[DixieGal]

Originally Posted by Tom90deg

I don't know about anyone else, but if i could have my books on the Kindle? Wow :-D Now, it's not that useful, medical school uses lots of high-detail illustrations, but back when i was studying Law? Wow :-D It would've been a godsend. We'll see what happens. If they are coming out with one the size of a 8x10 piece of paper, that'd be great for reading long text-heavy books.

Overachiever much? Wow!

Sadly, the Cynic in me is screaming, "The College market? You just wait! in a year, Apple is going to come out with one and it'll be announced as NEW! NEVER BEFORE SEEN! And it will sell a ton, regardless of how good it is." Hehe, My inner cynic is a apple hater :-D

They'll call it the iRead. As in "I Read." Bono will star in the commercial at the Super Bowl.

Originally Posted by vivaldirules

I'm trying to picture it. A freshman is off to the bookstore. He needs texts for four or five classes - let's pick English, Chemistry, Math, Sociology, and a language. Each has at least one required text but there are some recommended books, too. There probably aren't two from the same publisher. In the first few years after the release of the new Kindle IV (a large screen edition with great search and linking abilities), a few of the publishers have been forced by Amazon and the public to publish etexts so Johnny has the option to buy three of his eight texts in digital form - for which he'll need to buy the digital reader which is kind of expensive because of the large format screen. So instead of lugging around 80 pounds of books he only needs to lug 50 pounds plus his reader.

That image makes no sense to me. I love the long-term vision. But I don't see how we get there.

Easy. Make the standard format Adobe. Everybody already has it on their laptops anyway. Problem solved.

Originally Posted by Tom90deg

Vival, there is one thing going on in quite a few colleges, and thats that the professors are getting fed up with the high prices as well. I've heard that more than a few are starting to turn to open source textbooks, or just selling a photocopied plastic bound thing for 10 bucks. I've had more than one in my college years, and that was a few years ago. We'll see what happens...

My last classes were in the early '00s, and almost every class had the bound copies or else a list of things to copy at the library. The library only charged a "user fee" to cover the cost of paper, so students lined up to copy what was needed. The profs were becoming very frustrated with the way things had always been done. (Continued after next quote.)

Originally Posted by HarryT

Many arts courses - to name but one example - merely specify that one has a text of a particular book. They may recommend a particular edition, but they don't insist upon it. For example, I'm doing a Latin course this year with a British "distance learning" university. The set text for the course is book II of Virgil's "Aeneid"; a specific edition is recommended, but isn't mandatory.

"Technical" courses, OTOH, will generally insist that the student has a particular book.

I began to try to save money. I would get the ISBN numbers of the books for the course off of the online bookstore, then search for the ISBN and buy them for a fraction of the cost from Amazon. When I told my Chaucer prof that I'd bought an $80 for $13, she was flabbergasted. Now I'm told she recommends that "under the table" to all of her classes. I also found math books I needed, so perhaps even technical books would work.

So I can see how having etextbooks could be easily integrated into the college system. Just carry around a laptop, a spiral-bound notebook, a pencil, and snacks.