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HarperCollins Wants Library EBooks to Self-Destruct After 26 Loans
An anonymous reader writes: "HarperCollins has decided to change their agreement with e-book distributor OverDrive [and other distributors, too]. They forced OverDrive, which is a main e-book distributor for libraries, to agree to terms so that HarperCollins e-books will only be licensed for checkout 26 times. Librarians have blown up over this, calling for a boycott of HarperCollins, breaking the DRM on e-books -- basically doing anything to let HarperCollins and other publishers know they consider this abuse."
Cory Doctorow, who wrote TFA, says: "For the record, all of my HarperCollins ebooks are also available as DRM-free Creative Commons downloads. And as bad as HarperCollins' terms are, they're still better than Macmillan's, my US/Canadian publisher, who don't allow any library circulation of their ebook titles."
Harper Collins also wants libraries to self-destruct after being used 26 times.
Not only does God definitely play dice, but He sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen. -Hawking
I agree to their terms but I will be using loan money. It ceases to function after 28 days and gets returned to me.
No deal?? ok I'll just pirate them. You lose.
Inspector Gadget style?
It's okay, I've found gigpedia & usenet have simpler checkout procedures.
It's asinine that library ebooks should self destruct. If they want to negotiate a minimum loan duration to force the library to buy more of popular books, like maybe 1 day per 100 pages, well fine, but checkout counts run contrary to the whole idea of libraries.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
I've been reading ebooks on my mobile devices for at least six years. It's hardly an "untested fad".
Caveat Utilitor
"I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further. "
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Fad? I take it you haven't actually tried an ebook, but they're pretty amazing. Pretty much the only aspect that's worse than the dead tree editions is that you need electricity to use them. There's more to innovate there like improving the interface and the screens, but it's a lot more convenient for me than books are.
Plus, I'm the sort of person that likes to keep books once I've bought them, and I just don't have much room available for books I might not read for several years.
From http://yuhongbao.blogspot.com/2010/06/artificial-scarcity-drm.html :
"Fair use rights
DRM is often used unintentionally or intentionally to take away fair use rights and sometimes sell them back, assisted by anti-circumvention provisions in laws like the DMCA that applies regardless of things like fair use rights."
In this case it is of course first sale, but the point is still the same.
They work when the power goes out
They work when the vendor changes formats for newer releases
They work when civilization collapses and they're found centuries later in a cave
And the don't magically turn into pumpkins when the clock strikes twelve.
There is of course, a way to make a normal book stop working when the availability of its content becomes a problem. It's called fire. It's generally bad form to burn a paper book. Why exactly is it socially acceptable to DRM a book again?
This is just another attack from the corporate powers against what is known as "The Commons". They won't be happy until they've destroyed any social institution that doesn't function to create profits for corporations. From prisons to libraries, there have been institutions in our society that we hold "in common". Public libraries, public schools, public safety (police and fire departments) even parks are all facing coordinated assaults on their very existence as public institutions. Corporations hate these things because people make use of them without enriching the economic elite. Hell, they don't even believe you should be able to lend something you bought to a neighbor or friend.
It can only happen if we go along with it.
What Harper Collins wants to do, what the RIAA and MPAA want to do, make a great case for civil disobedience, which in this case might take the form of "piracy" (an inaccurate label). Why would you want to buy a book from someone who holds you in such contempt?
And it is definitely possible to support the artists without supporting the corporations. It just takes a little more thought and effort.
You are welcome on my lawn.
They better not block screen readers and the blind should sue.
1) Print
2) Scan
3) OCR
4) PDF
5) Lend at will, as many times as you please.
Although it isn't legal, in this case I think it could and should be regarded as simple civil disobedience. Prohibition was brought down largely by people's flagrant disregard for it. If enough people thumb their noses at this foolishness, then perhaps we can all stop fighting about obsolete business models and get on with taking full advantage of the things our shiny new technology offers us.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
I don't care if other publishers won't license to libraries at all.
What I want is e-books to be available to libraries just like regular books, and to be able to be loaned-out indefinitely.
The one-loan-per-license restriction is the only compromise I am willing to make.
I, for one, am sick and tired of literates.
