james_davis_nicoll | A personal jet-pack for the 21st century

I'm sold. I just wish I could get my "comfort" books, like the Nevil Shute and CS Forester books in a format I can read on my Palm.

I'll get a Kindle when they fully support PDF. They'll probably have Neuro Twitter before that.

Ah, that article.

It's interesting how often people, especially older people, in SF books preferred old-fashioned books to whatever was currently popular in the invented world at the time. Almost like people getting book nostalgia before there were any alternatives to books. (I remember a particular instance in Heinlein's The Rolling Stones and have the general memory that it was fairly common.)

While I essentially never annotate a fiction book (I'm rather conditioned against writing in books), I can see why other people might consider it important. A service like Kindle could handle that, though you'd have to back up your annotations somehow in case the service died on you.

I'm not very happy with current e-book tech for reference material or textbooks; anything where page format conveys information, there are significant illustrations, or whatever.

Current e-book tech works very well for reading linear text streams for me, it's my preferred format at this point for fiction and some non-fiction.

I'll be happy to get an e-book reader when it has the following characteristics:

1. The size of a paperback book, so I can shove it into my pocket.
2. Simple page access- as simple as flipping pages to the right spot.
3. Complete wireless connectivity
4. Ability to play movies and music
5. Phone connection and Bluetooth
6. All the secondary functions of a PDA or Blackberry.
7. Ability to read and write PDF files, wit the books of course being
in PDF format.
8. Complete web connectivity.

In other words, why the hell should I pay the money for a dedicated device, when I should be able to get all the functions I want. I'll be reasonable- I'll pass on the ability to squirt perfumed water at people, though a reasonably smart AI would be nice.

Never solve a problem with hardware when software can do it.

By which I mean, my netbook, on which I am typing this, cost $450. It can read PDFs, e-documents, and Word files. It can hook up to Wi-Fi wherever it goes, and Wi-fi is getting cheaper. It can run any software I choose. 3 pounds, 10.2" screen. Its successors will be lighter, more powerful, and probably thinner. There's enormous competition in this market driving it to be cheap.

This generation of Kindle still has a niche market. However, the price curve on actual laptop PCs is headed through the floor, and smart software developers can provide more features than Amazon currently does.

We'll see. I'm betting the Ebook will ultimately be specialized software running on an ultraportable notebook that meets all your software/cloud computing needs. I think Amazon's DRM-based model is too late to the market. Apple got several good years out of DRM but ultimately had to go unprotected. I'm betting that the book market is good enough that the same will happen. (Note that Google Books is now offering the ability to read books online from their enormous database for pay, the money to be split with the copyright holder, and is hinting at offline access to come. They already have books specially formatted for the Android and iPhone, and out-of-copyright books are free.

With the smartphones chewing up from the bottom and the netbooks chewing down from the top, I don't see the Kindle or its revenue model lasting more than 5 years.

Also: is any of these e-books water-tight (I usually read when taking a bath)

Sigh... the "book reader" was one SF gadget I'd wanted since I was a kid. Finally it came along with the later Palm series (the ones with the high-def screens). As I've mentioned before, my TX not only stores lots of books, it fits in my pocket so I've got it WITH me when I want it. I'm just afraid the day will come when this is so obsoleted I can't get a new one or fix the old one, and with everything else the choice will be between "screen too small" (ex. Blackberry) and "device too big" (ex. Kindle). Meanwhile, the ebook publishers who will thrive will recognize that the ebook is the new "cheap edition", and the big advantage of cheap editions is in word one of the phrase. Baen recognizes this, and I've bought a LOT of books from them in consequence. Amazon will never sell me a Kindle (even if they shrink it) because they don't.

I like the concept of e-books so we wouldn't need to cut down as many trees but I like the idea of having and holding a book.

Also, the unreasoning paranoid in me worries what an authoritarian regime (or those who are just better with tech than myself) could do withregards to rewriting e-books.

I suspect costs will eventually drive paper books out of the market place but I will enjoy them while I still can.

