A thought about e-readers

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rayonline

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#782813 16-Mar-2013 23:27

I think novels are pretty ok b/c you read from start to end and it's a fast read. My concern is maybe with study textbooks and guide books like travel guides, DIY/reference books etc .. Having not used a tablet yet ... would be more fussy? When you are always going back and forward, jotting down notes, marking them etc ... eg .. maps / diagrams, flow charts ....

For pleasure reading novels, I just borrow them from the library, they're free.

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#782814 16-Mar-2013 23:36

timmmay:
Geektastic:
I've had this problem. Fortunately having a younger brother who is a mere 31 and so more in tune with this geekery than I am at 45, he merely 'obtained' the book files from somewhere and emailed them to me.

As far as I can tell people basically scan a book, or break the DRM, then distribute them online. ie steal them.

Sure. They can do the same with paper books. They can also put them in the post and send them to people!!

The books in question are things I would gladly have paid for if they were available in Amazon.com but they were not - only from the UK.

I see no reason not to circumvent idiotic distribution.

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#782815 16-Mar-2013 23:39

There is also no better thing for travelling with many books.

The Kindle truly has improved my international travel by providing a small, light unit that holds so much material to read. Weeks and weeks of books in less than the space of a magazine in your luggage.

That's the best thing about them I think.

John2010

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#782846 17-Mar-2013 08:58

rayonline: My concern is maybe with study textbooks and guide books like travel guides, DIY/reference books etc .. Having not used a tablet yet ... would be more fussy? When you are always going back and forward, jotting down notes, marking them etc ... eg .. maps / diagrams, flow charts .... ...

If that is what you are considering an eReader for, then forget it. While most you can add notes, have bookmarks, etc., such as you want, their screens are just too small and black & white (at the moment, about to change though) for anything other than very, very, very casual use for the likes of heavily illustrated, colour dependant for clarity of illustrations, sidebars, etc books such as textbooks, reference books, travel guides, etc.

Also, many of that type of book are still only offered in pdf format which is inappropriate to small screens unless reflowable text only (and some eReaders do not reflow text very well).

A tablet of good size or a notebook is the only way to go if what you are saying is what you want to achieve - you will be real disappointed otherwise. I have a modern eReader and really enjoy it for fiction and general non-fiction, and as said before I have been using eBooks for more than a decade so am very used to using them, but I use a notebook for the likes of textbooks, reference books, magazines, travel guides, etc. Unfortunately, tablets and notebooks do not have the life between battery recharges that E Ink readers have (non front lit ones are typically weeks between charges)

If you do go for a reader, don't be mislead by all the prattling about Kindles; they are all that many have heard of, sort of like many just think "Hoover" for vacuum cleaner :-). Experienced users know there is a variety of good eReaders available to choose from, several of which are better than Kindle and also do not suffer the limit of a proprietary format eBooks. While it is a personal decision Kobo and Sony are, for example, good alternatives without the proprietary format limitation of Kindle and are readily available in NZ. Kobo do a front lit model, if wanted; Sony do not do a front lit model at present, but would be no surprise if one appears late this year. Lots of information about all eReaders on the link I gave previously.

timmmay

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#782852 17-Mar-2013 09:15

Flying Auckland to Wellington e-readers are hopeless. You're not allowed to use them during takeoff or approach, so you can use them for about 20 minutes of the flight. Better take a magazine.

freitasm

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#782856 17-Mar-2013 09:23

On the other hand flying Auckland to Los Angeles they are great.

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timmmay

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#782858 17-Mar-2013 09:26

freitasm: On the other hand flying Auckland to Los Angeles they are great.

Yeah absolutely. The other thing I do on long haul flights is wear foam ear plugs, with noise cancelling headphones over top. Much better suppression of people noise, which noise cancelling headphones don't help with.

I take my Android tablet to watch movies on, but 10" only just fits in my flight bag, a 7" tablet would be much more practical. That or a different bag.

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#782859 17-Mar-2013 09:35

timmmay:
freitasm: On the other hand flying Auckland to Los Angeles they are great.

