Quote:
Originally Posted by Juliette
I'd say why not, but it can't be just a basic device, touch screen and annotation (with drawings, too!) are essential. Which is the problem- not-too-basic devices costs.
Unless we use those books like library books, and ignore comments and other commentaries. Can work for some subject, but, for example, literature would suffer, and historical exegesis too!
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Other than the touch screen, most of this stuff is just software, which isn't really expensive if you can amortize it over millions of units. I'm not even convinced annotation is really that important. Things like very easy searching and bookmarking are much more crucial.
And for students, $300-400 for a device could be saved back in as little as one year if the costs of the textbooks are lower. (Which they are, since publishers can rent them the text for one year rather than selling them a physical copy to keep.) This is why university textbooks are the killer app for e-readers. You can get a whole generation of young people used to the technology.