So in the latest technology buzz, Barnes & Noble is unveiling its highly anticipated Nook eReader. Already, some of my friends in the geek-laden Information Science department up the street are atwitter with excitement. Alas, call me a killjoy, but I’m at a loss to see where eReader technology is going. From my point of view, the eReader market looks like one big dead end. And it’s not, as you might suppose, because I don’t see the benefits of these gadgets. On the contrary, I’ve owned one in the past.
A couple years ago, I received a Sony PRS-505 eReader as a gift. At the time, it was the big competition for Amazon’s recently unveiled Kindle. Kindle, however, was awash in DRM and the content you could access on it was pretty much limited to what Amazon was willing to sell you. You couldn’t, for instance, read a run-of-the-mill PDF on Kindle, which is a big part of the show if you happened to be a starving grad student who sleeps in a pile of journal articles. Sony, on the other hand, advertised itself as Adobe-friendly, and its eReader worked like an external hard drive, allowing you to load any file you liked on or off as you pleased.
Not long before, I’d finished hauling a truckload of books, papers, and Xeroxed journal articles to Brooklyn, and then to Cornell, from my previous graduate home at the University of Pennsylvania. I was eager not to repeat this experience, and even on a day-to-day basis, a 10-ounce eReader seemed like a Godsend compared to a backpack full of books. So, I was pining for a Sony and elated when I received one for my birthday. If only it had worked as advertised.
First off, the gadget didn’t handle PDF files as it should have. A scant few of my PDFs would indeed load correctly, but over 90 percent of them came up blank. Even after extensive trial-and-error, it was never quite clear to me what the distinguishing characteristics of the working files were, much less how I might reformat a non-working PDF to have it load correctly. Second, when a PDF did load, it was scaled down mercilessly in a Procrustean fashion to fit the tiny reader screen. As it turned out, the Sony gods, in their great wisdom, had limited the device’s zoom functionality to an ability to scale up fonts, and this feature only worked on text files. So there was ultimately no way to increase the size of a PDF’s lilliputian lettering after scaling.
Ultimately, the thing was only good for reading text files, which proved a dead end. It had no keyboard, so it was no good for reviewing or proofreading my own writing. And when it came to the much-touted eBook functionality, I was sharply limited by Sony’s DRM ploys. The device wouldn’t read eBooks unless they were from Sony, and the only way to get a Sony eBook was to install the company’s retail software on your computer. Unfortunately, the software was only designed for PC. I have a Mac and a Linux machine, so I was out of luck. When I did find a junker Windows PC to load up the proprietary software, I realized it didn’t much matter because most of the titles I wanted were only available from non-Sony eBook outlets.
“Oh, well,” you might say. “Those are the perils of being an early adopter.” And you’d be right. Upon hearing this story, my friends over in Information Science point to the B&N eReader specs, or their sparkling next-generation Kindles. These read many file formats with ease, allow you to type, check your email, and load any file you like. Not only do they not need to dock with your computer, they connect directly to the Internet. Why on earth would I continue to be so cynical about eReaders?
Here’s why. I firmly believe that eBooks are the wave of the future, but eReaders—not so much. When I sold my eReader, I ultimately used the cash to buy an iPod Touch. It was one of the best decisions I ever made. My iPod reads PDFs as well as eBooks from every major online retailer. Yes, the text is a bit small on its tiny screen, but ironically it’s larger than it appeared on the old Sony—and unlike with my old eReader, I can actually zoom in on non-ASCII text while using the iPod. But here’s the kicker. In addition to all that reader functionality, I can check my email, edit Word documents, browse the Web, do my banking, any of a multitude of other things. There are even IDE clients I could use to do programming on my iPod, were I so inclined.
Whether or not you like Apple products in general or iPods in particular; whether or not you’d use an iPod or an iPhone to do any of these things—All of that is beside the point. My ultimate point is that there are an increasing number of devices out there that do everything an eReader does and more. Netbooks, digital tablets, cell phones, and mobile internet devices all read eBooks, but they also have a world of functionality beyond what an eReader does, and all of them are either currently cheaper than eReaders or rapidly coming down in price. If the eInk or the slim profile of eReaders is so desirable, then other devices will no doubt adopt these advantages in the future. And at that point, what edge will a dedicated eReader possibly have on the market?
My prediction is that ten years from now, eBooks will be ubiquitous. eReaders will look nothing like they do today, if they’re still around at all. Of course, I may be horribly wrong. But that’s why blogs have discussion threads—so you can say, “I told you so.”
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I’m a sucker for technology and if I find myself with even the smallest amount of spare money I will usually throw it at the newest and brightest thing. I did hesitate on the first Kindle because it was first generation technology, but upon seeing the banners for the new one coming available my mind began to work and well… I ended up with one. I love to read but just haven’t been doing it lately. My time has been taken up with schoolwork and my leisure time online or with my tivo. The little box hooked up to my television has some competition now.
I didn’t expect a whole lot. I thought I’d get the thing and continue my reading habits which tend to be slow and plodding through books, taking a month or so of just reading a page here or there when I had the spare time. I was pretty sure I had just wasted my money, but told myself that I -did- have 30 days to return it, so may as well see what all the fuss is about.
Call me a dork, but I was delighted just by the packaging when it arrived. Even the shipping boxes were Kindle specific and it really felt like I had joined some club of the elite. I had made the mistake of visiting the Kindle store while waiting for it to ship and had bought three cheaper titles to experiment with, liking the idea that somewhere my Kindle was already being loaded with pages from Irving and Chaucer even while in a warehouse. The price of these ‘classic’ titles is pretty hard to beat, too… you can get a lot of them for free but I decided to splurge and pay .99 cent to get what I hoped was a better edition.
