Underestimate much?

Oct. 12th, 2008 01:46 pm
oursin: Photograph of small impressionistic metal figurine seated reading a book (Reader)
[personal profile] oursin

My eye has just been caught by a Waterstone's ad for the the new eBook reader from Sony: '160 books under one cover'.

And it goes on:
'Imagine having your entire book collection whenever, wherever'.

Only 160 books? I think not. I get through more than that in the course of a year. It doesn't begin to touch the dimensions of my entire book collection.

Plus, on top of that, I very much doubt that I could get more than a minute proportion of my collection in eBook format.

Okay, this might work for travelling purposes and having a reasonable if limited library in a portable form.

Not going to replace bookshelves any time soon.

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Date: 2008-10-12 12:56 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rivrea.livejournal.com
It might also be useful for saving shelfspace. One reason why I can't buy or keep all the books I'd like to own is simply due to the fact that I'd like to stash other things in my room as well. Like a bed, a desk or a wardrobe.

Unfortunately, I don't like e-book readers at all.

Date: 2008-10-12 03:04 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] coalescent.livejournal.com
Unfortunately, I don't like e-book readers at all.

I always said that, and then I actually saw one of the Sony Readers. They are lovely. They've finally come up with a screen that works on an e-book.

Date: 2008-10-12 05:58 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rivrea.livejournal.com
I suppose I'd have to test different models to see if any worked for me. I have even got an aversion to reading longer texts on a normal-sized computer or laptop screen, so it's difficult to imagine doing it on something that tiny.

Date: 2008-10-12 08:07 pm (UTC)
ext_22879: (Default)
From: [identity profile] nja.livejournal.com
I had the opposite reaction - the one I played around with in John Lewis was slow to change pages, and flickered as it did. I'm happy with eReader on my PDA and iPod Touch.

Date: 2008-10-12 01:53 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mrissa.livejournal.com
Not only do we have significantly more books than that, but my grandmother has significantly more books than that, and she only started reading much for pleasure in the last decade.

Date: 2008-10-12 02:01 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] frumiousb.livejournal.com
If they ever came up with an eBook reader that I liked (that I could take in the bath, read in bed, read in strong daylight, whatever) then I wouldn't mind eventually implementing a kind of tier system for some of the genre reads that I'm more dubious about needing to own long-term. Maybe.

Date: 2008-10-12 05:35 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] carandol.livejournal.com
I've got an iLiad ebook reader. I wouldn't read it in the bath but its fine in bed and in strong daylight. The e-ink screens are remarkably like paper, not backlit like an LCD screen. But if you're not a gadget freak I'd give it another two or three years until they get all the foibles ironed out. At the moment its rather like buying a bike in the days before they'd decided on the right size for the wheels and where the pedals should be...

Date: 2008-10-12 06:17 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] frumiousb.livejournal.com
I know that they're improving, and I *can* be a gadget freak if I want something badly enough. But real books are just fine right now, no pressing need to replace them. I'm generally not the sort who wants to buy a car if you've got to crank it from time to time.

Date: 2008-10-12 02:53 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] livinglaurel.livejournal.com
....I can maybe see that if I were working from a v small and specialized library and was also commuting a lot, but otherwise....? ehhh. What I'd like _much_ more is some kind of decent ereader (I HATE them, I can barely stand reading text on a largish monitor) that was able to temporarily dload books I needed but save my notes/annotations on them. The one big hangup of hardcopy books for me is how difficult it is (for me anyway) to organize and index and quickly _find_ them. Otherwise, paper beats electronic rock every time.

Date: 2008-10-12 07:55 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] caulkhead.livejournal.com
There's an ereader supposed to be coming out next year that lets you do that. It's the first one I've ever been tempted to buy.

Date: 2008-10-12 03:52 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sollersuk.livejournal.com
Well, maybe if I had a few dozen... but somehow I don't think they'll be putting Hodge's "Artefacts" on ebooks any time soon.

Date: 2008-10-12 04:11 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] egretplume.livejournal.com
A recent story making the rounds of edutech newsletters is that the most widely used ereader turns out to be the iPhone. It turns out that people don't want to carry another gadget; they want one gadget to do it all, even with the limitations the iPhone has as an ereader. I don't think users are really trying to archive their libraries so much as have something diversionary on hand to read.

Date: 2008-10-12 05:39 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] carandol.livejournal.com
You can upgrade the internal memory with a standard SD card. I've got room for about 2000 books on my iLiad, though there's only about 350 on there at the moment. And it's meant I've been able to get rid of a lot of books, and make space on my shelves... for more books! :-)

Date: 2008-10-12 07:31 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com
Traveling purposes is exactly right, IMO. My elderly little PDA contains the complete works of the Brontes, Jane Austen, Oscar Wilde, and a few random books. It's comforting to have in my pocket.

As for 160 books being a library, clearly the ad writers have never met a reader.

Date: 2008-10-13 12:06 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dichroic.livejournal.com
When we moved out of the US for 3-4 years, I left the bulk of my books in storage and only brought the ones I couldn't live without for that long. I didn't count but I'm pretty sure I *brought* more than 160 books. And have supplemented that number considerably since. (For some reason English-language books were very $$$ in the Netherlands but are priced reasonably in Taiwan.)

160?!!

Date: 2008-10-13 08:44 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fox-in-sand.livejournal.com
I live in a tiny flat and thus am fairly stringent about getting rid of books if not strictly necessary (plus I've a fair few in my mum's still)-and I still have 400-500 books. Maybe you can buy extra space to put on your ebook though. I kind of like the idea of these to save shelf space-but definitely not in their current format, plus I currently rely on the library to save my shelf space.

I've seen the screen of these things and I think THAT's a good technological innovation-dovegreyreader and a few other book bloggers have been trying them out and apparently they really don't hurt your eyes-but given the price of the Reader AND the individual books (like itunes, ebooks are still about a tenner even though you don't get the physical object-I get most of my books from Oxfam for £2-3), as well as the things you've pointed out, I can't see them taking on just yet.

The other problem with them is people generally don't want to flick through 10+ books on the train the way you might do with albums on your ipod.

A possible advantage in the future though could be that books wouldn't have to go out of print as they wouldn't be wasting any money getting printed/sitting in a warehouse-potentially making lots of obscure titles widely available?

Date: 2008-10-18 11:05 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] diatryma.livejournal.com
160 might cover someone who read only Nora Roberts. Might. And even then, that'll only last for a year.
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