Have You Changed Your Opinion On eBook Readers?

An anonymous reader writes "The Kindle made waves when it came out, but they've now had the chance to calm. How many of you have been using your eBook readers since you've received them? How many of you forgot you had one, and how many of you swear by your reader? I like my single-purpose (well, dual — music player) Sony Reader because I actually use it to read, rather than multitasking myself to death. Is this technology as convenient and useful as you expected?" If not, what refinements or improvements would reKindle your interest?

Monospace Font for Technical Books

[mmurphy000]

The Kindle, as I understand it, lacks a monospace font. Monospace fonts are rather useful for code listings and whatnot.

Re:Monospace Font for Technical Books

[Jaegar]

The Kindle, as I understand it, lacks a monospace font. Monospace fonts are rather useful for code listings and whatnot.

According to O'Reilly, the lack of the monospace is one of the roadblocks for getting more publisher support for the Kindle. I think that getting Safari Online for the Kindle would certainly be enough to get me to give the Kindle a shot.

How about no?

[heptapod]

If the books were printed on rag or something else that lacked acid then those tomes would certainly outlast their electronic counterparts. Over time books will become brittle and fragile because the acid is deteriorating the paper.

Re:No.

[radish]

The screen on the kindle only uses power when it refreshes. The other stuff in there obviously uses power (cpu, memory, data link, etc).

Re:This changed my mind about reading

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF!?

Re:Only two sticking points for me

[powerlord]

Take a look at Baen's E-book publishing ( http://www.webscriptions.net/ [webscriptions.net] ).

They've been publishing their entire catalogue since 2001, the prices for the books are pretty reasonable, and the ebooks are available in several unencrypted forms.

They even have a whole bunch of their older titles available for free ( the first dose is always free :) ) http://www.webscriptions.net/c-1-free-library.aspx [webscriptions.net].

Re:Monospace Font for Technical Books

[Pedersen]

Check out the iLiad. I've been using it for the past month and a half now, and wouldn't dream of using something else. Oh, and I can use my download tokens from Safari to get the books, and put the PDFs onto the iLiad. Very very nice device and combination.

Re:Wishlist.

[WuphonsReach]

The Sony unit comes pretty close on a lot of those elements. Especially #1 and #2.

#3 - Isn't that important, IMO. Unless you're plowing through a book per day or more, it's not difficult to load up the unit once a week (or even once a month) with the next dozen books that you want to read. (WiFi is nice for daily RSS feeds if you want it to act like a newspaper though... so I'm not completely against WiFi. It just isn't a must-have for me. I wouldn't mind a docking station setup though, or better RSS support where I connect the unit via USB and it automagically pulls things in.)

#4 - Pretty sure that both the Sony (I know for sure) and the Kindle can load books from other sources. I have a few dozen Project Gutenberg books on my Sony reader (currently working through Stoker's Dracula). Plus some no-DRM books from Baen that were only $4-$6 each.

#6 - The screens on the latest generation are quite good. The pixel density is 170ppi with around 16 shades of grey. Which is just enough to work well. The more ambient light that you have, the better that they look. Glare issues are minor, unless you have a lot of light sources in the room.

#7 - Sony design is very sleek, page-turn time is not that noticeable.

#8 - Sony units are under $300. Which was my "pain threshold" for buying one. Picked mine up for $280 or so back in January.

These aren't the difficult-to-read, expensive ($500+) units from a few years ago. The tech is coming along quite nicely and prices are falling steadily. And the bit of competition between Amazon and Sony is good for us.

Bookeen Cybook purchased through NAEB

[jazir1979]

http://store.naebllc.com/ [naebllc.com]

This is a great alternative e-Ink reader to the Kindle and Sony Reader. It supports open formats as well as DRM'ed mobipocket, runs linux and comes with the promise of firmware updates to add future format support and bug fixes.

Kindle is awesome, but not perfect

[Brandee07]

I've had my Kindle since February, and I never leave the house without it.

I use it primarily for textbooks and the newspaper. The Washington Post downloads automatically to my Kindle every morning, for about 1/4 of having the print edition delivered to my door. If I miss a day (never turn the wireless on), I have seven days to grab it from Amazon's website, which is less than perfect but easier than trying to get an older paper copy.

Many of my assigned readings for class are available for free from ProjectGutenburg or similar websites, so those go on the Kindle via USB. Articles from JSTOR are easily converted to Kindle, as long as they don't have too many funny characters (mine generally do). Class syllabi are often distributed online, so those go on the Kindle as well. The Kindle is a student's best friend.

As pointed out by others, the Kindle's main weakness is PDFs. As some of you well know, the PDF format can be tricky. Some can be converted by Amazon's email service or by MobiPocket Creator, but if you've got a document made up of scans of a book, you're out of luck. It'll display, but at a size far too small to read, and since it's an image, there's no way to increase the size.

