I think you're seriously hung up on calling others "consumers" or slaves to corporations, maybe to make yourself feel better, I don't know. Making a purchase doesn't enslave you to anyone.
Where do you draw the line between want and need, though, because enlightening yourself and improving your brain activity through reading seems like a fairly clear need, especially in today's information-based society.
Now, if you ask if this specific device is a need, I would say it is a need if you desire to have reading available with you to suit your mood and don't want to have 10 pounds of printed material in your book bag.
If I take the train to work, I used to carry a book and a newspaper because often I'd have no interest in reading one of them. With my Sony reader, I have half a dozen different news sources and RSS feeds loaded up in the morning -- anything from the Wall Street Journal to Linux Magazine or crash.net -- and can jump to any of them at the flip of a switch. And the weight that I carry remains the same.
As for ownership, is that an advantage? Having rows upon rows of books taking up space in your room? What will you do then, put them up on ebay and deal with shipping them? Pain in the ass. Or maybe just give it to the local library. My local library doesn't accept used books. Yeah, boggles my mind too. Obviously you can buy printed versions of the books you want to keep for a while, or text boots or technical reference books, but for novels, I don't see the point.
So is one automatically a consumption drone every time they make a purchase? Any purchase? There are thousands of people that enjoy their readers, many have multiple ones, and still keep up with the new models coming out.
Are you seriously saying that people buying these things to spend hours reading are making impulse buying decisions to satisfy some emotional need? Cmon. Most people buying these things are rational about the pros and cons and why exactly they buy them. After all, these things arent cheap.
You were comparing the Kindle to a laptop on _reading_ _experience_, not content control, so let's separate those two. eInk readers have significant advantages over a laptop or tablet.
But turning to content control, are books free on the PC? Do you get access to the latest releases DRM-free? Free to copy and paste into plain text? To lend to anyone? No? Books have the same amount of owner control as on the Kindle?
Well, then, I guess it's the usability that's really important here, isn't it?
And no one has a problem with you disliking the Kindle. People could take issue with your statement that the Kindle is useless universally, as if it were some truth written in stone.
The only cool feature with the Nook is that LCD on the bottom. It would have been perfect to load up a keyboard onto that thing to let you annotate, and look up words in the dictionary, but I haven't heard about it having such a feature.
Only lame book cover previews and setting menus. You'll still be staring at eInt 99% of the time, and that isn't different than the Kindles, and books at B&N's ebook store are reportedly much more expensive.
As far as I am aware, prices are significantly higher if you download them wirelessly. If you download them to your computer and load them onto the Kindle via a USB cable, the price is lower, as it doesn't incur cell charges. I think an Amazon rep confirmed this, though I don't have a link.
It isn't just Murdoch, but also Associated Press, and probably others.. Most content that you see on aggregator sites are from the AP (MSNBC.com would have 3 headlines otherwise).
> It's easy to lend to friends.. just hand them the book.
Adobe's Digital Editions allows you to share books with other users. I haven't used it yet, so not sure how exactly it works, but the idea is obviously in the minds of DRM creators and is already being implemented. It could likely also be extended to purely online libraries.
The few times I read something in the bath, the pages wrinkled up just from the humidity. Add to that accidental splashes, having moist fingers, etc, and a printed page fares much worse than y Sony reader in a ziplock bag.
I agree with you that both have their own benefits. For me, its the options. When commuting by subway, I found that pretty often, I'd get bored of reading whatever book I had with me, and wanted to quickly turn to something completely different. So often I'd have a newspaper along. That got kind of heavy. On my PRS-505, I can load up a few different online "newspapers", which are just rss feeds, but range from traditional newspaper sites, to ars technica, to whichever rss feed you want to download and compile into a book.
So a reader gives you that option of variety without any added weight.
> Unfortunately the publishers want us to continue to follow their business model of purchasing hard books
I don't think so. I would doubt they are dumb enough to realize they could significantly erode the used book market with ebooks. They'd get money from every single purchase (barring piracy), and people couldn't even lend to eachother.
