Quote:
Originally Posted by corroonb
I remember spending €330 on a Sony PRS-505 in 2008. There were very few places to get decent ebooks apart from mobileread. Many authors were simply not available. Alas the perils of being an "early-adopter".
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I was in the same boat. Spent €400 on a Cybook Gen3 including its original cover and the end of 2007, but sold it in febuari 2008. There were very, very few authors available that I wished to read, and at that time, I wasn't really interested to re-read the classics that were posted at MobileRead. And of course, at that time, the library here was WAAAAY smaller than it is now.
Apart from that, I actually liked books better. One reason was the fact that the Gen3 did not have a touch screen. I absolutely hated the Four Way button. Very hard to press.
However, I did keep an eye on e-readers, mainly because I recognized the massive advantage for me, due to poor eyesight: custom fonts and sizes. It all exploded in 2010, and ebooks started to become available in larg(er) quantities. More and more authors were readily available. The ones I wanted to read and were not (yet) available, were exceptions.
When the Kindle Touch appeared in the end of 2011, I jumped on it as soon as it became available in the Netherlands. The only thing I wished for was built-in lighting because the Touch required MUCH more light than a paperback. I could not read on the Touch in some places where I could read a paperback.
Therefore I swore that my next e-reader would have that; I'd not upgrade until a such a reader was introduced. And *tadaa*, there was the Kindle Paperwhite at the end of 2012. I actually had a German friend pre-order it for me.
Now, in the beginning of 2013, apart from one (1) author, whose books will probably will never be ebooks, I've been able to replace my entire library with ebooks. I wouldn't want to go back to paper for daily reading. In the end, I will probably only have the very best of the best (IMHO) as paper books; as hard covers, if possible.
Quote:
Originally Posted by crich70
They were good for getting dirt or other junk on the media and ceasing to work as well. At least the 3.5" disks had a spring loaded door that would cover it when not in use.
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Diskettes.... AAARGGHH. My Hammond organ, designed in 1997, sold up until 2007, still used them. (My "Special Edition", sold in 2000-2001, did not escape this fate. Its storage system was not redesigned to use USB or Compact Flash or whatever.)
After seeing "DISK ERROR" one too many times, and not knowing if my disks were going bad (new, sealed boxes, but already produced in 2005...) or if the drive was failing, I went on a search and found the
HxC2001 Floppy Emulator. It basically is a microcomputer that reads images from SD-cards, and represents them to the host device as if they were floppies. It uses the normal 34-pin floppy cable and 5V power connector.
Yes. Finally. I can press "SAVE" or "LOAD" without trembling on the bench, waiting to go run upstairs with a new disk to make a new copy, because of a "DISK ERROR". My instrument now has a 21st century storage capability which will probably last as long as the instrument will.