Barnes and Noble Drops Ebooks

computx writes "I just recieved an email from Barnes and Noble that they will no longer sell ebooks and I have 1 month to download the books I have purchased. Wow!"

Comments

Bathroom Reading

[Brahmastra]

E-books aren't popular because they are inconvenient. Have you ever tried reading in a bathtub or on your toilet seat with an e-book?

Re:Bathroom Reading

[M.C. Hampster]

I think this is defniately the holdup for eBooks. Without a portable device, you are tied to a computer to read them, and even with them you are tied to battery life plus the possible eye strain associated with looking at a little screen to read.

I know some people that talk about the allure of paper, and the sentimentality they have for holding a book with paper, but personally if I could buy eBooks and download them into a nice sized reader that had acceptable battery life and a nice, easy to read screen, I'd prefer that. I'm guessing the device exists out there, I'm just not willing to pay a few hundred bucks for it yet.

Re:Bathroom Reading

[CGP314]

The palm is the only device I find comfortable to read. Why? Because it doesn't shine bright, white light into my eyes. Reading on a computer screen is like looking into a floodlight that someone has taped letters over. I wish more webpages defaulted to a black background with light text. Much easier to read.

Re:Bathroom Reading

[Zathrus]

I know some people that talk about the allure of paper, and the sentimentality they have for holding a book with paper, but personally if I could buy eBooks and download them into a nice sized reader that had acceptable battery life and a nice, easy to read screen

The "nice, easy to read screen" cannot be emphasized enough.

Most portable electronics have tiny screens with low resolutions, horrible DPI, and glare issues. And they suck down batteries.

Newspaper print is generally the worst in terms of DPI for printed material, and even it exceeds 2400 DPI. I distinctly recall talking to a friend of my father who was in the newspaper business. He was wondering when I thought traditional printed newspapers would be in significant danger from portable devices, home printing, etc. I, as a know-it-all geeky CS student, said it'd probably be about 10 years before the display technologies got there.

Well, it's roughly 10 years later and we're really no closer than we were. Printing has certainly improved, but not as dramatically as I expected. Display technologies have gone more or less nowhere -- LCD has come down in price and power consumption, but the resolutions haven't gone up dramatically and there's been no really new technologies in that time period. Sure, OLED and similar are on the horizon now, but they don't promise a solution to the resolution issues. Printed circuits, electronic paper, and other technologies are also closer, but still probably a decade or more away.

Paper is here to stay for quite some time.

Re:Bathroom Reading

[OrangeTide]

Black backgrounds also cause eye strain. You should strive to have a more neutral background that is closer to your ambient environment.

You could crank the brightness down on your monitor so bright white was closer to the ambient environment, but then everything else is too dark.

A piece of paper does fine since it only reflects the light available in the room, it doesn't create any additional light (obviously) and even absorbs a little bit of light.

We need displays that can match this much more closely, of course people have abandoned reflective displays on laptops. Since they are impossible to read in low-light, even if they are much easier to read in direct sunlight. This is pretty much the kind of display your palm uses. I don't think this OLED thing is going to fix anything either, maybe the electronic ink might be the future for reading a lot of text on a display.

When programing either do a fairly neutral gray on black. or a somewhat interesting color on a dark grey. The later seems to cause me fewer problems on my CRT. (my LCD's "black" is pretty bright still:)

eBooks...

[FileNotFound]

...would have been great had readers been umm readable and cheap and had the format been widley available.

I'd love nothing more than having all my college books in eBook format, and preferably for half the price... But it doesn't make sense to pay $300ish for a reader with fairly limited battery life and the pay prices for books which in my opinion are still unreasonable.

Inconvenient at best

[Anonymous Coward]

I recall my one experience purchasing ebooks. It seemed like a fantastic idea. I saved on shipping, and would get it right away.

The DRM management in both the Microsoft and Adobe Readers made it so annoying that it took days for me to be able to read what I purchased. A combination of buggy software and lousy online support ended my enthusiasm. In the end, I decided to go back to good, old-fashioned books.

Re:Is anyone really suprised?

[EvanED]

It depends on the format, but they could be searchable. Ever have a book where you want to find the exact wording of a quote, or want to look up something in a book that has a crummy index? Just search. Also convienience; if I had a good reader (very clear screen) I'd much rather carry that around than a couple 1000-page textbooks.

Until they get e-Paper its a dead deal anyways

[PierceLabs]

Noone really wants to download a PDF and page through it at their desk and I don't know too many people taking laptops to the toilet, bathtub, or park in order to read. The problem isn't really with eBooks per-say, its that there really isn't a convenient way to view the content.

Some of the new OLED technology may make eBooks more practical for consumers, but right not they just aren't convenient enough and the eBook readers only add insult to injury as many consumers (myself included) just don't see the point in buying a device to read a book as opposed to just buying the paper book and not having to worry about charging it up before making a coast-to-coast flight.

E-Books aren't mature yet

[ragingmime]

The eBook is too young to die.

The eBook isn't dead - it's just immature. Anyone remember the Apple Newton? I don't mean to offend the legions of devotees that the machine apparently has, but the fact of the matter is that it was too young an idea to succeed, and we had to wait until US Robotics came out with the PalmPilot to see that kind of computer enter the mainstream. The same thing happened with Windows 1.0. I could go on and on. The problem with these kinds of things is that some solid ideas are lacking things - battery life, maybe, or size or reliability.

I think the same thing is happening with eBooks - they're too bulky, expensive, battery-hungry, difficult to read, and just generally inconvenient to read when compared with books. Not to mention that I don't like shelling out a few hundred dollars for a machine to read eBooks when I could use that money towards twenty or thirty paperbacks. And as many people have said, paper does have its charm.

I can see the convenience of eBooks, and it seems like some early adopters have, too. But they're just not ready for widespread adoption yet.

Re:E books??? Why

[Lumpy]

E-books could of had a future. but it certianly was not in recreational reading.

Textbooks and refrence books were the killer-app for e-books. unfortunately the textbook and tech book makers are very against technology.

I would kill to be able to carry around my 30 some college refrence books easily in my pocket or in one book sized device. but it's impossible as the companies and people that write those books do not want them in any format but dead trees.