Quote:
Originally Posted by emellaich
Practically, there are several problems with this.
[snip]
2) SCREEN SIZE: many texts need larger screens. You need to be able to fit graphics/diagrams on the same page at the same time. It's tough to do in six inches, and large screens are much more expensive.
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This, in particular. Textbooks differ, but I just opened one of my 15-year-old law school textbooks, with the usual small print and dual column pages; it looks like each page of text is the size of 4 6" e-book reader pages. Meaning that if the book is opened flat, I would need the equivalent screen size of *8* e-book readers to have the same information in front of me.
Of course, the book is also 1,600 pages long and weighs 10 lbs, so there would definitely be some advantages to an e-reader (and carrying 3-4 of these books presents its own ADA issues...).
But right now, e-books are significantly inferior at being actual textbooks.
And multimedia ability might be useful for a high school textbook, but it is something of a joke for a college or grad school/professional school text. In most of my law school classes, I basically needed to read 100's of cases (and a few statutes, regulations, commentaries, etc.) to understand how the law developed in a particular area. A short video of a supreme court justice speaking, or of a bridge in a case involving a bridge, would be a waste of time. (And in a rare instance where some multimedia would be useful, an URL would be more than enough).
There might be a few fields where multimedia would be more useful,but I think for most fields at the college level, it would just be fluff.
[snip]
All of this can be fixed, and when it is, I believe the book prices will more than payoff any upfront hardware costs. However, there is quite a lot of work to solve all of these for most players. It would require a total ecosystem approach from an Apple or Amazon, for example.[/QUOTE]
This is probably true.