Not yet. Maybe soon. God knows I've been waiting long enough.
We publish e-books, and for demonstration purposes I use a Sony Z505 Notebook with a high-res 1024x768 screen. It's small and you can type on it, but battery life sucks. It was very expensive when new, but probably cheap now. The screen sure is great; it's comparable to a mass-market paperback, two pages side-by-side.
But it's larger than most PDA's, even though small for a notebook/laptop. Weighs 3.75 lbs. Did I mention it draws down its battery the moment your back is turned?
I run a small e-book publishing company (www.hidden-knowledge.com) and would say that everything people have written here is approximately correct. Printed books are easier to read, but e-books are easier to carry; e-books are too expensive (but I hate paying $6.95 for a disposable paperback); DRM is a fraud as well as an inconvenience (or worse); and so on.
e-books will grow because they DO have advantages over printed books: size, weight, shipping cost, built-in index and search, audio read for the blind, read in the bathtub (inside a ziploc bag), read in bed with backlighting, etc.
They're not replacing printed books; they're growing alongside them, as one more instance class.
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Not yet. Maybe soon. God knows I've been waiting long enough.
We publish e-books, and for demonstration purposes I use a Sony Z505 Notebook with a high-res 1024x768 screen. It's small and you can type on it, but battery life sucks. It was very expensive when new, but probably cheap now. The screen sure is great; it's comparable to a mass-market paperback, two pages side-by-side.
But it's larger than most PDA's, even though small for a notebook/laptop. Weighs 3.75 lbs. Did I mention it draws down its battery the moment your back is turned?Mike Ward, www.hidden-knowledge.com
I run a small e-book publishing company (www.hidden-knowledge.com) and would say that everything people have written here is approximately correct. Printed books are easier to read, but e-books are easier to carry; e-books are too expensive (but I hate paying $6.95 for a disposable paperback); DRM is a fraud as well as an inconvenience (or worse); and so on.
e-books will grow because they DO have advantages over printed books: size, weight, shipping cost, built-in index and search, audio read for the blind, read in the bathtub (inside a ziploc bag), read in bed with backlighting, etc.
They're not replacing printed books; they're growing alongside them, as one more instance class.