The great problem that libraries have is that most of them aren't used by the people that support them. As local governments are increasingly finding, you can shut a library and other than some well written letters to the editor, most taxpayers will go along with it. Public libraries have been around for 150 years and were far more important in ages where books were a lot less accessible. Spin forward to today and the use of public libraries has been declining. Part of this is the Internet. A lot of the information you once would have once gone to the library for you can search the internet for on your mobile phone. Schools have libraries that complement their curriculum, and Universities tend to be the place where you go if you are looking for more obscure books. My high school library was superior to the civic library when it came to research for papers back then. If I couldn't find stuff in my high school library, I had to go to the University library, because civic libraries didn't carry those sorts of books.
Although it is nice to believe that the community is charitable enough to want to spend money on putting books into the hands of people that can't afford them, a lot of people aren't willing to fund public health for poorer people. If you aren't willing to fund doctors for poor kids, you probably don't give a rats about making sure they have access to books. What is comes down to is that as much as a certain segment of the community likes the IDEA of libraries, the majority of the community doesn't give a rats arse because they never use them. That makes them an easy cut when local municipalities are trying to right the balance sheets.
People would rather less services than more tax and that puts libraries, increasingly less utilized, squarely into the "this is a luxury" column.
They don't work in the dark.
They cost a forest and a polluted river.
They require huge structures to house them, constant vigilance to watch for mold and deterioration, mice and fire.
Caves are not where you find books.
They bring jack booted thugs to demand their surrender for burning.
Books have to be carried around, you can never carry very many of them. Moving house is a bitch.
Shipping them is expensive. Printing them is expensive. This leads to a artificial scarcity of ideas and knowledge.
Books out of print may never come back into print. If you didn't buy it then, it may not be possible ever again.
Long after the copyright has expired, the Physical DRM encumbering books still hinders their distribution and replication.
ok, I'll get off your lawn now.....
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
/* empty */
We move around, a LOT. About 3 years ago, my poor husband begged me to consider an e-reader to save his back. I agreed, and I LOVE it.
I think it's great that I can carry a whole library of books in my purse. Everything from whatever fiction I'm currently reading to various textbooks.
Yes the technology still has some ways to evolve, but I don't imagine that the future of books will remain locked in paper for much longer.
Actually, you might be on to an idea.
Can we contact the agents for Ray Bradbury for permission to crowd-source Fahrenheit 451?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
No licensing? I suggest you take a good look at what libraries have to do to not be considered stores.
Also Libraries are trying to do everything they can to get people to visit them. With the internet they aren't used as much anymore.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
Harper Collins = Newscorp = Rupert Murdoch = Fox
I'll assume you asked this seriously. Despite OverDrive's claim that all you need is your ebook reader, you actually have to download and install a "minder" program from Adobe onto a regular PC. You cannot check out an eBook directly from the library, nor can you check it out to any old device and side-load it. You have to run the Adobe app, which comes in 3 flavors: Windows, Mac, and Screw You (Linux and everyone else). The Adobe app downloads the eBook and peers into your eReader to get the information needed to encrypt the eBook before uploading it into the eReader.
Yes, you heard that right. Not only are you tied to a desktop machine with limited OS choices to get the book into your eReader, you have to provide the resources to put the resulting document under DRM.
If it sounds like forcing the slaves to forge their own shackles, well....
nobody wants to work anymore, everyone just wants to get paid
http://stephan.sugarmotor.org
All I take from this, is that Cory Doctorow needs to have all of his book rights under a better publisher than Macmillan.
Have you been into a major public library in a large urban center lately? They're usually about half full of "itinerant campers", who are either surfing porn on the free public internet terminals or are giving themselves sponge-baths (or worse) in the library's rest rooms. Emphasizing electronic content frees the genteel reader from the physical and social hazards of travel to their library building. It reduces the problem of specialized content being in a different building. It also allows patrons to relax more about borrowing, since there are never any overdue fines for electronic content.
How about just keeping actual books in libraries instead? No tech support, no licensing needed.
Right, just physical space (heated, air-conditioned, humidity-controlled, access-controlled space) and staff to store, shelve, check out, check in, reshelve, index, and repair every single print volume.
