Dezignstuff SolidWorks Blog

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.