I was wondering any Quotelanders were fans of e-book readers and, if so, if there were any suggestions on which to try.

I know most (if not all!) "real readers" have a lot of angst towards ebooks. And so did I... but I've started downloading some to my laptop and it's interesting, though still so very different from "reading". I still buy books en masse, but I'm getting more and more used to being able to carry 100 books with me inside my laptop.

I don't know if I'll ever be able to put out $300 for a machine that does nothing BUT carry the books around. I can't help but look at it and think of how many books (or how few amazing books) that the $300 could buy. Who knows, though? A few years ago I wouldn't have ever bought an ebook at all.

Has anyone else gone to the dark side?

The problem right now is that the E-book reader technology is still overpriced and poorly designed. It's really important that E-books keep a lot of modern codex features, a simple horizontal pad is a terrible idea, and doesn't lend itself well to kind of scanning that our eyes do. A good, vertically orientated A4 design is by far the best, but they seem hard to come by, and often don't have good margin settings.

I love PDFs, I read online all the time, I've become very used to it. Portable PDFs on high-resolution, low-glare, matt-textured screen? Perfect. Hopefully E-books will become the norm, although hopefully books as we know them will stay around for comfort's sake as well.

You know, when I read online, I do miss turning pages.

Free PDFs or do you buy them somewhere? I've been purchasing from the publisher's sites directly.

I miss turning pages, too, but mostly I miss being able to "eyeball" where I am in the book. My husband will say "How much longer will you be reading?" and I look down at my screen and have no idea. It's so different when I have a quarter inch thickness of book left, or something like that-- much easier to predict.

I also miss browsing by book covers and placement. I didn't realize how bad I was at remembering titles until I started having to sift through a list of titles. Adobe Digital Editions has a sort of "bookshelf" systems, but still... not the same.

Most of my online reading has been free-access science articles, particularly in links via Scienceblogs.com. I've got about 50 on the evolution of the eye. Finding e-books can be harder. Bibliophile and a few others posted links of good online compilations of books way back when. Isn't too hard to find PDFs of classic books, if you do a little digging. Modern e-books I don't deal with, I buy hard copy.

A big NAY!

Have you checked the Kindle on Amazon? Personally I find reading on a computer/laptop very irritating. Other than the fact that it robs me of my pleasure to fill my bookshelves with colourful spines, and leaf through pages yellowed by age, I absolutely abhor that I have to stare at the screen again after a whole days work in front of the computer.

Maybe if I was something other than a designer who used the comp 24/7, I would have at the very least tolerated them... but I absolutely refuse to read them online.

The only time that I download e-books is when they are available in print ready pdf files and when its existence has become so rare that I can't find it anywhere else. I guess "something is better than nothing" surely applies here.

*************************************************************************

HMMM...
I am reading a very interesting book about anti-gravity.
I just can't put it down.
-- Anon

*************************************************************************

-

much love, light and laughter,
ananya.

*~Come play with my children feel the peace and Scatter some joy.~*
~*Blowing out someone else's candle doesn't make your's burn any brighter.*~
We can't all be stars, but we can all twinkle.
We may not have it all together, but together we have it all.

That quote reminds me, Asavari! I always find myself wishing and wishing and wishing that books could levitate. My shoulders and neck get SO tired, no matter how I hold a book. Forget E-books, get me my Hover-Book please Science!

I'm with Ananya. Love the feel of my books in my hands and I find the actual page, brightened by a soft night lamp, kinder on my eyes.

My one other (paranoid) fear is how much easier it would be for Machiavellian-types in power to manipulate, change, edit, etc. important documents. Wasn't it Animal Farm where some proverb's word kept changing?

------------------------------
The opposite of joy is not sorrow. It is unbelief. ~ Leslie Weatherhead
Picture me with my ground teeth stalking joy--fully armed too, as it's a highly dangerous quest. ~ Flannery O'Connor

True, a real book is more comforting than an e book could ever be.

I wonder how much more likely it is for an e-book to be manipulated? It seems just as likely that a print version could be changed, unless you buy the older books only.

Especially with the print-on-demand book kiosks now:

http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/PUBLICATION/INFOSHOP1/0,,contentMDK:20884077~pagePK:162350~piPK:165575~theSitePK:225714,00.html

That's the nice thing about ebooks-- it encourages these books to go digital, which is probably going to save a lot of literature from being lost with the ages as it so often is.

I strongly vote nay. I could never use an ebook. I don't even like to buy new books. Library books and used books all have a personal history to them that I prefer. Every ripped page, crease, and cracked spine contributes to it.
I'd like the internet to remain my source of trivial entertainment and news only.

"This is an old song
These are old blues
And this is not my tune
But it's mine to use"

Update on this, I finally bought a Sony Ebook reader. I'm not overly impressed with the technology, but having the ability to carry tons of books with me wherever I go is fantastic. It's not nearly the same, though, and I still find myself reading out of real books as soon as I get home. But for long days in the car, it seems to be working really well.

On this topic, I've noticed a lot of public domain books have been rehashed, with forwards by whoever has rewritten them, being sold in the Sony Ebook store. I've also noticed a few discrepancies between the original books and the downloadable versions-- so it appears that yours fears were not in vain, Aire.