And the print books are only available during the limited hours the library is open. (This can be a serious issue for individuals with long work/commuting hours coupled to family commitments, especially in communities where library hours are very limited.)
For individuals with mobility concerns getting to the library can be costly or time-consuming, if not impossible. For individuals with limited vision an ebook offers adjustable font size.
In rural areas, it may be impossible for individuals to get to the library by public transit; even library patrons who own cars may need to commit significant time and generate appreciable emissions driving to their nearest library.
Larger cities with multiple library branches can share a small number of ebooks across a large number of branches.
That's why.
~Idarubicin
A. I don't want to spend extra money on an e-book reader, and cross my fingers that whatever e-reader I buy today will be usable next year.
B. I don't need yet another gadget that requires bug fixes, internet access, batteries to be replaced, and headaches. No gadget made today is as simple as a book.
C. E-books is an entire category of products that's fixing a problem that doesn't exist.
I guess that possibly, if you live in NYC or San Francisco, and you have thousands of books, that space may be an issue, but other than that particular circumstance, I can't see what the problem with books is that needs to be solved by yet another expensive, complicated, polluting gadget.
I don't respond to AC's.
Pirated versions of your content do not have these annoying restrictions.
Actually, it's a new first step, pushing each of the other five down the stack:
6) Buy the book.
You need something to scan, and the publisher and writer need to make SOMETHING.
In many cases, they'll make more because of a potential step 7--some of the people to whom you lend the pdf will want to buy their own paper copy.
E-books have many advantages, but -- ignoring the idiotic licensing shenigans -- they have a huge disadvantage too: they're less pleasant to read. Yes, e-ink displays are better than LCDs, but frankly they're still awful compared to simple old paper.
Maybe some future tech will fix that, but I'm not holding my breath... even when it becomes technically possible, the current market focus seems to be more on making books into little TVs than supporting reading well.
[I'm thinking mainly of books that one reads at length. For something like a reference manual, of course, which is typically read in short bursts, and where small size, searchability, and random access are huge advantages, an e-book of just about any sort is the bee's knees.]
We live, as we dream -- alone....
Wait to borrow books that do this until someone comes up with a point and click script that rips the DRM off the eBook, like the one I use on my purchased Sony Reader books (linux user, their appstore won't work on linux.) Win.
They cost a forest and a polluted river.
And electronic trash is any better?
sysadmins and parents of newborns get the same amount of sleep.
...buy things with DRM... or that need to be jailbroken. If they didn't make any money at this, they wouldn't do it...
My Kindle will be usable until it breaks, i'm not sure how you think they might become "unusable," I don't need bugfixes, internet access, or batteries, and I keep the wifi turned off so I won't get any of those unnecessary things pushed down my throat.
RUGBYRUGBYRUGBY
Libraries should simply buy paper books instead of ebooks while this policy is in place.
Respect the Constitution
Let them have their 26 checkouts, if I can have copyright protection only last 60 years, instead of the 120 congress is pushing towards.
I have to disagree here. I have been using an eInk book reader for the past two years and have had no regrets. I take it on trips as well as to the office to read while at lunch. I can lock the keys instead of looking for a bookmark, and if I exit the book I can start right up where I left off. I used to do reading off of an Ipaq, and that was not enjoyable for long periods of time.
I would not recommend eInk for manuals with illustrations yet because I don't see a device that can do them justice. In my experience the PDFs were reduced so much so everything fits on a page, and the diagrams and text were almost unreadable.
But ebook readers for novels and such, totally as pleasant as holding a book in my experience.
They bring jack booted thugs to demand their surrender for burning.
Dude that is so old school. These days you don't need firemen to burn unwanted books/ideas. In a world of electric books on multi-media devices there are two far simpler options:
Respect the Constitution
Do books cause more pollution than creating an e-reader?
If you get Nook or some other ereader that supports the epub standard then you're not going to be in that sort of situation. I can replace the battery in my Nook without much trouble, and the device itself is standards compliant. Worse case I have to get a new battery from a 3rd party source and stick with DRM free books, not that big a deal.
Plus, it's just a whole lot easier to read books on an ereader than it is with a standard dead tree edition.