I don’t know if it’s because I felt like I had to use it or what, but I sat down and read with my Kindle that first night and have been hooked ever since. Slow reading me went through three books the first weekend. I’ve been discovering new authors, rediscovering old ones and filing away classics that I always wished I could reread but never had the chance. I had become so hooked on reading on this thing that I was reading Terry Pratchett’s newest in hardcover and turned around and spent $10 more to have it on my Kindle. I went through the second half of the book in a day where the first half had taken me two weeks.
This thing is too convenient, almost dangerously so. I have thirty books already and have only owned it a couple weeks and I find myself reading for hours daily instead of minutes. Maybe I’m silly, but reading has always been a rewarding experience for me and it just feels good to get into it again. It’s so simple to go onto amazon through my computer and buy books for it, a lot of which are insanely cheap and some others which are questionably not so. But I will pay $9.99 for the Kindle edition over any used paperback at this point… it’s just so much more fun to read.
I am the type who appreciates having the books, the smells and feel of the pages, and I will still buy them. But now I can buy better editions of the ones I actually -want- instead of filling my bookshelves with dogeared fluff that I never get around to donating to Goodwill. And having an entire collection of books plus thousands more with a simple search and a click compacted to the size of a small journal is just pretty amazing to me.
My only complaint is how many publishers have not gotten into this and I am really hoping that the Kindle 2 meets with a lot of success to make them finally realize that this is a market they need to be in. Don’t get me wrong, there’s more than enough to read from my favorite authors, but I did search for some of the more obscure titles I have and a lot didn’t make the cut. I’d also love to see publishers take advantage of the technology to release out of print content. I think that’s a really exciting use of this technology that has been woefully unexplored.
At any rate, on to the actual specs of the thing. It weighs enough to feel solid without being heavy and is very comfortable in the hand. My favorite part of it, though, is I can prop it on my pillow or desk and read without worrying about my fan flipping the pages. It’s easy to put down and come back to because you don’t have to fiddle with a bookmark. Those few things right there are worth it for me. Also imagine reading those thick 1000 page books without all the bulk and awkwardness.
The screen is a good size, but I do wish it were sized so that the smallest text size would emulate a single paperback page. It comes close, but the ones I have compared to are a line or so off. Due to being able to change the font it is also difficult to be able to read this for a class and reference page numbers from an actual book, but a search function that regular books -don’t'- have more than makes up for this. You can also highlight passages and make notes without bleeding yellow onto the next page or marking up the text permanently. These highlights are even presented in a list so you can hop right to them instead of having to flip through pages and possibly miss one.
Battery life is pretty spot on. I made sure to run it from a full charge to dead and it lasted two days or so of almost constant reading. If you find yourself having to read for two days without a way to charge it I guess you can fall back on a regular book, but those times should be rare #though not unheard of# and you would probably have more than a book to worry about. I would almost wish for a light built in to the top or side of the screen, but I haven’t really found myself needing one yet and if I did, it’s no less convenient than an actual book not to have it. I think they made a good decision not integrating one. (EDIT: The 2 days battery life was with the wireless turned ON which is wholly unneccesary in the normal operation of the device. Using it with wireless turned off looks like it would give a week or two at least of reading on a charge.)
The buttons are well placed and need a good push to change pages, but not so much that it detracts from your reading. It did take some time to get used to the placement of them, and I found myself muttering at hitting the wrong one, but in less than a week I can manage it like it’s second nature. My only complaint would be the slow response on the keyboard. This is a minor complaint because you really shouldn’t be typing a whole lot, but it seems like keypresses will sometimes lag behind so that others you pressed before will pop up first. Annoying, but if you learn to type a bit more slowly it’s a non-issue.
People complain about the screen flash between pages turns, saying they feel like they’re going into seizures because of it… all I can say is these people have a penchant for the over-dramatic. I hardly even notice the screen flash anymore, and it turns pages a heck of a lot faster than I could. It never gets two pages stuck together either, or ends up fumbling and dropping and losing my place altogether like I’ve experienced with books more times than I’d like to recall. There’s also some people who say it’s like a fluttering of pages, trying to make it sound like a pleasant experience… well it’s not that either. It’s just a really quick flash of black which is necessary due to the ink technology. You’ll notice on parts of the page that don’t flash that you will sometimes get ghost images of text, if the pages didn’t flash when you turned them it would do the same to the book you’re reading.
Anyone wondering why this is any different than reading on a computer… well I absolutely hate reading books on computers or any other screen similar and this is not like that at all. It seriously looks like a page in a book. Glare is not an issue unless you go out of your way to make it one, and it’s just really easy to read. Being able to change your font size is really nice as well, but I keep mine at the lowest so I don’t have to turn pages so often.
At any rate, I’ll stop my rambling now. I don’t generally write reviews but felt like I had to for this… very few things have really impacted me quite as much as this thing has lately. There’s a lot more I could cover, and you probably deserve kudos for reading this far anyway because there are many more well written reviews and many others that get into things I simply missed. But if you are reading this and can afford to, give it a try. If you don’t like it, return it… just don’t expect to.
[...] an educated guess. New eReader technology is changing the shape of the market so quickly that predictions from just 6 months ago sound completely arcane. Many of us in the industry are excited to see how [...]
[...] educated guess. New eReader technology is changing the shape of the market so quickly that predictions from just 6 months ago sound completely archaic. Many of us in the industry are excited to see how [...]