Posted on 11/29/2007 6:31:14 AM PST by shrinkermd
Mecklenburg County is sort of like sneaking into Cuba :-). They do have a great library, but there are lots of reasons we live "over here."
When it’s more like $200 and I can get any book on Amazon for, say, 50% of the hard copy version, heck yeah. I would just love having a book that fits into my purse and holds hundreds of novels. If it comes with some sort of note taking capability or better get, writing software so I can work on my own too, yeah.
My books collection will never be replaced. The used bookstore has too many books that won’t ever get digitized. But having something like this in a few years, sign me up. Just not for the first edition. Never buy the first model of anything.
You’re talking to someone who carried back a three volume thesaurus as carry-on baggage when I came back from my visit home this summer, in spite of all the on-line versions out there. ;-)
But I suppose I’ll eventually accept e-books for *some* things. I just still don’t like the idea of a book that needs to be turned on and that can’t be dropped or spilled on without going blank...
Yeah, but it’s less likely to get eaten by dogs or lost. I was searching for a book this week and it took a good fifteen minutes of hard hunting to determine that I did not, in fact, have it.
But if it does get lost, you’ve lost more than just the one book!
I do, however, occasionally wish I had the ability to search text in a regular book...
Why are only the does reading the matter?
Why not the bucks?
True! I haven’t lost my ipod though. Well, I mislaid it but it’s in the house and I’ll find it tonight.
It’ll be interesting to see whether this actually works or not. It’s hard to replace a paperback novel for ease of reading, after all.
Like drinking fine wine out of a tin can.
The bucks are too embarassed to wear their bifocals.
Unless it fills two criteria, I won’t be in the market for a Kindle. First, is the file format open, and thus readable 10 years from now? Much of the beef against using MS Word for files is that archival data needs to be read decades or centuries later, and I want my favorite books to be the same.
Second, can I back up my purchased book files, so they don’t disappear into electron dust should the gadget fail? I don’t want to lose books to limited HD space either, so offloading to DVD or CD archives is vital.
My son has been reading at college level since elementary school but he would rather play video games than read. Still, we can still get him to read a “Goosebumps, Lemony Snicket or Captian Underpants” for about 45 minutes or so.
Or happening before our eyes. And the left couldn't be happier.
Not to Book Snobs.
Books stink. If you look at what’s on the “new releases” shelf, it’s mostly whiny “chicklit” about the poor benighted career girls in NYC. Or some revisionist historical romance. Y-A-W-N.
When you buy Kindle books from Amazon, a backup copy is automatically saved for you. If your Kindle, say, gets stolen, you can re-download all your content. And although the Kindle format is proprietary, you can also load open formats onto it from your own collection.
Pocket PCs cost less and do so much more than just ebooks
Er...yah...’cause the *only* books available are the ones on the “new releases” shelf...
But you still have to re-download, which could put a major damper on a trip. And there’s still the power issue.
Not to mention the fact that, as many have pointed out, computer technology changes and dies. Whereas I still have books that are a hundred years old...and the interface still works amazingly well...
Read only seasoned books. Nothing published since 1968. The older the better.
Oh, I do. But usually these articles don't involve "no one's reading the classics" anymore. It's because people aren't buying off the New Release wall in the bookstores. And most of that stuff is not worth reading, IMO.
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