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The eBook, Mark 2

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the expiring-libraries dept.

Selanit writes "David Pogue recently published a review of the Sony Reader, under the title Trying Again to Make Books Obsolete. Though he likes the device in general, he concludes that it's not destined to replace the book any time soon. Well worth a read."

4 of 203 comments (clear)

  1. Just one question: by Woldry · · Score: 4, Funny

    From TFA: "One charge is good for 7,500 page turns. That's enough power to get you through "The Da Vinci Code" 16 times (electrical power, anyway)."

    So my question is: Why would you want to?

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    1. Re:Just one question: by Bender0x7D1 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Although I think that's a little unbelievable.

      You didn't RTFA.

      If you had, you would find out it only consumes power when you have to redraw a page.

      You would also have discovered that there is a prototype that has been displaying the same page for 3 years.

      Sure, batteries slowly leak power. However, have you noticed that watch batteries can last for years - even with a constant power drain? As long as you don't need to provide huge bursts of energy, like those needed by a digital camera, you can design the battery to be more efficient in the long term.

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  2. Re:the one advantage by zoeblade · · Score: 4, Insightful

    pulp books do not need electricity

    That's the only advantage you can think of for traditional books? They also have no DRM; they have to be treated pretty badly before they stop working; they contain both the data and everything necessary to read it.

    I have a fifty odd year old book I bought second hand recently. It has one or two holes in it where it got torn up pretty badly. However, I can still read it. I probably couldn't say the same thing about a fifty year old computer text file, as it would pre-date ASCII and likely be written on some old format like a punch card, so I'd probably need to buy some specialist hardware like a punch card reader, then write a program to translate the data into a modern format.

    Of course, digitised books have advantages too, such as not taking up space, and being easily searchable. It seems like an ideal format for non-fiction reference books such as encyclopedias and guides, but not very good for fiction.

  3. Re:Direct link by Anne_Nonymous · · Score: 4, Funny

    Link to printable version

    :)