UK Kindle and E-Books...

I guess the presence of DRM would be a fairly big deal.

Some company ( and their authentication servers? ) going bust or deciding to revoke access to your books would be totally bogus.
 
Antar Bolaeisk said:
I also reckon that these will be big in schools with kids carrying around an A4 sized rugged version with access to all the necessary books for their classes. No more lugging around heavy school bags and such. (or the goldfish ate it excuse)
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Exactly. Not more multiple grubby textbooks, just one (preferably flexible) electronic sheet.

Also, the technology with these e-readers could drastically improve to become more robust or you could have devices that mimic the pages of a book (i.e. same shape with pages) but each 'page' has generated information and you can still store multiple books on it.

The possibilities with new tech are literally endless.
 
People are also forgetting time for delivery. One of the biggest reasons I'm buying pc games and films online. is I get them instantly. I don't have to wait 3 days to get a cheap version. I can get a cheap version and download it instantly. Or in the case of some games, within a few hours.
 
Someone mentioned the delivery thing, that is one thing I do agree on, even more so considering I rarely buy books new, it means I have to hunt a book down which can take a lot longer.

Another thing at the school book thing, I know for a fact when I was a kid I was far from careful with stuff, its going to be expensive to fix/replace.
 
fini said:
Let me explain to you a few reasons why the two are not comparable:
1. The format that music comes on does not fundamentally alter the experience of using it. Whilst album art etc was nice, once the CD was in your hifi there's no difference between it and an MP3.
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Yes there is. At least on any decent stereo. Lossless formats in theory at least are fine, but not MP3s.


M
 
AcidHell2 said:
Don't a lot of schools now use laptops? or in the process of being equipped with laptops?
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Not that I know of, when I left (couple of years back) we were still rigidly stuck with books, now my brother who is in primary school still has books (I doubt they'd supply a 6 year old with a laptop though), I still have contact with a few people at secondary school, and as far as I know theres no plans to supply laptops (I'm sure someone would have mentioned it).

At college, in my computing classes, we were running PCs with 800MHz CPUs to give an idea of how slow education is with new tech >.>
 
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Chimerical said:
Wouldn't electronic books ecourage more independant works to get through. No printing costs, no overhead, kind of how some budget games are released now.
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Yup, although for a semi decent release there will still be a number of overheads (apparently editing/proofing the books cost a fair bit), but no real replication/distribution costs.

Baen (who I've mentioned a few times) tend to release their ebooks at about the same time as the paperback versions for $6ish dollars (or part of a bundle at about $15 for 4-6) partly due to this, and ARC versions anything up to 2-3 months before the hardback release for $15.

One of the problems is, that at the moment there is zero incentive for most of the big publishers to do something similar, hence they release ebook versions at the same time as the normal versions, for about the same price as the normal versions (often at the RRP, so much more expensive in real terms).

Where it really comes into it's own is the small run, or back catalogue books, which can sometimes be years between printings normally due to the costs involved, but with Ebooks (like MP3 stores) it costs them nothing to keep them "in print" and available.
 
Meridian said:
Yes there is. At least on any decent stereo. Lossless formats in theory at least are fine, but not MP3s.
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As someone who regularly uses a NAD S300 you don't need to tell me about audio quality. The fact is that the difference between a LAME encoded 320kbps file and a FLAC file is simply in the mind of the listener on any speakers costing less than ~£300 (teamed with an appropriate amp). If you'd like to link to a double-blind test proving otherwise then please do.

If mp3 files have proved anything it is that the vast majority of people don't care about quality anyway (iTunes started out as 128kbps), so I struggle to see your point.
 
We seem to discuss this every 2 months - they pros and cons of e-readers that is. For me these new e-readers are no match for a printed book. For one I like to have several technical books open at once, can't do that with an e-reader unless we're now supposed to have several of the £200+ devices can we?

Secondly of the models I've seen I can't annote them, write little notes of them, highlight bits, I've not seen any that have any type of stylus with them, I'm *constantly* correcting little mistakes in text books, especially those that are "code heavy".

Also do they pass the "kids" test, can your most hated little open get chocolate on it and put in the toaster and it survive? Personally I'd hate to lose a valuable device like that, where as a £20 book I'm not as fussed about. And it's not like it's a mobile that most of the time I'll keep on me, or a netbook that'll be in my bag most of the time, it's the type of thing that's likely to be in harms way.

I still can't look at one for more than 30 minutes and not get a head ache (and that includes the fancy Sony models). How about first editions when I pop along to waterstones what is the author going to sign? Get a compass and engave the damn thing?

I'm sorry as much as I want too, I just don't buy the whole e-reader thing
 
The Sony 600 comes with a pen so you can annotate your books.

I can't see how you can get a headache with a proper e ink screen. I can read my ebook for hours but I get a headache after half hour on my laptop.
 
Secondly of the models I've seen I can't annote them, write little notes of them, highlight bits, I've not seen any that have any type of stylus with them, I'm *constantly* correcting little mistakes in text books, especially those that are "code heavy"
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When i was in school they called that vandalism:mad:
I could never see myself defaceing books like that:(
I have the Bebook and find it easy to use,Although i am with the others who like the `smell` of paper books
Ebooks are so easy to find online too even ones i thought were OOP ages ago i have found on the net
And the text zooming is a godsend these days the old eyes ain`t what they used to be and it is possible to make the text clearer/larger or even change the fonts to what style you prefer
 
ANDARIAL said:
When i was in school they called that vandalism:mad:
I could never see myself defaceing books like that:(
I have the Bebook and find it easy to use,Although i am with the others who like the `smell` of paper books
Ebooks are so easy to find online too even ones i thought were OOP ages ago i have found on the net
And the text zooming is a godsend these days the old eyes ain`t what they used to be and it is possible to make the text clearer/larger or even change the fonts to what style you prefer
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Well if there's a mistake in a technical book I'd rather annotate it, than make the same mistake again, seems erm sensible no?
 
I've been reading eBooks almost exclusively for about 5 years now. Weirdly though I can't stand these e-paper displays, they're slow to refresh and you can't read them in the dark, I also find them harder on the eyes than my PDA. I use an HP iPaq 214, which has a nice large 640x480 display, uses cleartype, and has a 2gb CF card with hundreds and hundreds of books on it. :)

I use Mobipocket reader on it, as the PC client is a nice way of organising my books, too and it syncs to the PDA using active-sync.

The software can also take Word, RTF, PDF, HTML and a variety of other files, as well as the Mobipocket ones from their site.

You can also (optionally) annotate and do dictionary lookups with it.

It's great to be able to read in bed with the lights off. There's no getting up to turn off the lights when I'm done, and if I finish my book I don't have to get up and find another one!

I read for several hours every day, and it doesn't cause me eye strain, at least no more than traditional books did.
 
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ANDARIAL said:
I could never see myself defaceing books like that:(
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A book's for using, not keeping pristine.

OT:
That reminds me of a silly mindset of people who are super-anti-tattoo. The human body's not a precious artifact, it's a working machine that does its job then gets dumped.
 
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