I'm no sure you've got the right direction of paranoia. With millions of copies out there, machine-readable, it's easy to compare later editions to newer editions, and easy to copy and redistribute old ones if the new ones are different and inferior. Whereas on paper, there's generally a single choke-point where new copies can be altered.

I already read about 40% of new books on my Nokia n810 and all it has is a 4.1" diagonal, 480x800 resolution screen. If there was a 5" foldable color high res epaper screen, like the 2011, 3rd generation of something like the readius, I'll likely never buy a paper book again if there are options.

In addition to any other benefits, I'm really looking forward to the flexible, foldable epaper screens, so I can carry a 5-6" screen in a small combo device. I'm certain that I won't have to wait for more than 3 years for this.

Ipod + audiobook mp3s isn't the best way to do this?

The problem is not that people aren't willing to read stuff in electronic format (modern fanfiction disproves that quite soundly), the trouble is that no mass market system for exploiting that market has been produced. Yet. Both of the items in that link are attempts to create a market that does not yet exist rather than exploit existing ones, along lines that have not worked to date, in forms that actively fight user's attempts to use them, with technology that is far too pricy to boot.

I'm not sure they'll make what I'd want.

Length and width of a hardback, opens up like a book, reads like a book. No tiny little screen nohow. No asshattery about what formats it'll take or anything like drm. Doubles as a mini-laptop with one "page" a touchscreen keyboard, the other the screen, also as a tablet computer for handwritten notes.

And you know, I'd like some eye-appeal too. Books are beautiful. Would be nice if the e-book was too. Beige plastic won't cut it.

Sigh. The Bujold list got hold of this, too (are you still reading the Bujold list?). The results were -- ugly.

Here's my objections to ebook readers *as they exist now* (from http://lists.herald.co.uk/pipermail/lois-bujold/2009-February/024945.html):

1) The high (anything above $100, IMHO) upfront cost of the (empty!)
reader, and the assumption that if you don't want to buy a dedicated reader
you can just use your iPhone/PDA/laptop/other portable electronic device,
when I do not possess/have any use for any of those (also high-priced)
gadgets, either (well, I'd like a laptop someday, but that's another
argument).
2) DRM and incompatible formats and their associated hassle. Proprietary
readers, like the Kindle.
3) The often decades-long gap between out-of-print and out-of-copyright,
where the content would be in limbo and unavailable for purchase if you
can't buy used books, which is related to
4) The whole used bookstore and resale issue, which must be preserved
*somehow,* and to the
5) There's always plenty of free stuff at Project Gutenberg gambit. I am
grateful for Project Gutenberg, don't get me wrong, but the point is, it's
beside the point from my point of view.

Oh, and someone might want to inform Siracusa. I ain't dyin' any time soon.

I'll admit to being intrigued by the new Kindle.

I do keep a small slew of books on my phone, but while the phone is workable as a reading device, the screen just isn't big enough to make it really comfortable for me. It's not a matter of resolution or contrast, you just can't fit enough text on a screen that small for it to be a comfortable "page" size for me. I use the e-books as backup reading material when I happen to not have a physical book with me.

But my biggest problem with e-books is that I have trouble paying significant money for a wodge of data that I download over the net. This isn't an entirely rational dislike, I know; but on the other hand electronic data is rather transitory by nature -- hard drives fail, etc. -- and while I do do backups (not as religiously as I ought to), without some kind of "original media" it doesn't quite feel like I actually own the data. Whereas I have physical books I've owned for decades and comfortably expect to still own decades from now.

Also, as the article notes, the DRM is a big turn-off.

The result is that I'm reluctant to pay physical-book prices, or even most-of-a-physical-book prices, for e-books. Project Gutenberg and Baen provide me with a smallish library of free books, but beyond that I'm disinclined to go at present.

Did you see www.jetlev-flyer.com ? I'm going to hope this comment isn't annoyingly off-topic for this thread on the grounds that the JetLev is a personal jet-pack for the 21st century (despite its obvious limitations, you can fly from Florida to the Bahamas with it, which you couldn't say about any other jet pack), and because the first video has a nice use of Thus Spake Zarathrusta (2001 theme music = 21st century reference and ObSF).

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Water ??

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