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**Gurm** · 9 March 2013, 09:30

I'll also follow up that... in EVERY utopian vision of the future (as opposed to the dystopian ones) a key piece of technology is a handheld tablet that lets children consume all the knowledge of the human race, all packed into a paperback-sized format.

We could build this technology, I just don't know why we haven't.

**Umfriend** · 9 March 2013, 10:51

I hear ya. But then.... I use a Playbook for just a few purposes. As an e-reader, that is one. And it saves me shitloads of money. Simply becuase it's cheaper to DL an non-DRM protectect epub than it is to copy a paperback of some somewhat exciting but not really special thriller/whodunit/spy/fantasy novel.

It is also more convenient when I'm taking public transport to work (but I guess in the US public transport isn't really used that much).

Ideal? No, not by a long shot. But if there are books that you'd read in circumstances where a device is easier than paper and that you do not actually need in a bookcase then you might be happier if you took a device that you'd have designed better but didn't.

**xortam** · 9 March 2013, 18:04

I bought the wife a Nook First Edition for a surprise Christmas present. I ordered it before the product had shipped yet so it was kind of exciting to take the leap on something untested yet so promising (first time I've taken a chance on an unreleased product). The e-ink is really comfortable on the eyes, especially when taken out under the sunlight. The wife took right to it and started purchasing books and consuming them one after another. It's really nice to not have the clutter of used books taking up space. I always pushed her to look for one of the abundant free books that were available but after reading one she went back to buying the latest hot book or recommended reading. The form factor (paperback) and weight made the Nook a great reading vehicle while sitting on the coach or exercising on her stepper. One problem that was a little annoying is that in dim room lighting she had to have a reading light on using a floor/table lamp or mini clip-on light attached to the Nook in its cover. Barnes and Noble came out with subsequent e-ink readers (including one with an illuminated screen) and then their first LCD tablet, the Nook Color. The Nook Tablet was then announced and I started reading about how people really liked the Color and rooting the Android tablet to run apps outside the limited B&N ecosphere. The Tablet would be a faster/brighter/higher-res version of the Color and I decided to purchase it for that years Christmas gift. She really took to the Tablet because of its illuminated screen and great color display for her magazines (which are free digital versions of her print subscriptions). The Tablet is pretty handy for doing a quick internet browse when you're sitting at the table or couch and don't want to bother going over to a desktop computer or one isn't on at the time. I've loaded tons of free apps on the Tablet but I never do anything with them. I've been loading up her Nook Tablet with free e-books when I run across something I think she'd be interested in and she rarely purchases books any more because the free ones have been good reading for her.

I think the Nook addresses many of your concerns:

1. Typesetting.
Limited support. The Nook tablets support "Page Perfect" books which will look identical to the printed version. Only certain titles are offered in this format. I haven't looked at a PP book but I've seen some comments that this feature may be buggy and slow, at least on large files.

2. Good screen.
I think the e-ink on the NFE is great looking though a bit sluggish, which is fine for just reading. It looks remarkedly good under sunlight though the wife rarely reads outside. The e-ink is definitely easier on the eyes than the LCD screens for longer reading sessions. The tablets do have a number of page color schemes and several color temperatures for black on white. The Tablet looks very good for pictures (your own or magazines) and video playback is smooth and clear. I haven't checked out the Tablet replacements (HD and HD+) but they should be even better displays. The Tablet was chosen by critics as the better display over the Kindle Fire. I haven't looked into the HD/HD+ vs. the latest Kindles.

3. Books are cheap.
You can't get cheaper than free. There's an overwhelming number of free e-books available from various sources and B&N offers a free e-book every Friday on otherwise comparably priced books. Other B&N e-books will come and go as free offers but are reported by forum members rather than announced at their Free Friday site. Many e-books should be cheaper and there's games played by some publishers and Apple for instance that keep the prices artificially high.

4. Stupid devices.

...
Let me be clear here. When I want to read, what I'd really like to do is... read. Can we please have an e-reader with:

- A screen the size of a paperback book.
- No keyboard.
- e-ink.

I'm sure one exists. But it has something else terrible and broken, like it only comes in chartreuse, or it electrocutes you when you turn a page. Maybe I'm prejudiced but EVERY TIME I look at these devices they suck.
...

Sounds like the Nook e-ink e-readers, past and present. What do you specifically not like about those?

5. Lend/borrow/give.
Numerous, though not all, B&N e-books are available for lend/borrow to/from other Nook owners. They're listed as "LendMe" books.

