Electronic book thingy - Page 3 - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

hey_allen · #31 08-25-2010, 05:06 AM

Having owned a netbook (and happily offloaded it) an ebook reader (Sony PRS-500 and -505) as well as a real laptop, I have a few opinions on the mess.

The netbooks just don't cut it as far as I am concerned, as they're basically a half hearted attempt at being a laptop, but with lousy battery run time to go with lousy performance. Cheap, yes, but with few redeeming values.

The ebook readers are nice if you can get books for them in a format that they behave with, and that aren't price insanely. No printing or transportation fees. Formatting is slightly different than the publishing work required for the dead-tree version, but not significantly. Yet they almost all seem to be priced at the same point as the paper version that you can sell again when you're done with it. (Which you decidedly can't do with the electronic version!)

Regarding the various readers as text books, you might do a little reading. The area a couple of colleges that have fielded them, and a few more that have played with the idea, and from what I'd read in the reviews of it, it's far less than intuitive as a study medium for learning from and using in the classroom.
It might grow into a useful format, and I'd love to see it succeed, but I wouldn't be buying the textbook sized Kindle just yet.

All that said, I really like my (Sony) e-reader, as much like Craig said, it's so much easier to carry a selection of books on a longer trip, or where space is a constraint. I've taken mine with a few hundred books loaded on it all over. The same in print would be a significant impact on fuel economy, not to mention chiropractor bills!

Before buying the e-reader, I was reading many books on my laptop, and again, it's carried hundreds of books with me, around the world as I've traveled. It's also kept me in contact with friends and family, helped me do school work, study for job skill qualification tests, tolerated my attempts at keeping an organized budget, and kept me amused with games.
No, it doesn't have a 2-30 day battery run time, but as it does so much more, I tolerate it's 'failings'.

On the iPad, as much as I like the design, I'm coming to detest the corporation behind it, and their heavy handed tactics of late.
I also finally broke down and ended up with an Android phone, and based on that experience, if I were in the tablet market, I'd be looking for one of the upcoming Android based ones.