It seems any more innovations in communication and information publishing are about maximizing the sales channel rather than providing value to the consumer.
Now I know how poor rice farmers in India must feel as the seeds from their rice harvest can't be regrown after some clever biotech company introduced a terminator gene to protect their IP and profits.
They bring jack booted thugs to demand their surrender for burning.
At least that is a conspicuous abuse of power. With e-books, someone at amazon enters a command or two and Orwell's works go *POOF*
It also ignores the fact that books are made out of what would otherwise be waste product of the sawmills that cut the lumber we use throughout the rest of society
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Makes sense to me, cause y'know regular books self-destruct after 26 loans too, right? Oh, wait...
Should you choose to accept this E-book.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Libraries should simply buy a different publisher's books instead while this policy is in place.
I mean, really. What are they being paid for? The author writes a book, presumably in digital form... ebook publisher does exactly what before posting it into the Apple store or Amazon? Sprinkle fairy dust on it?
I can see the need for an editor to proofread and make some quality suggestions, so freelance or editing companies, but then? Advertising? Google Ads...
and?
Buh bye publishing houses.
Deleted
I have tried e-books. My reader is now gathering dust, another wasted technology purchase. The selection of titles is still terrible, the prices are inflated and the reading experience is dismal. I'm not saying e-books will never be a better way of accessing books, but they're a way off it yet.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
The main advantage that it has is portability. I can take a few dozen books on holiday and fit them all in my carry-on luggage. The biggest disadvantage, for me at least, is that I can't read them in the bath. Even if I weren't worried about dropping an expensive device in the water, the humidity would probably destroy it after a few uses.
The real problem here is that lending is a model that just doesn't fit with electronic data. It only supports one operation - copying. You can just about do selling, by making a copy, but lending requires making a copy and then destroying it later. Publishers (in all media) need to adapt to the idea that they are selling access to a growing repository of books, not selling copies of individual ones.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I use my phone to read ebooks, have done that for years.
I assume this means you also still take your dirty laundry down to the creek with a washboard and a bar of Phels-Naptha on laundry day?
You're a fucking moron. The problem ebooks address is portability -- I have about 30 books on my phone right now. Can you put 30 dead tree books in your pocket, dumbass?
Are you for hire, my hero?
Athy, athier, athiest.
not to support those who support DRM, but I can kind of see where HaperCollins is coming from. I mean paper books degrade over time, ebooks do not. I can't claim to know if '26' is the avg borrowers of a paperbook before it gets replaced (or more likely retired), but if HC is just trying to make sure the libraries aren't getting more for their dollar (actually, that HC is getting less $s for their work), then I have no beef with them.
Will it fit inside a zip-loc freezer bag? I used to put my tape player inside one if I was planning on a long soak.
Give it time and special housings and/or ruggedized versions will probably appear.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
A large collection requires lots of floor space which costs a lot.
You can never have as big a collection as you could with electronic materials.
Lots of cost in acquisition and (sometimes) cataloguing.
Lots of manual labour involved in processing, shelving etc requiring large staff and costs.
Only one person can read them at a time.
Books get returned late, and they get lost.
Yes or no, depending on the scale. Remember, each e-book is simply data, whereas each physical book is a little bit more pollution. So an e-reader versus 5 books might create more pollution, but versus 500? I doubt it.
Yet Another Tech Blog
(but so much more, including game and movie reviews)
http://yanteb.peasantoid.org
My Kindle DX fits the 1-gallon size bags just fine. Since I'm still waiting for my cover to arrive, I used one the other day to take the Kindle with me for lunch when I didn't want to carry the briefcase and it was raining. Perfect fit! And I could use it while still in the bag, too, though the readability suffered a bit.
I hope this comment is well received... I could have moderated instead!
Persecutors will be violated!