**Dr Mordrid** · 10 March 2013, 00:35

We use both iPad and Nexus tablets. No problems for us, and many schools in these parts are switching to tablets & eTextbooks. NASA's Orion and the commercial spacecraft will be putting their manuals on them, some cars already have, and a couple pilots I know say aircraft are heading that way too.

Times, they is a changin'

**Brian Ellis** · 10 March 2013, 02:01

Interesting thread. I, too, am a Luddite and an avid reader of both fiction and non-fiction. When e-books were first proposed, I dismissed them as a gimmick. I've looked at e-ink devices in shops and was impressed but still wasn't keen

I recently bought a cheap Android tablet, essentially to stream a few TV stations via WiFi to the TV (which is too far from the modem/router for a convenient cable run) - this works fine with filmon.com. Naturally, I explored some of its other possibilities, one of which was e-reading. I tried it out by downloading a freebie, Oscar Wilde's The Canterville Ghost. Even though it was perfectly legible, with a good contrast, I gave it up in the middle of Chapter 2. The only time since that I even entered the app was to demo it to the other half, and she didn't catch on, either. I'll grant you, it is not e-ink and I'm possibly being unfair.

Prior to that, a couple of years ago, I had downloaded Kindle for Windows and found that trying to read off a 21" computer screen didn't let me get past the first page. However, this was for an ulterior motive. In 1986, a highly specialised techie book, which I wrote, was published, with an unheard-of print run of 3,000. I now have the last 9 copies unsold, but I thought I would publish an up-dated version as an e-book. I had it professionally scanned in as a kdp format. It was a catastrophe, tables, figures, formulae, equations etc. were impossible to reproduce correctly in their right place. In the end, I gave it up and reverted to a simple PDF file of the original scan with updating as annotations. I think this has been supplied in either downloaded format or as a CD ROM, perhaps 20 times, at about half the price of the hard-back. This experience was very negative against e-books, in my mind, as well as being a money-loser (having 360 pages scanned in and converted to kdp format is not cheap!)

The main advantage of e-books, as I see it, is for someone wanting to read Ryoki Inoue (1086 novels at the last count) or even John Creasey (>550 crime novels). They wouldn't need a library-sized room lined with shelves to stock them. As I write, I glance at my techie bookshelves and count 23 books on a full shelf that I guess is ~90 cm wide.

Apart from my office (specialised books), we have a large collection of mostly non-fiction and classics in the living room (including Encyclopaedia Britannica). In the bedrooms, we have mostly novels, in many genres, including some pulp fiction. We even have books in one of the toilets! Am I willing to give these up? No! Why? Well, I have about 77 years experience in turning pages (yes, I started reading at three!). Flicking a screen to simulate that comes hard!

**Gurm** · 10 March 2013, 09:03

I think the Nook addresses many of your concerns:

1. Typesetting.
Limited support. The Nook tablets support "Page Perfect" books which will look identical to the printed version. Only certain titles are offered in this format. I haven't looked at a PP book but I've seen some comments that this feature may be buggy and slow, at least on large files.

I did a quick google around for this. Apparently it's some kind of ... scan? This isn't what I mean. Any idiot can scan a document, clean it up, and build a PDF out of it. I'm talking about licensing the professional fonts and doing real typesetting.

Did you know that a huge percentage of the books you see at the bookstore use fonts that you simply CANNOT ACQUIRE, by any means, for your computer? This is intentional - the font industry is HUGE and exclusive.

Lastly, this is proprietary. I love B&N but they may honestly not exist in 2-3 years (if Borders is any indicator).

2. Good screen.
I think the e-ink on the NFE is great looking though a bit sluggish, which is fine for just reading. It looks remarkedly good under sunlight though the wife rarely reads outside. The e-ink is definitely easier on the eyes than the LCD screens for longer reading sessions. The tablets do have a number of page color schemes and several color temperatures for black on white. The Tablet looks very good for pictures (your own or magazines) and video playback is smooth and clear. I haven't checked out the Tablet replacements (HD and HD+) but they should be even better displays. The Tablet was chosen by critics as the better display over the Kindle Fire. I haven't looked into the HD/HD+ vs. the latest Kindles.

The tablet has a great display - I actually want to get one for the kids. But it's an android tablet, not an e-reader. And LCD isn't a reading technology, at least not for me.

As for the e-ink readers, the lighting conditions under which you can read them are... limited. And the various backlighting schemes seem heavily reliant on LEDs which are ... y'know, not real light.