And you're charging probably 80 percent of regular price for a few bits of data, without having to print the book and maintain a distribution network.
Why aren't thy jumping on it? I dunno. There are many different readers out now. Many different formats. It can take a lot of reading just to grasp info about all the formats, online book stores, etc, so there's a general confusion in the market.
Maybe it's just too early and/or too disorganized. Maybe the formats, readers, and stores need to sort themselves out first, consolidate, etc, so that there's a solid base for consumers to have confidence in.
So holding a device up to your ear is more dangerous than fixating your eyes on a 5" LCD, and reaching out to type out an address and navigate the too often cluttered and unintuitive menu interface?
There's a fair bit of engineering and machining involved, stuff that no one has ever done really, no different than building a Mars rover, yet you probably wouldn't complain about the rover being mentioned on the front page.
I use VirtuaWin on XP and have Alt+(1|2|3|4) to change to my desktops, which is pretty easy, and I never took a typing class. And the only parts of my body actually above my desk are my forearms and head. So I'm not exactly sitting in ergonomic positions. And it's still very easy for me. Plus I have these icons in the task bar that let me switch using my mouse, which on my ThinkPad is a trackpoint, so I never take my hands off the keyboard.
Plus, your grandma would still have to reach over the keyboard to get to the displays, so how is less of an effort?
But it's such a good business. I know of one colo client that has DNS for a domain with UltraDNS. We're talking about a single domain with maybe a dozen records. The bill? It was over $2K per month. And we aren't talking about a Fortune500 company here. All those techie sounding terms, trademarked labels, and slick marketing comeons work well with IT "managers".
But why is it the journalist's job to spell out that you're reading a press release from a commercial DNS provider denigrating competition. It should be in everyone's ability to take a press release as company's marketing drivel, and whatever assertions they make about competing products as attempts to promote their own products, unless proven otherwise.
That's the gamble that those that choose to leave will have to make, won't they? I'd also be inclined that the stores will fail. But whoever switches will be taking a higher income with a decrease in security. But at the same time, who's to say Apple wouldn't close a store anyway, and put that same person out of work?
They don't have to leave. You just have to offer them a competing salary or some other benefit. That's the basis that both of these companies operate on, no? Market rule and supply and demand.
No, I'm not so sure the AC missed your point. Your sentence about not spending a nickel on a reader conveyed a certain anger or hostility, which the AC was picking up on.
And what we can pick up on in your response is a certain arrogance that you read a lot of books. Well, good for you. But all that reading didn't seem to help you in understanding someone's response to you or at least rereading it to try to understand before responding.
I'd agree with the AC: I don't know why you're faulting Sony and Amazon for anything. It took a lot of money and time just to develop a black and white screen. So it isn't there in time for you to read comics on. So what. Future generations will have that ability. And displays that use very little power will definitely find lots of applications in an era where energy conservation will be come more important. That goes beyond readers, to advertisements, road signs, etc.
But the whole point of eInk is to eliminate strain on your eyes for prolonged reading. If all you need is reference, open the docs on your 21" LCD or laptop, which you no doubt have with you since access to documents is important to whatever work you're doing.
I can't imagine the paranoia of carrying a glass screen that size in a backpack of bag. You'd probably need a hard protective case, at which point you might as well get a tabled, which would also give you editing capabilities.
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I doubt Apple would do this on an OS that people paid money for.
Maybe they'll be releasing a free or cheaper version with the caveat that you will see ads once in a while. The NetZero business plan.
I think you're seriously hung up on calling others "consumers" or slaves to corporations, maybe to make yourself feel better, I don't know. Making a purchase doesn't enslave you to anyone.
Where do you draw the line between want and need, though, because enlightening yourself and improving your brain activity through reading seems like a fairly clear need, especially in today's information-based society.