Foreign character support would also be awesome, but there's only so much room for OS and drivers on the 256MB of internal space. 180MB are available for use on a fresh unit. (More storage can be added with SD cards, but face it- text is small. There's 20 novels and over 100 newspapers on mine and still about half the space is unused)

The real "Killer App" of the Kindle is the EVDO connectivity. It's not fast and active web surfing will kill a battery in minutes that would otherwise last days, but it can be a lifesaver. I tend to browse the Kindle store on my computer and send a few dozen samples to my Kindle, and only turn on the wireless on the Kindle when I have read the sample and decided to buy it- which I can do anywhere I get cell coverage. Wireless book/newspaper delivery is bundled into the cost of the books, and Amazon is making a healthy enough profit off of that to cover our websurfing as well- while having it there is great, it's clumsy enough that no one is going to use up more than their fair share of bandwidth. When my computer failed for a few days, I was using my Kindle to check my email- and even to register for classes, a very time-sensitive operation. It was slow and clumsy, but bad internet is better than no internet at all.

Book prices have impressed me. Most of them are priced well below their print counterparts, normally around 20% lower than the paperback version. Some books come out priced higher than the hardback versions, and then suddenly drop a week later as the author realizes how the pricing model works. Most books off the bestseller list are 50% or more cheaper than what you'd find in a store.

The battery lasts days, books can be read in full, bright sunlight and doesn't cause eyestrain, and the refresh is fast and doesn't bother me at all. The buttons can be a little too easy to press, but if you keep it in the cover that comes with it (or one of a few aftermarket covers that are already out there) then that's not a problem. The back battery cover has a tendency to slide off, but the Kindle itself has never actually come loose of the cover to float freely in my backpack.

The price of the actual unit is really high, and it's got some of the hallmarks of a v1.0 product, but these will be addressed in the future. Having an imperfect product is part of being an early adopter. And yeah, it's not the most aesthetically designed thing ever, but I've been an Apple fan my whole life. I've got a thing for white plastic.

Re:Only two sticking points for me

[kickabear]

1. Refresh time on turning pages. I know that it doesn't bother some people, but I do notice it. I'm told that it's getting better, though, and that gives me some hope.

I've been reading a Kindle since the third day after release. I was annoyed by the page turn for about 10 minutes, and then my buffer adjusted. Most of us, when reading the last line on a page, skim the last few words of that line, and process it as we turn the page. With the slightly increased page turn time of the Kindle, I just had to learn to buffer a little more of the last line. Now, I don't even notice the page turn. Oh, and if you haven't tried e-ink for at least half an hour, you should do it before you compare your PDA/Laptop/SmartPhone to it. It's not the same. Not even close. I can stare at a backlit screen for about an hour before my eyes start to burn. I can read the Kindle for hours and hours and never get the slightest eye strain.

Re:Its all about book availability

[TooMuchToDo]

Amazon has an email address you can send PDF files to and get back files in the Kindle format. You can than upload said files to the Kindle over USB. Works like a champ for all the PDFs I use (specification documents, open source software documentation, etc).

Re:Monospace Font for Technical Books

[Anonymous Coward]

Official page:
http://www.irextechnologies.com/products/iliad [irextechnologies.com]

Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILiad [wikipedia.org]

Ancient libraries

[Anonymous Coward]

While it's true that a lot of the ancient library was lost, much of it was not very good; a lot of the good stuff was saved. And there is much more than will fit on a single shelf, certainly! I have five or six shelves of it just in my office, and that's not nearly everything.

Karen Carr, Dept. of History
Portland State University

Re:Monospace Font for Technical Books

[Anonymous Psychopath]

There'ss a pretty good comparison matrix of a bunch of eBook readers with links, including the iLiad, here [mobileread.com].

Sony eReader

[Time Doctor]

I really enjoy my sony ereader, once you use it you realize that the physical design is vastly superior to the kindle.

Iliad sucks

[nguy]

I've used an Iliad for a few weeks and found that it sucked: flipping pages is slow, quickly skipping around in a book is nearly impossible, the user interface is mind numbingly broken, and the much talked about contrast of the eInk display is underwhelming. The Sony didn't seem to be any better. With a better user interface, the Iliad could be tolerable despite its display technology, but even then, it wouldn't be a good device.

I think the future of electronic books is with higher resolution cell phones, media players, and tablets, not these kinds of special purpose devices.

