Why 2+ GB Cards?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by pieter

You guys sound like those people that say that nobody should need or want to read books on an electronic device...

Do you really feel that you'd be missing out if you did not have 500 (or so) eBooks on your reader?

[pieter]

Do you really feel you're missing out if you'd just read a paper book instead of this reading gadget?

Reading paper books has served me perfectly for many years. It has served humanity for many many years. So even if I didn't have a cybook, I really could not say that I would be "missing out" if I didn't have it.
My cybook is quite new, and I have less books on it than it came with, since I deleted the ones I knew I wasn't going to read anyway. So at the moment I don't think I have the feeling I'm "missing out" by not having 500 books on it, no.
But is that really what you want to know? Or are you genuinely interested in how other people use their e-reader and why some of them would want more than 2gb on it?

People have answered: comics. or the ease of having everything on one card. There are plenty of other reasons.

Let me say it like this. If the reader would have supported 4gb, I would have bought a 4gb card. Just like I didn't buy a 1gb card now even though "Surely you dont think you're missing out because you can only put 250 books on the card?"
The way you're talking you make it sound like you have like a 256mb card in yours. I mean, using your line of reasoning, why would anybody want more than 80 books on their reader?????

[JWLaRue]

I have to agree. Different folks have different needs and preferences. It doesn't matter if *you* have a need for it or not. To dismiss them as simply not needed is, quite frankly, rude and uncalled for.

While I have no need or desire to put my entire e-library on a single SD card, I do want the ability to use a folder structure to organize those books that I do have with me on the reader. For me it's not quantity, it's quality.

-Jeff

[James Bryant]

Originally Posted by cmbs

Anyone have a valid reason why you require thousands of books at the same time, all the time; AND you are incapable of carrying more than one card to accomplish that goal; AND you chose to purchase a cybook?

Yes. This is how I want to organise my electronic library. I want every book I own (except a few antique, particularly beautiful, signed, or paper ones associated with people or occasions) in one portable device where I can read (or refer to) any of them any time.

Obviously this store will be well backed up.

I have wanted this ever since I have owned any books (nearly sixty years now) but with paper ones it is not possible. It is not possible with any ebook yet, either. But it is my ideal against which I measure the performance of any ebook I acquire. And the Cybook does not do too badly.

Other people have different needs and wants, but this one is mine. De gustibus non est disputandum.

And Internet/Wireless does not meet it. I travel in aeroplanes and find myself in the bush in less developed countries. No communications access (satellite is not affordable and too complex for this). One day Internet access will doubtless become totally ubiquitous and I shall be able to download what I want whenever and wherever I want it. But not yet.

James - who wrote (and had published by the IEE) a paper on this thirteen years ago http://www.jbryant.eu/pages/ebook.htm

[junior]

Originally Posted by James Bryant

Other people have different needs and wants, but this one is mine. De gustibus non est disputandum.

I agree with James.

Questão de gosto não se discute.
De gustibus non est disputandum.

Christine, I believe everyone is happy with their Cybooks, we are just trying to (discussing) its possibilities.

I have so many books in my Cybook as James has in his necktie (tie.)

PS. interesting article James!

[yvanleterrible]

Of course every one can dispute their claims but what are the real intents behind hording. Are there people masquerading behind other pretences to appear serious? That is the basis of this discussion.

When I first got the 500 I started preparing loads of books, put them on a 2GB card and started showing off to any interested sucker. It was a good sell though. After awhile it felt ludicrous. The cross referencing I thought was my basis for doing so was so labor intensive and hard to do that I gave up on it. And then I had less and less time to play with the books which obviously I stole from actually reading.

A book takes me from 6 to 20 hours to read during which I may use the computer about 50 times. Why should I keep so many books on the device if I can change them anytime I want. It's just like having 20 freezers in the house for the moment I'd need that special meal I'd fancy at what particular time.

Still do remember that most devices are slaves to a computer for everything other than actually simplyreading.

[Krystian Galaj]

Originally Posted by yvanleterrible

A book takes me from 6 to 20 hours to read during which I may use the computer about 50 times. Why should I keep so many books on the device if I can change them anytime I want. It's just like having 20 freezers in the house for the moment I'd need that special meal I'd fancy at what particular time.

I also like to have all my books on Cybook, precisely because if I fancy to read something else, I can start doing that in a matter of seconds.

Why do you buy books at all? You can go over the public libraries in your city, or maybe other cities, and find the book you want to read in one of them antyime you want. It could take you more time, of course.

[DDHarriman]

I just have a answer for this question of “Why 2+ GB Cards?” - why not? Or even “just because I can!”

I myself do not have used a SD card, besides to test if it would work, and even so it was just 256 Mbyte one.

I have now some 30 eBooks in the main memory of the Cybook and have not feld any need to use external memory… also, without a folder file organization in the reader (Bookeen are you listening about this for the upcoming upgrade?!) I do not see a point in having much more - browsing 7 pages of 5 per page books is a pain enough already.

Anyway, and going back to the question, “why 2+ GB Cards?”, yes indeed the answer is still, “why not?”.

Best

[perkata]

I do research in modern Russian history and in Classical Chinese. Though I have, probably, fewer than 150 Russian-language e-books, I have many thousands in Chinese (about 400 GB), and I frequently need to consult many different volumes at a sitting. It is easy for me to see why I'd need more than a puny 2 GB; my Chinese journals alone take up 8 GB).

Perkata

[yvanleterrible]

Originally Posted by perkata

I do research in modern Russian history and in Classical Chinese. Though I have, probably, fewer than 150 Russian-language e-books, I have many thousands in Chinese (about 400 GB), and I frequently need to consult many different volumes at a sitting. It is easy for me to see why I'd need more than a puny 2 GB; my Chinese journals alone take up 8 GB).

