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Old 01-26-2014, 08:57 AM   #71
Yapyap
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Posts: 861
Karma: 3543721
Join Date: Nov 2011
Location: Estonia
Device: Kindle Paperwhite, iPad 3, Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge
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.
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