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The Amazon Kindle and other E-Book Readers

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0bsessions:
I suppose I can see the allure to a student, but that's about it. Even at that, you'd have to rely on your college adopting it as a popular format. I spent close to seven hundred bucks on books alone my first semester of college. Outside of students, though, this thing is pretty jack shit useless.

Ladybug:
I could see it being really useful for students or people who generally move around a lot, because a huge plus is that you can carry tons of books basically in a little pocket in your backpack. Though most people read one or two books at the time, I can see it being useful when travelling etc.

But yeah, I wouldn't be getting one either (if I lived in the US, I mean, I don't think the Kindle is available outside?), just because while it might be good for text books, it would drive me nuts that I wouldn't be able to highlight or comment stuff in it, and that the screen in general is kinda small. I like that my text books are mostly huge, even though that makes them a bitch to carry around.

Vendetagainst:
I agree that it's superfluous, but it's still basically an improvement in the system. It is first generation and it will only get cheaper and better. You resisted comparing it to an iPod, but you can't deny that there are plenty of parallels. iPods were called unnecessary by a huge number of people, and they were absolutely right. Nobody needs an iPod, iPods are a luxary, but they've made many lives better because they're enjoyable and convenient as fuck--there's no reason to resist improvement on the basis of necessity.
Libraries are great, but would you rather drive to one or have any book you wanted permanently, instantly, and wirelessly delivered to you? And there's an internet connection, so you can find virtually anything to read whereas finding a book in a library is a pain in the ass (for me anyway).
I'm not saying that libraries will become obsolete or that there is anything wrong with the system we have now, but it IS an improvement and thus should be encouraged, because I can think of dozens of things I would enjoy doing with this that I couldn't do the same way without.


--- Quote from: Ladybug on 22 Dec 2008, 13:16 ---it would drive me nuts that I wouldn't be able to highlight or comment stuff in it, and that the screen in general is kinda small.

--- End quote ---
you can do both. It has a keyboard, you can annotate specific sections, and you can highlight.
Not only that, but it has a search function. Think about that for a second, how often have you gotten pissed by the fact that you cannot find a specific section of a novel or textbook?

Ladybug:
Well, yes, real life would benefit massively from a search function. That has bugged me so many times. I'm not saying I'm against it entirely - hell, I like PDF e-books on my MacBook - I just don't think that at the moment, it would be worth its price for me.

I must admit I didn't know it had a keyboard, which makes it more relevant for me than I thought, but I think I would still prefer highlighting and adding notes by hand, simply because when I study, I need...lots of room and having multiple things open at once and generally using huge books, while the Kindle looks like it would drive me nuts, because the screen is kind of small. It will probably improve and all that, but unless I start earning loads of money and travelling a lot, I don't see myself getting one.

Tom:
It'd be awesome if I could read my .cbr/.cbz files on it. Other than that, I'm more in favour of books not being published as ebooks but instead like this.

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