What? Which e-reader did you get? I have a Kindle DX and I'm quite happy with it. The screen is the best I've seen for e-readers and the battery life is phenomenal (I leave the wireless off most of the time). The selection of books isn't bad at all. There are plenty of free books (and occasional special free deals) and most others are LESS expensive than the dead-tree version. I have a metric ton of books on mine already. Many are PDFs and freebies provided by my girlfriend (she likes SciFi, too), Others are manuals and certification study guides, again mostly freebies I found and PDFs from the software providers. The down-side is that Amazon won't play nice with libraries, so checking out an e-book from my local library isn't going to work. However, other e-readers obviously do work for this and HarperCollins is a bunch of asses for what they're trying to do here.
Originally, I didn't want to 'waste my money on another unneeded gadget', but then came the Citrix documentation I had to study for work. Over 5000 pages of PDFs! My girlfriend made a very valid point: "If you worked for me and printed all that out, I would fire you!" And I sure as hell wasn't going to print it at home. Besides, as she also pointed out, who in their right mind would want to carry around 5000 pages? Or even a small part of that? It's inconvenient to say the least, not to mention environmentally unsound. I'm no tree-hugger (far from it) but I do my part. So an e-reader was the right way to go.
Then came an amusing, satisfying moment-
I was kicking back, reading a SciFi on my reader, occasionally tapping my way to the next page, when it dawned on my I was reading a SciFi on a device that a few years ago only existed IN A SCiFI!
AND IT WORKS!
So cool! :)
I hope this comment is well received... I could have moderated instead!
Persecutors will be violated!
It's insane the levels some people go to maximize profits. If they would just lower prices so that it's budget-able for the common American then there really wouldn't be any need for DRM. The entertainment industry estimates it's loosing 3 billion a year, but when you consider that they are making several times that, they are loosing a percentage that is less than that of what is considered a minority in America. And are they factoring the costs of combating piracy into their losses? And if they are then it it really a fair calculation?
What is really funny is that the top ten best selling books on amazon all cost $10 or less with most at only $3 or less. If we would just price the books to that they are affordable then people would have no want to pirate the books. It's the fact that people cannot afford to buy multiple books at $30-$50 ($150-$250 for university text books) that make people want to pirate the books. On top of that it costs them only a fraction of a cent to distribute an e-book, e-video, or other e-content. The best way to make money is to price it so that anyone who wants it can buy it at a price that won't really effect them. I think they are just shooting themselves in the foot. Because when you do the math 26 checkouts means that there will be as many as 33554432 copy's in circulation before the book starts destroying itself. It only takes one accomplished hacker to get ahold of one of these copy's to remove the protection and suddenly now it's free for everyone to pirate on the internet.
I'm beginning to think that DRM is costing more than it's saving, It's not encouraging anyone to buy legitimate products. it's just encouraging people to move over to free solutions. Pirated, open source, creative commons, etc... In fact i think the price of installing DRM on all of this content, and filling lawsuits, is actually costing them more than they are making by having it. When and if i publish anything i will do so with all of this in mind, and any publisher who wants to sign me will have to sign a contract i write not the other way around.
Speaking as a reader, an author and a publisher - I like libraries. Libraries benefit the publisher, the author and the reader.
But some history: Publishers have been trying to destroy libraries for over a century. They've failed so far and hopefully will continue to fail. Not everyone is going to buy a book. Not ever book is worth buying. Every library book was bought, either by the library or someone else who then donated it to the library. The publisher made their money. They're just greedy. If they get their way you will have to repay every time you read your own book and heaven forbid, NO you can NOT lend your book to your spouse or your kid. Nor can you read it in the bedroom and then start the next chapter in the living room. You must read it all within 24 hours in the same chair.
Personally, I'm not doing the ebook thing yet because these issues are still in flux and I don't want my collection of books lost just because I change ereaders. I'll stick to PDF (wow! all those free documents) and paper books of which I have many. Harper Collins can suck glue.
The spam challenge this time is "spited". As in, I loaned the book and spited the publisher. Bravo.
As many comments previous, Harper Collins have contractual obligations to Authors unless they have waived their rights.
Just do not buy any Harper Collin's books anymore. Besides most will remember the fiasco of Amazon bricking peoples' Kindles.
The reality is Ladies and Gentlemen... you are being held to Ransom and actually is an indirect threat. I was up to page 499 and it turned itself off!
All cows eat grass!
You read 30 books at a time?
I don't respond to AC's.