Now, if you ask if this specific device is a need, I would say it is a need if you desire to have reading available with you to suit your mood and don't want to have 10 pounds of printed material in your book bag.
If I take the train to work, I used to carry a book and a newspaper because often I'd have no interest in reading one of them. With my Sony reader, I have half a dozen different news sources and RSS feeds loaded up in the morning -- anything from the Wall Street Journal to Linux Magazine or crash.net -- and can jump to any of them at the flip of a switch. And the weight that I carry remains the same.
As for ownership, is that an advantage? Having rows upon rows of books taking up space in your room? What will you do then, put them up on ebay and deal with shipping them? Pain in the ass. Or maybe just give it to the local library. My local library doesn't accept used books. Yeah, boggles my mind too. Obviously you can buy printed versions of the books you want to keep for a while, or text boots or technical reference books, but for novels, I don't see the point.
So is one automatically a consumption drone every time they make a purchase? Any purchase? There are thousands of people that enjoy their readers, many have multiple ones, and still keep up with the new models coming out.
Are you seriously saying that people buying these things to spend hours reading are making impulse buying decisions to satisfy some emotional need? Cmon. Most people buying these things are rational about the pros and cons and why exactly they buy them. After all, these things arent cheap.
You were comparing the Kindle to a laptop on _reading_ _experience_, not content control, so let's separate those two. eInk readers have significant advantages over a laptop or tablet.
But turning to content control, are books free on the PC? Do you get access to the latest releases DRM-free? Free to copy and paste into plain text? To lend to anyone? No? Books have the same amount of owner control as on the Kindle?
Well, then, I guess it's the usability that's really important here, isn't it?
And no one has a problem with you disliking the Kindle. People could take issue with your statement that the Kindle is useless universally, as if it were some truth written in stone.
The only cool feature with the Nook is that LCD on the bottom. It would have been perfect to load up a keyboard onto that thing to let you annotate, and look up words in the dictionary, but I haven't heard about it having such a feature.
Only lame book cover previews and setting menus. You'll still be staring at eInt 99% of the time, and that isn't different than the Kindles, and books at B&N's ebook store are reportedly much more expensive.
As far as I am aware, prices are significantly higher if you download them wirelessly. If you download them to your computer and load them onto the Kindle via a USB cable, the price is lower, as it doesn't incur cell charges. I think an Amazon rep confirmed this, though I don't have a link.
It isn't just Murdoch, but also Associated Press, and probably others.. Most content that you see on aggregator sites are from the AP (MSNBC.com would have 3 headlines otherwise).
Who uses their ISP's email service these days?
> It's easy to lend to friends.. just hand them the book.
Adobe's Digital Editions allows you to share books with other users. I haven't used it yet, so not sure how exactly it works, but the idea is obviously in the minds of DRM creators and is already being implemented. It could likely also be extended to purely online libraries.
The few times I read something in the bath, the pages wrinkled up just from the humidity. Add to that accidental splashes, having moist fingers, etc, and a printed page fares much worse than y Sony reader in a ziplock bag.
I agree with you that both have their own benefits. For me, its the options. When commuting by subway, I found that pretty often, I'd get bored of reading whatever book I had with me, and wanted to quickly turn to something completely different. So often I'd have a newspaper along. That got kind of heavy. On my PRS-505, I can load up a few different online "newspapers", which are just rss feeds, but range from traditional newspaper sites, to ars technica, to whichever rss feed you want to download and compile into a book.
So a reader gives you that option of variety without any added weight.
The whole point to eInk is that it isn't an LCD display.
But to use your own comparison, how is that LCD in direct sunlight?
> Unfortunately the publishers want us to continue to follow their business model of purchasing hard books
I don't think so. I would doubt they are dumb enough to realize they could significantly erode the used book market with ebooks. They'd get money from every single purchase (barring piracy), and people couldn't even lend to eachother.
And you're charging probably 80 percent of regular price for a few bits of data, without having to print the book and maintain a distribution network.
