Rambling about EBooks

[elfwreck]

Inspired by this post by theferrett. (I mentioned him in a comment, so I had to go check out what he's been saying recently

Comments

[songfire3]

I know virtually nothing about ebook readers (I store my ebooks on an USB stick and take it to work where I read them on the pc whenever there's nothing else to do *g*)...but I stumbled over this ad for the new amazon reader a while ago,

(http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Amazons-Wireless-Reading-Device/dp/B000FI73MA)

have you seen that yet?

[elfwreck]

Thanks! No, I hadn't. I'm aware they're doing Weird Stuff with ebook readers; I hadn't kept up with what.

GAAAH $400?!?!?! I can get a laptop for that price! (I think. I have geeky friends.)

Wireless "like a cellphone" a.k.a "doesn't work on BART in the underground stations." There goes most of my reading time in transit to & from work.

Weighs most of a pound. OMG is bigger than a paperback book. Loses most of my interest right there. One of the main things that keeps me willing to deal with the nuisances of ebook reading is that mine currently fits in the palm of my hand; I can read it on a very crowded bus or while drinking coffee, without risk of dropping it.

Looks like special proprietary software; won't read my current pdbs, only books I buy from them. At more-than-paperback price. Ick. No, wait... "Email your Word documents and pictures (.JPG, .GIF, .BMP, .PNG) to Kindle for easy on-the-go viewing." WTF? It does email? Or you email docs to the service, and they magically appear in your device? (I read a couple of reviews.

[hobbitblue]

Wow... having overlooked your first line about the post that triggered this, I assumed that whole post was a response to the existence of Kindle (which is kind of nifty but expensive and proprietary, bulky, weirdly designed and you can't do other stuff on it like you can on a PDA). I think there's maybe a market for similar things when they're as easy to slip into a pocket or bag as a paperback book :)

[elfwreck]

Ebooks are glorious things... but as long as the electronics companies are thinking "let's make it as much like a paper book as possible, and then people won't care about the things we *can't* do that paper does" they're kinda doomed. People who embrace the new media want it to max out its *new* features, not pretend to be the old medium

[7leaguebootdisk]

The screen is digital ink, much more like the printed page that an LCD or the like. If it was just a touch more open... But for that I can get a OLPC XO, and I'd much rather have that.