MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - McGraw and Zinio offer digital textbooks at half-price

hacker · 08-15-2005, 03:23 PM

Three Words: No Thank You

You can't sell your 'textbook' at the end of the year to regain some of the money you spent on it. Even at a 50% discount, its not worth it to throw that money away. I still have textbooks from school here, from 20 years ago, and they still work fine. Will this electronic version work in 20 years? Not likely.
You can't transfer it from one computer to another (and as anyone who uses a computer at college knows, computers get stolen/wiped a LOT). What happens if you go home for break, and want to read your textbooks on your home computer? What if you use a PC at school and a Mac at home? Bzzt.
You can't trust that the material in the electronic version is the same exact material as the printed version (without visually comparing them of course). There was a report released in the last 6 months that basically described how one teacher's curriculum was subtly rewritten by changing a few paragraphs in his textbook over the years, changing history essentially. With digital media, this becomes even more possible.
Printing a copy, even a 1-time copy, now exceeds the original purchase price of the book. Not only do you have to spend money on paper, ink, time, etc. but you don't get a bound, annotated, ISBN copy of that work.

I hope this "test" fails, and fails miserably. There are lots of advantaged to printed books, over electronic books (and yes, electronic books are superior in some ways, but not all)

You can write in them, annotate pages, highlight passages
You can refer to the printed book while away from anything electronic, such as on a train, camping, whatever.
Your ability to read the book doesn't stop when the batteries run out
You can lend your bound book to a friend, or borrow one from a friend.
You can read it in a side-by-side fashion, vs. one huge long scrolling page of electronic PDF. To this day, I still have not seen a proper electronic book reader that allows pages to be viewed side-by-side. Microsoft Word 2003 has this feature (but horribly distorts font sizes when used... sigh, typical of them to screw something like that up), but no dedicated reader that I know of has this, and certainly not in a way that supports free formats.

08-15-2005, 03:23 PM	#3
hacker Technology Mercenary Posts: 617 Karma: 2561 Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: East Lyme, CT Device: Direct Neural Implant	Three Words: No Thank You You can't sell your 'textbook' at the end of the year to regain some of the money you spent on it. Even at a 50% discount, its not worth it to throw that money away. I still have textbooks from school here, from 20 years ago, and they still work fine. Will this electronic version work in 20 years? Not likely. You can't transfer it from one computer to another (and as anyone who uses a computer at college knows, computers get stolen/wiped a LOT). What happens if you go home for break, and want to read your textbooks on your home computer? What if you use a PC at school and a Mac at home? Bzzt. You can't trust that the material in the electronic version is the same exact material as the printed version (without visually comparing them of course). There was a report released in the last 6 months that basically described how one teacher's curriculum was subtly rewritten by changing a few paragraphs in his textbook over the years, changing history essentially. With digital media, this becomes even more possible. Printing a copy, even a 1-time copy, now exceeds the original purchase price of the book. Not only do you have to spend money on paper, ink, time, etc. but you don't get a bound, annotated, ISBN copy of that work. I hope this "test" fails, and fails miserably. There are lots of advantaged to printed books, over electronic books (and yes, electronic books are superior in some ways, but not all) You can write in them, annotate pages, highlight passages You can refer to the printed book while away from anything electronic, such as on a train, camping, whatever. Your ability to read the book doesn't stop when the batteries run out You can lend your bound book to a friend, or borrow one from a friend. You can read it in a side-by-side fashion, vs. one huge long scrolling page of electronic PDF. To this day, I still have not seen a proper electronic book reader that allows pages to be viewed side-by-side. Microsoft Word 2003 has this feature (but horribly distorts font sizes when used... sigh, typical of them to screw something like that up), but no dedicated reader that I know of has this, and certainly not in a way that supports free formats.