Do you ever travel? Ever traveled for more than a week? Just because you can't see a use, doesn't mean there isn't a use. E-book readers are very popular and your resistance isn't going to change that. I love my Nook, when I was looking at the need to send it in for warranty repair, I even went out and bought a new one so I didn't have to live without it.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
E-ink even is made from ink, so I don't frankly see the difference. Also, when was the last time you could change the size of the font on a paper book? I even upgraded recently to the Nook color, and was surprised at how good the screen is, it is just as comfortable to read as my Nook B/W was; it is even better in low light, I even keep the backlight at its lowest setting and never have an issue. You do however sacrifice the battery replacement ability of the B/W version, but the battery seems to last about 5 days, with wifi on, so it seems that the battery is much bigger then the B/W version (backlights take more power, Android takes more power, but it lasts about the same)
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Second all your points on the Kindle with the Nook. Selection is very good, you can often find PDFs of many useful things (I have all the Linux Documentation Project books) and you can even get books from other sellers like Fictionwise.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
I would disagree on one point, many lower income people use the library specifically for the internet. I don't see libraries remaining a repository for books much longer, it is easier to go digital for many of these things, at least for those of us who have the money.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Please create a 100 foot tall tower of books on your driveway and dive off it, head first.
It seems to me that you would be getting more use out of a book than you've ever previously gotten in your life.
...a bar of Phels-Naptha...
That's Fels-Naptha (Fels was the inventor's last name), and I thought I was the only geek who'd heard of it. That's potent stuff. It even has an MSDS listing their particular flavor of naptha - "Hydrocarbons, Terpene Processing By-Products".
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
What? Which e-reader did you get? I have a Kindle DX and I'm quite happy with it. The screen is the best I've seen for e-readers
It's a Sony, but that's not relevant. Did you notice how you had to qualify what you said? You're quite happy with it; the screen is the best you've seen for e-readers. It's as if you're arguing that watching a program about the Carribean in high-definition is better than watching it in low definition, when I'm arguing that neither is as good as actually going there.
and the battery life is phenomenal
It's pretty good on my Sony, too. How does it compare with real books? See, as long as e-readers and e-books are trying to impersonate the dead-tree equivalents they're always going to be just a copy. When e-books actually start adding something good, then the technology might really take off. Yes, the ability to search text is something good in the case of reference material (although not as good as having the material properly hyperlinked), but I only really need to do that searching when I'm doing my assignments so I'm sitting at a computer to have the word-processor open, so even though I use the e-book then I still don't use the e-reader (the course I'm doing provides all texts in dead-tree and pdf).
The selection of books isn't bad at all. There are plenty of free books (and occasional special free deals) and most others are LESS expensive than the dead-tree version.
Some are less expensive than the list price, but they usually seem to be the ones selling for a lot less than the list price in the local supermarket too, so the e-books are still more expensive. If you just want something in a genre to read and are not much bothered what then there is probably loads available at sensible prices. If you want a particular book, though, and it's not on the best-seller lists, my experience is that you're unlikely to find it at all, and if you do it will probably be overpriced. The only one I found that wasn't was Shaw's Pygmalion, which I needed for my studies a few years ago. At that time I couldn't find all the free versions that are around now, but I found one that was pretty cheap. I bought it, and used it for that course (on a computer -- this was before I had an e-reader), but it was loaded with DRM that's incompatible with anything I own now so I can no longer view it. That's never happened to me with a dead-tree book.
I have a metric ton of books on mine already. Many are PDFs and freebies provided by my girlfriend (she likes SciFi, too)
I have been very disappointed by the (legal) freebies I've found.
Others are manuals and certification study guides, again mostly freebies I found and PDFs from the software providers.
Yes, I have loads of those. Not on my e-reader, though. On the computer on which I'm actually using the information.
Originally, I didn't want to 'waste my money on another unneeded gadget', but then came the Citrix documentation I had to study for work. Over 5000 pages of PDFs! My girlfriend made a very valid point: "If you worked for me and printed all that out, I would fire you!" And I sure as hell wasn't going to print it at home. Besides, as she also pointed out, who in their right mind would want to carry around 5000 pages? Or even a small part of that? It's inconvenient to say the least, not to mention environmentally unsound. I'm no tree-hugger (far from it) but I do my part. So an e-reader was the right way to go.
