01-25-2014, 08:34 PM | #61 |
monkey on the fringe
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01-25-2014, 08:40 PM | #62 |
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Last edited by Katsunami; 01-25-2014 at 08:42 PM. |
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01-25-2014, 09:18 PM | #63 | |
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The slate isn't better than paper, just as paper isn't better than the slate. Your choice of a technology should depend upon its benefits for in a particular application. Paper is good when you need a lasting record, and is wasteful when you don't need a lasting record. A teacher may choose to use paper when a student is writing a story that the teacher is taking home to grade or that the student may want to take home to show their parents. A teacher may choose to use a slate when practicing grammar in class, since the teacher can do a formative assessment during class time. Oh, and before you make too much fun of the slate being old fashioned, it is making a comeback in schools. The only difference is that it's a white plastic card used with erasable pens or erasable crayons. Much the same can be said of print vs. electronic books. Neither is better than the other overall, but one may be better than the other in particular circumstances. For instance: ebooks are good if you're building a personal library or borrowing from a public library. Print books tend to be better if you pass on books or share your books. Ebooks are good for titles that accommodate text reflow. Print books are good for titles that have complex formatting that is difficult to reflow. (Of course you can read such documents electronically, but it is only efficient when the screen reflects the document's formatting.) We see this sort of thing everywhere, so I would like to offer up another example. Since people like to make fun of buggy whips: ask yourself why many police forces still have mounted units in operational use. (I know that the police don't use buggy whips, but the buggy whip analogy is made under the assumption that horses have been obsoleted by automobiles.) Outside of ceremonial use and public relations, some police forces prefer to use them for crowd control both due to mobility and visibility. They are also used for patrols in rural areas that are not accessible to automobiles. Contrary to what some people believe, new technology is not all benefit and old technology is rarely entirely obsolete. At best, the new stuff is revolutionary. At worse, it is wasteful. If you choose appropriately, choose the best of both worlds, we can let the revolutionary be. If you choose inappropriately (favoring either new or old), you end up with a very inefficient world. I'd mention my favorite example, the automobile, but that probably belongs in the politics and religion forum. |
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01-25-2014, 09:52 PM | #64 |
monkey on the fringe
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01-25-2014, 10:02 PM | #65 | |
monkey on the fringe
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01-25-2014, 11:19 PM | #66 |
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I see ebooks are here to stay. What we read them with I am just not sure. These days a PC has been replaced by a laptop for most people. I see the average person replacing their laptops with a tablet within 10 years. Sure their will be people who buy and use a Pc. I will probably keep one as I do now for a file server. Others maybe for gaming. Laptops will be for a few who maybe game, or use it for work or study. Ease of typing for the last . Everybody else will be using tablets. I feel further down the track it will be phones over tablets. Reading my stay as eink, I hope so. But 10 years from now our kids will be going to school with something electronic to read from rather than paper text books.
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01-25-2014, 11:39 PM | #67 | |
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I missed this earlier. I love the little bit of history. My mum is 71 in 2 weeks. She has a laptop and a smart phone. She is considering moving from the laptop to a tablet, becaus oh my all her friends are. This elder pressure
Now my younger sister drives us nuts. We can not get her to change to a smart phone, and my precious kindle I gave her has sat unused in a draw. Even tho I loaded it with books she wants to read. I finally put my foot down last week and said I would not burn movies or tv to dvd for her, she had to learn how to use a thumb drive. I am on my way up there tonight to teach her how to stick it in a computer and media player. applesauce Quote:
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01-25-2014, 11:48 PM | #68 |
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If I had to guess, I'd expect the dedicated reader to continue dropping in price for the next few years, and fade away in another decade, though I could easily be wrong.