Re:Monospace Font for Technical Books

[TheRaven64]

I'm in two minds about whether to recommend the iLiad. The hardware is absolutely gorgeous - the 768x1024 eInk screen with 16 shades of grey is almost as good as real paper. I spent a couple of hours in the park this week reading a dissertation and some research papers on mine. Much of the software, however, is really badly thought-out. It claims to have RSS support, but that's basically a lie (you can use Feedbooks to get PDFs of RSS feeds, but then you just get headlines, which is a complete waste of effort).

If I'd paid RRP for mine, I'd probably be disappointed. As it is, it's definitely a fun toy and anything that lets me work in the park instead of at my desk definitely wins points.

Re:Palm/plucker vs Nokia/FBreader

[TheRaven64]

The 770 has the same resolution screen and can be found very cheaply now. I own both a 770 and an iLiad, and the iLiad is so much better as an eBook reader it's barely worth comparing the two. As a general pocket computer the 770 is better, and I paid about four times as much for the iLiad as I did for the 770 when I bought it. I've read a few novels on my 770, but it's not a great experience. The last novel I read on my iLiad was The Count of Monte Cristo, and I don't think I'd have been able to finish something that long on the 770.

Re:Monospace Font for Technical Books

[Nicolas Roard]

I can only concur. I've got an iliad since a couple of months, and it's fantastic :) It has some issues, but overall is worth it (and it's not like the other available devices are better). I wrote some impressions here: http://camaelon.blogspot.com/2008/04/iliad-irex-note-taking-and-hand-writing.html [blogspot.com] My only reserve is that you have to get the shell access to really take advantage of it -- but I don't think it's a problem that's really annoying for slashdot readers ! It's a really cool hacking platform.

Re:Ancient libraries

[CastrTroy]

Exactly. The only reason the bible is still around is because there had so many monks tirelessly copying it out many many times (millions?). Same goes for many other religious texts. Very few works survived from the era before the printing press, because it was too costly (in terms of time) to create multiple redundant copies. Now that we have digital recordings that can easily be copied perfectly, bit for bit, it should be much easier to preserve the information we have. The library of congress [wikipedia.org] only hold 20 TB of data. That could easily be fit on a few (20) hard drives, and many copies sent around the world to ensure that in case of a single catastrophe, that all the data there was not lost.

Re:Hi, I'm your polar oposite.

[swillden]

I agree with you on the screens issue. I did intend my response partially as a joke, but only partially.

For literature (and I don't limit that category to just dead-white-guy-classics), I'll take paper over electronics, and will continue to prefer paper until ebooks have the same basic physical properties

I find current-generation (and even the prior generation) e-books to be greatly superior to paper books in many ways.

1. 1. Paper books can't be read in the dark. I've never found a reading light that doesn't disturb my wife, but my e-book's backlight doesn't.
2. 2. Paper books require at least one hand, and usually two. E-books require none, as long as you can spare one to punch a button now and then. That means I can lay the e-book on the table while I'm eating breakfast, set it on the shelf of the treadmill, etc. With an e-book I can read virtually anywhere.
3. 3. Paper books are too heavy and bulky if you want to carry more than one or two. When I travel, I want four or five, at least, and in my e-book I can carry a whole library.
4. 4. Paper books are annoyingly difficult to acquire. I have to actually go to a store to get them, or else I have to wait days for them to be delivered. E-books can be acquired anywhere I can get an Internet connect, in a matter of seconds.
5. 5. Paper books don't like water, etc. E-book readers don't either, but you can put your reader in a sealed plastic baggie and still read it just fine. Paper books must be unprotected to be read.
6. 6. Paper books require too much storage space. My house is filled with bookshelves, and the shelves are stacked two and three layers deep with books. When I want to re-read something, I often can't find it.
7. 7. Paper books are expensive. Unfortunately, so are a lot of e-books, but there are a handful of publishers of genres I like that sell them very inexpensively. I probably don't spend any less on books by reading e-books, but I read more.
8. 8. Paper books are hard to share. DRM'd e-books are even harder, but I buy DRM-free e-books, available in multiple formats. I often give someone else a copy of a book I bought even before I finish reading it. The publishers I buy from encourage this.

To me, paper books have only one advantage: You can read them during takeoff and landing. Other than that, they're a pain in the ass.

Re:That's not a safe bet at all.

[radiotone]

"this is why public libraries are important repositories of culture."

Bwa-ha-ha-ha!

As a former public librarian, I can tell you that most public libraries do NOT view their role as repositories of culture. They don't, in 99% of cases, have the shelf space or the money to store books which circulate only rarely or never. They aim to provide their taxpaying customers with the latest books, and also focus heavily on services for children. That's their bread and butter.

They may have a special branch that houses materials with local interest for the long haul, but they do not for the most part try to conserve culture in general.

Larger university libraries, and of course the Library of Congress, are repositories of culture. While university libraries aren't strictly speaking public, they do often participate in inter-library loan programs with public libraries.