Quote:
Originally Posted by rogue_librarian
You're missing the point; by a mile, if I may say so: they are special and very much single-purpose devices that excel at what they were meant to do, i.e. display ebooks. If your needs go further all kinds of alternatives exist, as you pointed out correctly.
Prices have fallen considerably, and will continue to do so. It's almost trivial to convert any text found on the net into an ebook any reader can display (i use Calibre for that), so I don't exactly see what problem you're having there. Also, don't forget we're all early adopters here. It's early days yet.
|
It is you who are missing the point. I see that you have the same device I do (PB 360), which I have had to send back for repair (or hopefully my money back) for the third time in less than a year. So much for "excelling" at what they are meant to do. The main problem has been (probably) that they are "meant to display ebooks," which is to say, SELL ebooks. If they had concentrated instead on simply transferring text (including ebooks) from computer screen to reader, I am certain much more progress would have been made -- including re the No. 1 priority of RELIABILITY.
It is far from "trivial to convert any text found on the net into an ebook any reader can display." First of all, most of what is on the net (e.g., Google books, not to mention PDFs and web pages) cannot be downloaded (by non-geeks), though it can be read easily online. Second, Even if you can convert it in Calibre and download it to your ereader without further formatting (hardly "trivial"), you can't read it with anything like the ease of a computer. There are problems everywhere, with page-turning, with navigation generally, bookmarking, note-taking, dictionaries, etc. -- things that are no problem at all on the computer.
I stand by my prediction: Netbooks/tablets will become ereaders long before ereaders become whatever it is they are trying to become. The main service of the latter (and of us guinea pigs) has been to point the former in the right direction.