I do see tablets continuing, and taking over from the dedicated reader, especially as prices drop. Phones are too small, but tablets have the form and function people need. At the same time, I don't expect tablets to be the same as they are now. Not only will resolution continue to climb, but I expect the screen technology to improve to the point that most come with a reflective mode for reading. |
01-26-2014, 02:22 AM | #69 | |
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01-26-2014, 02:35 AM | #70 | |
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01-26-2014, 08:57 AM | #71 |
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My mother, who is nearly 60, doesn't want to read paper books at all anymore, now that she's used to the iPad (and it's my old first generation iPad - I couldn't read comfortably on it, but she's found a combination between sepia background, large font and not very strong backlight that works well for her). It took her minutes to get used to reading on it.
I have a feeling that there are many older people here who'd really take to e-reading because of the adjustable font in particular, but the combination of expensive devices (a Sony or Kobo eInk reader costs about what my mother's monthly disability benefit is; old age pensioners get a bit more but even the cheapest iPad is an entire month's/45 days' income) + expensive books (€15-18 on average for ebooks) and no library ebook lending means they need above-average earning children who could buy them a device as well as keep them in books. In the meantime, it's library books + magnifying glasses for most elderly people I know. (We don't have large print books here - the market's not nearly big enough to support different editions.) BTW, while I agree that for the large majority of tech, prices do fall enormously compared to earliest generations, my new PCs have always cost about the same - they're just much better specced each time I've needed a new one. In other words, a currently-good-PC has, at least here, cost about the same for at least the last 15-18 years. My current desktop, which I bought last May, cost just over €2000 - that's just the box, I kept my existing monitor and other peripherals. And I'm not a gamer and it's not a gaming PC - I do need a good, fast, reliable one for work though, and I need a lot of space for my photos (of course I also keep an external backup of those but one set also resides in the PC). I've been fully digital in my photography since 2003, so over time, photo files do add up! I do hope this will last me for a good five years though; my previous PC was also pretty decent when I got it and last about that time. I have a laptop for backup computer but I don't actually use it - I find it pretty useless for my purposes. Bad screen, horrible keyboard, slow, not enough space, urgh. (And it's a good business class Dell, matte screen + full keyboard & numpad.) Just doesn't compare to a decent PC in any way as far as I'm concerned. Anyway, I'm really pretty particular about my needs, so I do hope eInk readers (or something comparable, without backlit LCDs) won't disappear any time soon. Ebooks definitely won't, I have no doubt about that, but devices are certainly going to change. |
01-26-2014, 09:58 AM | #72 | |
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01-26-2014, 09:50 PM | #73 | |
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I got the Kindle Fire when it was released specifically because it was not as fragile as the Kindle Keyboard (which I had happened to break 3 weeks after getting it, simply by putting it in a bag together with my iPad and iPod ... wrapped in a sleeve that was not sturdy enough). Now all my Kindles (currently 8 in the family, not counting the ipod/iphone/android apps) have sturdy covers. I personally think that e-readers will continue to be around. They are just so much better than tablets for serious reading. Right now, you get the Kindle NT for 50 EUR ... guess that somewhere down the road, you will be able to pick up a paperwhite for not very much more than that (75-99 EUR range). Best regards, Andy |
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01-26-2014, 10:56 PM | #74 |
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I think e-ink will only continue to evolve and that flexible substrates rather than glass will lower prices, improve toughness, and provide for a better experience visually for a while.
That said, e-ink is just a display technology, ebooks are not going anywhere, though I'm hopeful that a hybrid between easily scalable tech like PDF/postscript and epubs will occur and allow for the best of both.(Epub 3X maybe?) I forsee continued progress with speech recognition, both locally on device and with net powered processing for the heavier lifting like context eventually. That said, Google Glass and similar technologies may eventually supplant the e-reader with multipurpse ubiquity. The latest tech seems to be direct projection onto the retina, so who knows? But, barring a scenario like the "Revolution" TV show is predicated upon, I think ebooks are here to stay. Even then they'd still exist. OTOH(is that three? -I've lost count...), I can easily imagine a world where paper books become increasing expensive to produce due to fuel costs, deforestation, and possibly a desire on the behalf of some to broaden the gap between the technology we use to read, dream, philosophize, better ourselves and that by which we clean our bottoms... Hey, I may be nuts, but I have a good time. |
01-26-2014, 11:13 PM | #75 | |
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