by I like this quote about books from Free by Chris Anderson (Editor of Wired magazine and GeekDad Editor Emeritus):
“For all their cost disadvantages, dead trees smeared into sheets still have excellent battery life, screen resolution, and portability, to say nothing about looking lovely on shelves.”
As a Twitterfriend also told me, e-books = not-so-good for taking into the tub nor for sharing with friends (one of the great pleasures of friendship).
Worst part for me: the visual queue for how much book I have left. Dead trees give me nice visual “thickness of pieces before/after bookmark” feel for how much is left that I can’t get from a progress bar, and an ability to quickly flip ahead/back that I haven’t taken the time to master with my Kindle.
Curious, a year or two in, on how it’s affected your reading experience, Doug?
Bezos shared how he uses the Kindle in his tub: http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/dailyweekly/2009/12/jeff_bezos_on_how_he_reads_his.php
“I’ll tell you what I do. I take a one-gallon Ziploc bag, and I put my Kindle in my one-gallon Ziploc bag, and it works beautifully. It’s much better than a physical book, because obviously if you put your physical book in a Ziploc bag you can’t turn the pages. But with Kindle, you can just push the buttons.”
I have to admit that I am not much of bathtub guy.
As a new owner of a Kindle DX 🙂 I might have to protest on the portability point. In about a month, I’ve managed to download a handful of books onto my slim Kindle that can fit nicely into any narrow space I have in a briefcase or laptop travel bag.
Even though I was lucky to get a signed copy of Andrew McAfee’s “Enterprise 2.0” book, I bought my own Kindle version as soon as I heard it was released. Why? Because I have a few books in progress now – and I am ONLY carrying around my Kindle for all my reading.
Then take into account that anything I download on my Kindle is also available to me on my iPhone – now I have ready access to any of my purchased books if I have an unexpected wait somewhere (like for an oil change or at a doctor’s office). And with access from your PC, too, (and soon from the Mac) this particular eReader makes it really easy to have access to your library when you want it and where you want it.
Now that’s the killer app part of the Kindle. (I can’t speak to other eReaders, in fact, not sure if the others have that type of ready access.)
But again, that’s just me, since I’m really loving my new toy! 🙂
I agree with you. The Kindle allows you take lots of reading with you. It wins on portability.