Why aren't thy jumping on it? I dunno. There are many different readers out now. Many different formats. It can take a lot of reading just to grasp info about all the formats, online book stores, etc, so there's a general confusion in the market.
Maybe it's just too early and/or too disorganized. Maybe the formats, readers, and stores need to sort themselves out first, consolidate, etc, so that there's a solid base for consumers to have confidence in.
So holding a device up to your ear is more dangerous than fixating your eyes on a 5" LCD, and reaching out to type out an address and navigate the too often cluttered and unintuitive menu interface?
Stories like these make me glad I only log in from a Ubuntu LiveCD that I boot up solely for that purpose.
There's a fair bit of engineering and machining involved, stuff that no one has ever done really, no different than building a Mars rover, yet you probably wouldn't complain about the rover being mentioned on the front page.
I don't recall any bicycles with full fairings on them. Does that mean supersports aren't motorcycles?
Think of the body as a really really big fairing, that encompasses the rider.
Nah, autocross is boring. You wait a whole bunch of time to do one lap around a 50 second course in a mall parking lot dotted with cones.
Go to a track day, on a real road track, and get so much driving time that you'll be sick of it by the late afternoon.
You could also buy a shifter cart and drive all day for much cheaper and probably have an even bigger blast.
But friends don't let friends autocross.
I use VirtuaWin on XP and have Alt+(1|2|3|4) to change to my desktops, which is pretty easy, and I never took a typing class. And the only parts of my body actually above my desk are my forearms and head. So I'm not exactly sitting in ergonomic positions. And it's still very easy for me. Plus I have these icons in the task bar that let me switch using my mouse, which on my ThinkPad is a trackpoint, so I never take my hands off the keyboard.
Plus, your grandma would still have to reach over the keyboard to get to the displays, so how is less of an effort?
But it's such a good business. I know of one colo client that has DNS for a domain with UltraDNS. We're talking about a single domain with maybe a dozen records. The bill? It was over $2K per month. And we aren't talking about a Fortune500 company here. All those techie sounding terms, trademarked labels, and slick marketing comeons work well with IT "managers".
But why is it the journalist's job to spell out that you're reading a press release from a commercial DNS provider denigrating competition. It should be in everyone's ability to take a press release as company's marketing drivel, and whatever assertions they make about competing products as attempts to promote their own products, unless proven otherwise.
So what if I download these "podcasts" only sporradically, and frequently only one for a particular "artist"? Is it no longer a podcast?
That's the gamble that those that choose to leave will have to make, won't they? I'd also be inclined that the stores will fail. But whoever switches will be taking a higher income with a decrease in security. But at the same time, who's to say Apple wouldn't close a store anyway, and put that same person out of work?
They don't have to leave. You just have to offer them a competing salary or some other benefit. That's the basis that both of these companies operate on, no? Market rule and supply and demand.
No, I'm not so sure the AC missed your point. Your sentence about not spending a nickel on a reader conveyed a certain anger or hostility, which the AC was picking up on.
And what we can pick up on in your response is a certain arrogance that you read a lot of books. Well, good for you. But all that reading didn't seem to help you in understanding someone's response to you or at least rereading it to try to understand before responding.
I'd agree with the AC: I don't know why you're faulting Sony and Amazon for anything. It took a lot of money and time just to develop a black and white screen. So it isn't there in time for you to read comics on. So what. Future generations will have that ability. And displays that use very little power will definitely find lots of applications in an era where energy conservation will be come more important. That goes beyond readers, to advertisements, road signs, etc.
But the whole point of eInk is to eliminate strain on your eyes for prolonged reading. If all you need is reference, open the docs on your 21" LCD or laptop, which you no doubt have with you since access to documents is important to whatever work you're doing.
I can't imagine the paranoia of carrying a glass screen that size in a backpack of bag. You'd probably need a hard protective case, at which point you might as well get a tabled, which would also give you editing capabilities.