Portable eBook Readers

Posts Tagged ‘reading’

Check out the Kindle here: www.amazon.com This is less a “pros and cons” review than a hopefully useful commentary about the Kindle compared with other eReaders and what it means for the eBook industry. (I believe that everything has changed with the Kindle’s creation.) For many…

Only one or two days gone I was in my fathers cellar, going thru my old storage of books making an attempt to pick which ones I had more of an attachment too.  I was moving across states with the help of a pal and his pickup, so I had to tame my inner pack rat and take just what I felt was important, things I’d actually remember not taking and regret it.  Over my 20+ years I have collected a far quantity of books, there was a point in my teen years where I could devour 2 or 3 a week.  Such was the life of a lonely nerd. 

After I filled 2 card boxes with my most favorite novels, I couldn’t help but think about my pals new “toy”-an Amazon  ‘Kindle‘.  An ebook rising in popularity that downloads novels direct from Amazon’s Whispernet. 

The newest Kindle model, Kindle DX costs just about $500, I couldn’t believe he was ready to drop that kind of scratch to read the same books he could buy for a bit less than 1 / 4 of that price .  How could it possibly mimic the intimate connection you can get with a good paper paged novel?  Particularly older ones, with yellowed pages and a thick, musty smell. 

Ebooks had a small surge in appreciation in the early 2000’s, but many were only programed in one format.  So if you owned an Ebook, and your fave novel just came out on a competitors Ebook-you would just have to cope with it. 

Thanks to the Kindle’s acceptance, many huge corporations decided to try and join the competition.  Barnes & Noble introduced they’re “Nook“, which is first to be based primarily on the  ‘Android’ platform, and has a MicroSD enlargement slot for extra storage.  Apart from being much cheaper Kindle alternative, it can be hacked to add applications like Pandora, a twitter customer, Google Reader, Facebook, and a net browser. 

In France, Bookeen released the ultra light Cybook Opus, featuring a paper-like high contrast appearance that may actually be read in direct daylight.  When the Cybook Opus is hitched up to your computer it registers as a typical USB mass storage gadget so you can easily copy books without special drivers. 

With the releasing of Apple’s iPad, came the release of the iBooks application.  Aside from having all the features of the Kindle, it can also implant video.  Still lacks USB ports, however. 

While my mate raved about his dear, miniscule, electronic library, I couldn’t help thinking how silly it was to think that a small, thin contraption able to download books could ever replace hundreds of years of paper paged history.  It only took up less room, you could download any book you wanted when you wanted, generations to come would definitely be less expensive and better quality…I stopped my train of thought and took a good look at my stacks of physical books, all together they weighed a ton and took up so much space.  Will this generation see the passing of broadcast word?  I’m sure people in the sixties couldn’t imagine life without their favourite 12-inch vinyl records, now those same folk carry the whole discography of their favorite artist on an itty bitty iPod. 

A decade ago T.V’s were bulky monstrosities, now they’re paper thin with such superb quality you can count the pores on someone’s’s chin.  10 years back computer games were still pixelated and featured squat characters with jerky movements, now it’s fundamentally interactive animation.  In a decade, will my  ‘bookcase’ just become  ’shelves’?  Featuring one PDF and whatever knick knacks I throw on there to dump the empty space?  What will happen to libraries?  My favourite used book store? 

As I eventually closed the card boxes and pressed down the packing tape, I couldn’t help thinking how convenient it might be to just slip my favourite book  ‘The Stand’ in my back pocket while having the rest of my library stored on my C : drive.

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