Yeah absolutely. The other thing I do on long haul flights is wear foam ear plugs, with noise cancelling headphones over top. Much better suppression of people noise, which noise cancelling headphones don't help with.

I take my Android tablet to watch movies on, but 10" only just fits in my flight bag, a 7" tablet would be much more practical. That or a different bag.

Ha. You could try taking my 17kg camera bag I carry on when flying for location shoots. 3 camera bodies, 5 f2.8 lenses, 1 f1.4 lens, a Macbook Air plus all the odds and sods.

Plenty of room for a tablet in there!

John2010

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#782863 17-Mar-2013 09:46

timmmay: Flying Auckland to Wellington e-readers are hopeless. You're not allowed to use them during takeoff or approach, so you can use them for about 20 minutes of the flight. Better take a magazine.

Hardly an important deficiency, I would have thought :-(. But if it discourages Aucklanders from flying to wellington, then that discouragement could be a good thing.

Anyway, in this case international rules are changing their habits faster than those of luddites resistant to change from paper books who throw up pointless criticisms. The 10,000 foot rule for electronic devices is, for eReaders, currently under review and likely to disappear soon.

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#782867 17-Mar-2013 09:59

Geektastic:Ha. You could try taking my 17kg camera bag I carry on when flying for location shoots. 3 camera bodies, 5 f2.8 lenses, 1 f1.4 lens, a Macbook Air plus all the odds and sods.

Plenty of room for a tablet in there!

My professional camera bag is about the same, 19kg with all the bodies, flashes, batteries, etc, not counting the other bags with light stands, portable power packs, strobes etc. I don't travel with that though, especialyl not on holiday. I'm talking about my holiday bag.

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#782868 17-Mar-2013 10:01

John2010:
timmmay: Flying Auckland to Wellington e-readers are hopeless. You're not allowed to use them during takeoff or approach, so you can use them for about 20 minutes of the flight. Better take a magazine.

Hardly an important deficiency, I would have thought :-(. But if it discourages Aucklanders from flying to wellington, then that discouragement could be a good thing.

Anyway, in this case international rules are changing their habits faster than those of luddites resistant to change from paper books who throw up pointless criticisms. The 10,000 foot rule for electronic devices is, for eReaders, currently under review and likely to disappear soon.

There was an incident at Heathrow a while ago when a pilot made an error and botched the landing a bit.

The reason for the error? He had left his cellphone on and as the plane descended into cell range, he got a text message which he decided to read..!

So even pilots clearly don't seem to believe that turning on a cell phone during flight will cause the plane to fall from the sky like a stone - much less reading a Kindle.

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#782890 17-Mar-2013 12:17

I agree with what others here have said; 6 inch e-readers are no good for reading technical books with lots of diagrams. It's certainly possible to read these sort of PDF's but unless the e-reader has reflow (which sometimes works well but other times makes a mess) you generally have to zoom in and out and scroll around the page.

Personally I prefer ebooks for marking up (i.e. adding notes and book marks) because I never write in paper books or damage them by folding corners (sacrilege!), much nicer to do it electronically and thus not damage the book in my opinion.

I like being able to carry hundreds of books (potentially thousands but I currently don't have that many) and great for taking on holiday. I find e-ink nicer to read than LCD screens, especially if you might be reading outside or in bright sunlight. Also the battery life is amazing; I usually get about six weeks out of every charge on my Kobo Glo (maybe averaging an hours reading per day with the light on).

Because ebooks are electronic I can back them up and / or store them in the cloud. I've lost some paper books due to lending them to people and never getting them back or water damage.

Reading ebooks I've discovered authors and books that I never knew existed because they are self-published and simply not available in paper format. I'm talking here about the 99 cent ebooks that you can get, some of which I've found to be every bit as good as professional paper books.

Since I prefer not to be tied to proprietary technologies I like my ebooks in ePub format, hence my choice to go with Kobo. Using Calibre you can automatically make your own newspapers, it will gather stories from your favourite blogs and news sites and put them all together in an ebook for you. Nice!

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