After reading the explanations I’m very intrigued and could well be persuaded to get one once the price isn’t so stupid. But for me, I, like Chewey, can’t imagine it ever taking the place of real books. There’s just too much about paper books that I can’t imagine being replaced by some gizmo. Maybe if they had bricks and mortar shops for e-books where you could walk in and see the titles – like a DVD store or something – MAYBE then I could see it, but then, that would defeat the purpose of having the thing in the first place, wouldn’t it?
I don’t shop online at all, really, except for very specific things.
Take the airport, for example: I’d rather buy a book I maybe didn’t even want very much before boarding a flight, just because its a fun part of an overseas trip. Imagine how boring it would be to just click on links, key in a credit card number and there you go – assuming of course that the Internet connection worked OK and that the files weren’t corrupted.
Plus you would be a lot less sad if someone stole your bag with a paperback in it than a $300 gizmo with your linked ebook account.
The ebook reader doesn’t make a good value proposition unless you are a heavy reader and don’t desire to have a dead tree book collection. If/when the cost gets down to $100 per device and there is a flat rate monthly fee model, I think we’ll see some real mass adoption.
again i say i’m a student…
if you guys really understood the power of torrenting books…
you’d understand how many books and how many uses you could get out of the ebook reader…
as i see it this whole thread is a bunch of people just wanting to spit on the idea of
an ebook reader…
seriously…its only meant for heavy readers…
and people who can find uses for it…
like having an extremely powerful computer and you only surf the net…rather pointless huh?
so why think about it if you don’t read and if your current state with books is sufficient…
right now i can download hundreds of engineering textbooks and
put them on my ebook reader…highlighting specific pages specific pictures
and oh i don’t have to 1…look for a book that i put somewhere at home…
i don’t have to worry about if the book deteriorates in say a year…
i don’t have to worry about people random stealing my books
i don’t have to carry a billion books around and yet i have the power of that many books
fact is…its for some…not all…
and its truly weird its not on the chinese markets yet nor the japanese markets…
it would make a killing here.
do you own an iphone?
whats the point?
can’t a 3000 Or LESS NT phone answer calls?
[quote=“masterdoko”]I don’t have to worry about if the book deteriorates in say a year…
I don’t have to worry about people random stealing my books[/quote]
You have some reasonable points, but these two are not among them. An electronic device is far more likely to go bad suddenly than a book, and theft is more of a problem with electronic devices than books.
[quote=“masterdoko”]do you own an iphone?
whats the point?
can’t a 3000 Or LESS NT phone answer calls?[/quote]
You’re either an idiot or you do a really good impression of one.
Are you trying to tell me you think the iPhone (or any smartphone) only makes and answers calls?
And how is this even on-topic for this thread?
16gb SD
most PDFs i’ve seen are around 50MB or so…
so lets see
16384 divided by 50 = 327.
hmmm
amazon kindle ebooks around 9.99US thats um…
327 x 9.99 = 3266.73
hmm
then a paperback would be about…using The Lost Symbol as a reference point on amazon…$16.47
327x16.47 = 5385.69
now using 2 textbooks as a reference point…hmmm Macroeconomics by N. Gregory Mankiw
327x119.68 = 39135.36
i guess 300 dollars is a lot…
hmmm oh and u can download many books from the google books thingy for free.
the iphone vs a reg phone
very much like
ereader vs paperback
Most of the ebook providers back up all your purchases on their server, so even if you lose your device, you can redownload all your books without having to repurchase them. Amazon goes one step further by synchronizing your reading among multiple reading devices. So you could start reading on your Kindle, then continue on your iPhone on the bus, then continue at the page you left off on your PC at work.
If a thief stole your Kindle, you could easily report it and disable your account. Even purchases already made could be deleted and refunded by Amazon. The thief would have your device, but wouldn’t be able to do much with it.
barnesandnoble.com/nook/index.asp
the nook looks much more sexy…
1 i think the NVIDIA 1 will weigh a ton…and NVIDIA guy is a dick.
2 Asus is joining the market soon…maybe end of year
3 MS gonna join the market with its courier which in my honest opinion is so great u won’t even question ebook readers ever again…
4 kindle has a little up their sleeve still
5 random startups have some great ideas coming on stream…
but so far for the assured stuff the nook looks the best…i’m trying to get my cred card fixed so i could preorder 1.
dude…everyone…people…all i have to say is…
WELCOME
TO
THE
FUTURE
OF
READING.
B&N pricing on ebooks for the Nook are significantly higher than Amazon’s. Also, there is no international support for Nook at the moment. If they can fix those two issues, it could become a big competitor.
i think they’ll fix them soon once the nook gets on the market…
it has a higher book sales than amazon i heard…i guess the UK part of it makes lots of dough
here’s the microsoft courier gizmodo.com/5381011/microsoft-co … -interface
i don’t really care about the downloading from whispernet or 3g wireless thingies…
i just want to be able to put in an SD card and be happy with like 16gb of books
i currently have 500gb of books on a harddrive…
the courier and gizmodo.com/5370252/apple-tablet … -magazines apple’s idea…
is the future…but i can’t really wait on that i’ll buy something now that fits my needs.
Are you on someone’s payroll to promote this stuff, or what? Some people don’t LIKE electronic crap, ok? AND ENOUGH with the endless back to back posts! 
(EDIT: Sorry, I’m sick and grumpy today.)
I for one love both old and new things. Though I really see my dream device being something like a pip boy from fallout; a powerful wrist mounted touchscreen terminal that can do nearly everything.
BTW comparing a smartphone to a regular phone is sort of silly. I actually use my iPhone as a PDA, laptop, and media player which also functions sometimes as a decent mobile phone. I have yet to find a cheap regular phone which does everything I need of it.
On tech though. Battery life needs to be improved. I made a power array and sewed it into my jacket, but this does not help in the summer (or here where jackets seem to be pointless).
BenQ has just come out with an e-reader that is multi-lingual: with English, Chinese and Japanese capability. The problem for english readers of course will be whether it can secure the rights to a wide array of e-books.
taiwantoday.tw/ct.asp?xitem=78729&CtNode=415
More about the BenQ here pocket-lint.com/news/29618/b … ook-reader
It’s actually rather much better than what’s been launched so far since it supports open standards and although it doesn’t come with built in 3G, you can attach your own 3G dongle to it.
BenQ is going to launch their own eBook store in Taiwan and China, they’re working together with some Japanese company to do it. I suggested that they have think about English language content for Taiwan as well as there’s a growing foreign community here that is interested in eBook readers. Not sure how much they’ll listen, but I told the product manager to go have a read on Forumosa to see if the level of interest was high enough to make it viable.
FYI, the link above is full of poor information, I suggest you read the story I wrote instead. The price might be right, but it sounds too high and BenQ was saying that they wanted to sell the eBook reader subsidised, although it might also be available on its own. It doesn’t have built in 3G, but it does have WiFi.
Thanks, Lars. 