away? Should all musicians be amateurs? No.
Anyway, I’m way off topic, but e-readers make you think about copyright issues. Mainly you don’t wanna get ripped off on either side. Readers don’t wanna buy books multiple times, and authors don’t want to give away PDFs of stuff people should buy.
How does your reading speed change when ereading versus a printed book?
@Rick McWilliams
Oh, my reading speed is terrible, and with this it is a little slower because it can’t display as much material on a page, so you’re fiddling with the controls more. I’m slow enough, I hardly notice it though.
Out of curiosity, how does the book publishing world work in comparison to the recording industry. I used to be the the recording industry and I am well aware of how little musicians are paid by record labels and where musicians real income stream is from. How similar is business end of publishing a book to releasing a record?
Hi Matt -
I also have a Sony Reader. I bought it because it could support PDF as well as ebooks. (but, not a kindle ebook…grrrr…).
I’ve had my reader for just under a year now and the only complaint I have is that the Sony store does not have the volume of books provided by Amazon and also I noticed that Amazons prices tend to be lower.
My guess is that a reader war is brewing and I’m not quite sure whose format will win. Time will tell.
Joy
How can I fold the corner of the page to mark the place?
What happens when I drop of to sleep and the device clunks to the floor?
I have to say I don’t get these things. £200 for a black and white, non illuminated display and interface that looks (and feels) like a rejected ipod prototype from 1999? Then you need to buy the “book” as well.
I’m as geeky tech as the next person but it strikes me as a “one trick pony”. I’ll wait until the likes of Apple come along with a bigger colour touchscreen that doubles as a phone, ipod, email and web device and sketchpad for £500. Then again, that buys a lot of cheap paperbacks….
Kevin,
Yes, I agree with some of your misgivings. But you can make bookmarks instead of folding pages, and the Sony is sturdy enough to fall on a carpeted floor from the bed, as I have done a couple of times. I agree that there are drawbacks to the technology. But the first time I accessed more than one book on a trip, I also had an appreciation for it.
Joy:
Unfortunately, I think the short answer is that electronic formats and copyrights just don’t go together. So far it looks like DVD movies have the best solution for protecting copyright, but you still have to buy something physical. I’m finding some of the old classics on Google Books in PDF format.
I had some ebooks on my Palm a while back, which worked well for traveling. But have you ever gone into a Goodwill store and seen what they sell perfectly good books for? (Same with CDs.) I’ve found some great books there. My preference is definitely for the book itself, but for traveling, text in digital form is hard to beat.
How do these readers handle graphics/illustrations/images? Can they display these, and if so, are they displayed properly/well?
I may read 1-2 books tops in a year (prefer audio books since I spend a lot of time in car), but I read a lot of magazines. If you can get them, what happens to all of the pretty pictures? Missing I imagine or in black/white.
SolidWorks Help Documentation on Sony Reader ?
…. makes sense reading your last two posts. Is that something SW would support ? Don’t know how well eReader will support nice graphics needed for SW Help.
JoeA:
The images are black and white. My books (except the surfacing book) are black and white. SW honestly doesn’t use many nice images, or certainly not enough. They used to have animations in the help, and those would certainly be gone. It would need an index, which they have taken out of the help. It would need to be in PDF format or Sony ebook format. PDF would be simplest. That would eliminate the update problem because there would be no updates, but they might have to start using revision levels on their PDF help files.
There is a way of thinking where SW Help for ereader doesn’t make sense. That’s if you assume that you need Help because you are running SW, and to run SW you need a better computer, in which case you don’t need to worry about an ereader.
We’re still in the infancy of ereaders. They will get color, search, commenting, and be integrated into netbooks. I’m convinced SW would kill the Help altogether if they thought they could get away with it.
SteveO:
You can get some magazines through Google Books. Black and white images for now. The images and text are zoomable. I have a pocket reader, and the default size is not readable, so I use the middle magnification setting. It just means you might have to turn the page a couple of times to get to the real Page 2. eReaders aren’t for everyone or every situation, but to carry a lot of heavy books on a trip, well, you never would do that, but now you could if you wanted to. Plus, you can read PDFs where ever you want. I don’t advocate replacing every piece of paper with an ereader.
Sony needs to update their touch screen version. Once they do that, I might look at it again. I have the first generation Kindle. It is good, but not great. I’ve not seen enough improvement in Kindle II or Sony to justify any further purchases. Another thing both readers need to fix is their horrible interfaces.
FYI.. put the Machinery’s Handbook 28th Ed on eReader. Seems Useful so far. Also got Roarks formulas on it. Two less books on my shelf.
I have serious doubts about PDF as a real usable e-book format. If, say, a PDF file was created to be printed on letter format, how will it display on a 6″ screen? It’ll be a nightmare to read.
I think a format designed for reflowable content, like .epub, is better.
I’ve been reading ebooks for almost 10 years. First on a Palm Pilot, then an iPaq PocketPC.
Now I use my 11.6″ laptop, and though sometimes I wish I bought a 10″ netbook because it’d be smaller, I much prefer reading on my laptop with 16pt fonts (or anything I want really) than reading small paperbacks like I used to. It’s so much more comfortable.
And I agree Matt, I just can’t wait for an affordable and thin slate form-factor netbook. I’ve looked at Always Innovating’s TouchBook, which has a detachable keyboard, but the product’s quality doesn’t seem to be high.