Poll: Age of People who Read E-Books

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by binzer

Personally I think hiring a servant to follow me 24/7 carrying all my books would be too expensive (not to mention socially awkward) so a Cybook seems like a good alternative :P

yes, that was what made up my mind as well...

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Oh, yeah. Trying to write a chapter or two on the on-screen keyboard of a Casio Zoomer (actually the rebranded Radio Shack version, same thing), is an experience that I'd only recommend to people who like wrist cramps, eye fatigue and a fifty-foot radius between you and any single girl in the area!

oh my, you are crazy, just to think about it makes my eyes start rolling around in different directions.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

oh my, you are crazy, just to think about it makes my eyes start rolling around in different directions.

Sure, I remember you now... you were the one in the blue bikini, in the middle of that bunch of girls huddling together, pointing at me and giggling (guys remember these things)...

What can I say? I was dedicated to my craft.

[binzer]

I guess it's true that writers are weird

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Hey! I resemble that remark!

[yvanleterrible]

Well... it's true if you start thinking about the pay to wortime ratio.

[spirits]

Originally Posted by yvanleterrible

Well... it's true if you start thinking about the pay to wortime ratio.

ohhhhhhhh, he/she said it!

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Sure, I remember you now... you were the one in the blue bikini, in the middle of that bunch of girls huddling together, pointing at me and giggling (guys remember these things)...

clearly you need glasses after all that typing on miniscule screens... look where we're having this conversation (and what the conversation is about), do you seriously think i was in the "pointing and giggling" group back in the day ? in fact, i probably was the one who noticed a grammatical error walking past you and pointed it out. for your own good, mind you ; out of the sheer goodness and public-mindedness of my heart.

[allen.gotwald]

As James Whitcomb Riley would say, I'm just this side of 40.

[Elsi]

Originally Posted by RWood

ANd I'm about 20 years older than that young whipper-snapper from Texas called NatCh.

Me too, but I'm also in Texas!

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

clearly you need glasses after all that typing on miniscule screens... look where we're having this conversation (and what the conversation is about), do you seriously think i was in the "pointing and giggling" group back in the day ? in fact, i probably was the one who noticed a grammatical error walking past you and pointed it out. for your own good, mind you ; out of the sheer goodness and public-mindedness of my heart.

Riiight. And then you went back to your friends and giggled!

(They all giggled... they wouldn't stop giggling... dammit, why won't they stop giggling?!?... )

H-haaugh...

Okay, I'm back.

Yeah, those days demonstrate how far we've come. Back then, if I wanted to work on a document, I first had to convert it to a text file, then port it over to the PDA to work on. And vice versa. There was no Pocket Word, nor any convenient sync-conversion apps, for those first products. It made text editing that much more trouble, especially if any unusual formatting was involved.

Same thing with most e-books: Any fancy fonts or formatting had to be sacrificed in order to get it into the PDA to read. No wonder so few people went for those PDAs back then... the ones that pretty much formed up the market behind them were the Palms and other basic organizer units.

[vivaldirules]

Great poll. I really had the impression of a bimodal distribution of old folks and young ones and yet that's clearly not the case.

[Basqueman]

I'm 46. I met an "older guy" on the Metrolink Train in Los Angeles. He's the one that turned me on to ebook readers. I bought a Sony PRS-505 shortly after I talked to him.

I love carrying a small library around with me wherever I go! Thats the appeal for me. My wife turns her nose up at the thing...She says she needs to "smell the book pages" when she reads.....hmmm.

[yvanleterrible]

oops sorry, wrong command

[yvanleterrible]

Originally Posted by vivaldirules

Great poll. I really had the impression of a bimodal distribution of old folks and young ones and yet that's clearly not the case.

Absolutely!
There's a little dip below twenty but I figure that might be because ereaders are, for the moment, quite expensive. The bump in the over thirties really marks the fact that these generations were brought up with reading as a form of entertainment. But that's my assessment.

The only thing that bothers me about the results is the fact that the ebook is so young and recent. I suspect figures would change drastically as time goes by.

[spirits]

Originally Posted by yvanleterrible

Absolutely!
There's a little dip below twenty but I figure that might be because ereaders are, for the moment, quite expensive. The bump in the over thirties really marks the fact that these generations were brought up with reading as a form of entertainment. But that's my assessment.

The only thing that bothers me about the results is the fact that the ebook is so young and recent. I suspect figures would change drastically as time goes by.

At 20-24, we're really too busy to read for entertainment. Plus I must question how these readers are advertised. Perhaps the target age range aren't students. Or perhaps students hasn't developed the habit to enjoy reading. I question the numbers mainly because I showed it to friends and they're all interested one way or another. It's true that money is an issue to some students, but the price really wouldn't stop them from getting a Sony PRS 505. For some students, one course is equivalent to 4 Amazon Kindle, and they had to take 40 courses to graduate.