3. Books are cheap.
You can't get cheaper than free. There's an overwhelming number of free e-books available from various sources and B&N offers a free e-book every Friday on otherwise comparably priced books. Other B&N e-books will come and go as free offers but are reported by forum members rather than announced at their Free Friday site. Many e-books should be cheaper and there's games played by some publishers and Apple for instance that keep the prices artificially high.

The free books have NO formatting, much less REAL formatting.

4. Stupid devices.

Sounds like the Nook e-ink e-readers, past and present. What do you specifically not like about those?

I've pretty much detailed it above. They're sluggish, they're the wrong size - if the entire unit is the size of a paperback, the screen is much smaller - and they have bad lighting response as compared to paper.

5. Lend/borrow/give.
Numerous, though not all, B&N e-books are available for lend/borrow to/from other Nook owners. They're listed as "LendMe" books.

Again, proprietary. I know I'm asking for a lot here, but if I have a Nook and you have a Kindle, both have DRM and we're SOL if I want to lend you a book. On the other hand, this copy of "Misery" that I got for $2.50 at the used bookstore? Here, take it. Bring it back when you're done. Or keep it, whatever - it was $2.50!

**Umfriend** · 10 March 2013, 09:49

Where and when do you read?

**TransformX** · 10 March 2013, 10:43

I really like the IPS screen on my kids Asus TF101.

**UtwigMU** · 11 March 2013, 00:17

For me X61 still wins:

I need to carry a laptop running a real OS most of the time and not having to carry an e-reader or a tablet along with it is a bonus.

It's a bight weighty (2kg) but 1400x1050 IPS pays off. I can read pdfs in portrait with scroll button on a frame.

VJ · 11 March 2013, 03:49

My girlfriend bought here a Kindle, but the most basic version (no touchscreen, no keyboard), and she loves it. First of: she bought it for travelling (living in Australia for 4 months), and used it a lot when commuting with public transport.

Her main arguments pro are:
- portability: try taking 50 books with you on a plane + light in day to day use
- screen: the e-ink screen is excellent, she did make the mistake later of sticking an anti-scratch guard on it, and it is reflective
- dictionary: she is reading in her 2nd or 3rd language, and having the ability to highlight words and look them up in a dictionary is really helpful and goes much faster than having to reach for a dictionary (which you also don't have with you when you commute)
- ability to put other pdf documents (e.g. scientific articles she needs to read for her PHD), this contributes to being more mobile, less prints, ...
- access to so many free (legal) books

The downsides she sees:
- loose the feeling of a book, but she quickly got over that
- no (easy) annotations to the articles she reads

I'm a bit surprised you mention typesetting and kerning... neither of those every bothered me on that kindle (and the font is much nicer than some courier - it even is selectable). I'll have to check how kerning is done, but it felt quite natural (I think they just don't do any kerning, but I'll have to check).

The e-ink screen is good, probably less quality than a high quality book, but IMO better than a cheap print.
- A screen the size of a paperback book.
- No keyboard.
- e-ink.

I'm sure one exists. But it has something else terrible and broken, like it only comes in chartreuse, or it electrocutes you when you turn a page. Maybe I'm prejudiced but EVERY TIME I look at these devices they suck.

Look at this one:

Amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007HCCNJU/ref=fs_sz

e-ink, 6", one very small green led at the bottom (barely visible), weeks of autonomy, metal housing that doesn't give a shock, no keyboard...

**cjolley** · 11 March 2013, 06:22

Daughter has a Nook basic she hardly uses. I'm not that impressed.
They have a nasty habit of bricking if the battery runs out.

We got my Mom the Kindle with eInk and a backlight for Christmas this year.
She loves it. Nice for reading at night.
I haven't seen it though.

**Gurm** · 11 March 2013, 06:56

Originally posted by VJ View Post

My girlfriend bought here a Kindle, but the most basic version (no touchscreen, no keyboard), and she loves it. First of: she bought it for travelling (living in Australia for 4 months), and used it a lot when commuting with public transport.

Her main arguments pro are:
- portability: try taking 50 books with you on a plane + light in day to day use
- screen: the e-ink screen is excellent, she did make the mistake later of sticking an anti-scratch guard on it, and it is reflective
- dictionary: she is reading in her 2nd or 3rd language, and having the ability to highlight words and look them up in a dictionary is really helpful and goes much faster than having to reach for a dictionary (which you also don't have with you when you commute)
- ability to put other pdf documents (e.g. scientific articles she needs to read for her PHD), this contributes to being more mobile, less prints, ...
- access to so many free (legal) books

All excellent arguments!