Ok, a specific purpose, and maybe an e-reader was the way to go for you. I would have used my laptop.
Then came an amusing, satisfying moment- I was kicking back, reading a SciFi on my reader, occasionally tapping my way to the next page, when it dawned on my I was reading a SciFi on a device that a few years ago only existed IN A SCiFI!
AND IT WORKS!
So cool! :)
Yes, that's the sort of geek-appeal that made me buy one in the first place. It wasn't enough to keep me using it, though,
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Thank you for your interesting reply. See my comments below....
What? Which e-reader did you get? I have a Kindle DX and I'm quite happy with it. The screen is the best I've seen for e-readers
It's a Sony, but that's not relevant. Did you notice how you had to qualify what you said? You're quite happy with it; the screen is the best you've seen for e-readers. It's as if you're arguing that watching a program about the Carribean in high-definition is better than watching it in low definition, when I'm arguing that neither is as good as actually going there.
Hmm.. Let me be more clear. In my use of the work "quite", I meant to convey a higher level of happiness. I am VERY happy with my Kindle DX. Is that more clear? And of course I said it's the best screen for e-readers. THAT'S WHAT THIS IS. I don't want a back-lit, high-def LCD screen. They have too much glare and put out too much light for comfortable reading. So, for e-readers, the type of display the Kindle has is best. And yes, which e-reader is relevant. Some are better than others.
And actually being there is better than reading the book, too, but can you get there? Do you have the time or money for it? That's what reading (and viewing multi-media) is about. Your argument is specious.
Basically, you're reading this with the meaning YOU want, not the meaning I implied, simply because you want to bash this genre of products. It's fine that you don't like them or find them useful, of course. But try not to twist another persons words. This isn't art class where you get to say how a painting makes you feel. This is written communication wherein we try to understand what the person actually meant.
and the battery life is phenomenal
It's pretty good on my Sony, too. How does it compare with real books? See, as long as e-readers and e-books are trying to impersonate the dead-tree equivalents they're always going to be just a copy.
Close, but not quite. You see, it IS just a copy of the book. So is any book. But it's also a copy of the other 200 books I want to carry.
When e-books actually start adding something good, then the technology might really take off. Yes, the ability to search text is something good in the case of reference material (although not as good as having the material properly hyperlinked), but I only really need to do that searching when I'm doing my assignments so I'm sitting at a computer to have the word-processor open, so even though I use the e-book then I still don't use the e-reader (the course I'm doing provides all texts in dead-tree and pdf).
Actually, e-readers already provide more than text search. They allow you to carry many books, books of large size, all in one little package. And without killing a tree. Then there is bookmarking, highlighting, word definition look-up, text-to-speech, and on-line shopping for books. There are even some games. (capabilities vary from e-reader to e-reader)
The selection of books isn't bad at all. There are plenty of free books (and occasional special free deals) and most others are LESS expensive than the dead-tree version.
Some are less expensive than the list price, but they usually seem to be the ones selling for a lot less than the list price in the local supermarket too, so the e-books are still more expensive. If you just want something in a genre to read and are not much bothered what then there is probably loads available at sensible prices. If you want a particular book, though, and it's not on the best-seller lists, my experience is that you're unlikely to find it at all, and if you do it will probably be overpriced. The only one I found that wasn't was Shaw's Pygmalion, which I needed for my studies a few years ago. At that time I couldn't find all the free
I hope this comment is well received... I could have moderated instead!
Persecutors will be violated!
I never looked into the eInk technology and how they really function. I assumed it was similar to how toner cartridges functioned.
:) The battery life isn't great and not truly what is advertised, but I think it is a problem with the battery instead of the unit.
;)
I have a Hanlin B/W book reader, and I enjoy it quite a bit. It changes pages rather slowly, but I learned to time it right so when I reach the end of the page it changes
I was playing around with a Nook at Barnes and Noble, I take it you like them a lot ? I was impressed at how slick and fast they operate. I was very tempted to pick one up last time I was in there. I am lucky it wasn't payday week