The downsides she sees:
- loose the feeling of a book, but she quickly got over that
- no (easy) annotations to the articles she reads

Can't exactly use a highlighter, or put sticky notes on an eBook.

I'm a bit surprised you mention typesetting and kerning... neither of those every bothered me on that kindle (and the font is much nicer than some courier - it even is selectable). I'll have to check how kerning is done, but it felt quite natural (I think they just don't do any kerning, but I'll have to check).

They absolutely do, it's just very generic. It's not ... BAD ... it's just not GOOD. Some people don't care, aren't sensitive to it, etc. But for me it feels very ... uncomfortable. It's like reading from a teleprompter, or reading someone's term paper. That's not the way I like to read a novel.

Look at this one:

Amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007HCCNJU/ref=fs_sz

e-ink, 6", one very small green led at the bottom (barely visible), weeks of autonomy, metal housing that doesn't give a shock, no keyboard...

Yeah there have been a few, off and on, that have most of the features (sans typesetting and lendability).

**Jammrock** · 11 March 2013, 08:00

Been meaning to reply for a while, just been horribly busy. Stupid responsibility.

I own a lot of portable devices and have used an eInk Kindle/Nook before. While I don't mind reading on an eReader I would pick a book over an eReader if I had the choice. Though my reasons are likely different than everyone else's.

I usually read laying down on my stomach. I can't stand reading sitting up, it's just not comfortable. This means the book and my eyes are normally less than 30 cm away. No mater what LCD tech is involved it causes eye strain to look at a backlit screen that close for more than an hour or two.

If I'm sitting at my computer, that's a different story. I can, and do, read on my displays at work all day with no issue. But then the screens are a few feet away. No issues in this case, but that's not the topic at hand.

As for the "feel" ... I do notice it, but it doesn't bother me as much. Maybe because I am a notoriously slow reader so it takes me forever to get through a book? I love reading, the process is just slow for me so I don't go through nearly as many books as the normal avid reader. Ultimately I read more on computer fonts than book fonts so the computer fonts feel comfortable to me.

Now, eInk is a different story. I love eInk displays for reading. I could read on those all day. I do agree that the contrast needs to be better. I haven't seen a Kindle Paperwhite so I don't know if that's much improved. But with eInk you are forced into a dumb device. You can read, and ... nothing else really.

There was/is a tablet, I think it's still available, that merged the best of eInk and LCD. When using it as a tablet it had an LCD. When reading you could switch it to an eInk like display. The Motion Ink Adam tablet with Pixel Qi display:

Sign in - Google Accounts

http://www.notionink.com/techspecs.php

Something like that, if well refined, could be a best of both worlds scenario.

As for price, eBook prices generally go down after the paperback release. Not always, but usually. The eBook prices are usually designed to compete with hard cover book prices anyway. It's their sneaky marketing way of saying eBooks are cheaper.

We have Amazon Prime and my wife gets "free" books through the lending library all the time. The selection is not stellar, but it's getting there. our library also has an eBook selection we can get. Overdrive is the service. The selection is bad there because publishers charge a small fortune for an eBook (3-5 times the paper book cost), or limit the number of times it can be checked out before the library has to rebuy it... for another small fortune. The eBook library system is honestly a giant mess.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000739811

Some publishers are also moving to DRM-free eBooks. Tor-Forge announced last year that all their eBooks will be DRM free, no matter where you buy it from. You could loan your eBook to a friend that way, but they embed metadata into the eBook so if you release it online they can catch you. I don't know what other publishers have done this, but if this catches on the lending issue could be minimized.

Tor/Forge E-Books Are Now DRM-Free - Reactor

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2012/07/torforge-e-books-are-now-drm-free

Tom Doherty Associates, publishers of Tor and Forge, is pleased to announce that all of their ebooks are now available DRM-free from Amazon, B&N, Apple, Kobo, Google, and most other major ebook retailers. “It’s clear to us that this is what our customers want,” said senior editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden. “We see it in the […]

And then there is the nook, which allows you to lend your eBook to a friend for two weeks.

So a lot of your dislikes about eBooks are being addressed in some form. The market still needs a lot of maturing, sure, but it's getting there.

**Gurm** · 11 March 2013, 09:10

I'm now, in my mind, picturing you lying on your stomach with your feet in the air, like a teenage girl. And it frightens me. Curse you forever, I need to bleach my brain now.

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