Perkata

Interesting. What format do you use for Chinese? PDF?

Then again, ebook readers were not meant for sholarly use but for reading novels. Since pages take so long to turn you must be going crazy just trying to find your references, I did and gave up.

[James Bryant]

Originally Posted by yvanleterrible

<SNIP!>Ebook readers were not meant for scholarly use but for reading novels. Since pages take so long to turn you must be going crazy just trying to find your references, I did and gave up.

At present ebooks are less convenient than they should be for scholarship.

But they're not just for novels - they are so convenient for textbooks, handbooks and manuals as well.

And the fact that the present generation is less convenient does not mean that we should not demand better ebooks with improved functionality in future generations. We should push its evolution until the pips squeak and it does let us do everything we want .

I chose the Cybook over the Kindle because I do not live in the USA and I want all my books with me - but I loved the functionality implied by the Kindle's keyboard. I have not explored what can be done with it (lack of time - I have been in 36 countries in the last 12 months and fly to Utrecht to lecture in a few minutes) but could list a dozen useful features of a smart book if I did have time, and hope that it, or a future model, has, or will have, them all.

PCs do these things already - but they're just not that comfortable as reading devices.

James - who wants a PC and an ebook, and will do different things with them

[Tibs]

Well, my reason for putting all of my books on the device is laziness. I've got my ebooks on my Mac, sorted into folders by publisher/author/whatever, and want to be able to just duplicate that onto the reader. If I have to start sorting out *which* books to put thereon, it is significantly less convenient.

[bob_ninja]

This discussion is bit silly. Of course, given the advances in disk and memory capacity we can certainly afford the luxury of keeping an entire library on a single SD card or whatever will come in the future. If we can load our computer disks with may Gb of media files then why not our eReaders as well. In fact, that is supposed to be one of the main advantages, the huge capacity.

That being said, I wouldn't expect from a version 1.0 be it Cybook or any other eReader to support large libraries very well from day 1. It is clear that Cybook at least lacks the commands for proper searching, indexing and general organization of many books. So while one could/would/want to use a higher capacity SD card, today it is not very practical.

For the time being we have to compromise by keeping a shorter TODO reading lists books in eReader while the main library remains hosted in PCs. As for security and accidental loss issues with SD cards, I just assumed that everyone makes backup copies of their content on PCs and other disks. So you can loose/break entire eReader, it shouldn't be a big deal so long as you have reasonably updated backups.

Now as to the question of big libraries needing a lot of space. The general literature most of us use is very compact so clearly you can stuff many books even into 2 Gb. I don't even remember what is mine (likely 1 Gb) and certainly I am not even close to its limits. However, things change when you consider other content.

Consider technical journals, reference manuals that may include diagrams. Also many textbooks for schools have a lot of images, diagrams, etc. So there is plenty of content that is not compact. Now you may read many manuals and articles which you wish to keep for a long time as you may need to refer to it at some point during your work. Maybe you are a reaseacher at a university, a student, designer, etc. You will likely have a larger library of reference material that requires more space. At some point in the future when eInk is so advanced it can even handle video, you may even want to store some video clips. Therefore, I could easily see how 4 Gb may not be enough.

The trouble is that the present devices, with a possible exception of Iliad, are not good enough for such content. Clearly you want a larger screen to examine diagrams and images. For maps you'd probably like colour as well. So we are talking about at least 10" colour screen. It is certainly not a pocket device.

Next you are absolutely dependent on excellent searching facilities and good index commands. If you have a lot of reference content then the device *MUST* be able to help you find it. I imagine that Cybook will offer a USB port for keyboard and mouse in the future that can be used with a fancy seach interface.

Clearly this will be a higher end eReader which is simply not available today. I don't think the current Cybook is even close. So there is not much point loading a bunch of content into it when the device cannot handle it properly.

In any case I assume it won't take them long to add support for larger cards. So it is only matter of time.

[perkata]

yvanleterrible:

I use pdf and djvu, probably in the ratio of 95% and 5%. I haven't tried to use the djvu files on a reader.

You shouldn't get hung up on what e-book readers are "designed for"; rather you should just use them whatever way you're comfortable with. I can remember when Palm folk used to argue that pdas weren't designed to do multitasking, to be used as desktop/portable computer replacements, etc. We all know where Palm is today. I always took the position that the pda (and, by extension, the bookreader today) is just a tool, and the owner should determine what is the best use of that tool. If the designer doesn't eventually catch up to the owners' preferred tasks, that particular tool will disappear.

I'll be happy when e-ink book readers are available with full letter- or legal-size screens and responsive random-search capabilities, but the current generation are just fine for reading that obscure work you couldn't otherwise possibly have fit in your overnight bag for the flight to the Big Island.

Before I retired, I was an editor in chief within a division of Random House. I'd've killed for an e-book reader in those days. I was on the road constantly and carrying books and manuscripts was a real pain. Nowadays, with most manuscripts being available in one wordprocessing format or another, I'd just have my assistant transform them into whatever format seems best for the reader I'm trying that day.

Perkata

[yvanleterrible]

Originally Posted by James Bryant

At present ebooks are less convenient than they should be for scholarship.

But they're not just for novels - they are so convenient for textbooks, handbooks and manuals as well.

And the fact that the present generation is less convenient does not mean that we should not demand better ebooks with improved functionality in future generations. We should push its evolution until the pips squeak and it does let us do everything we want .

I chose the Cybook over the Kindle because I do not live in the USA and I want all my books with me - but I loved the functionality implied by the Kindle's keyboard. I have not explored what can be done with it (lack of time - I have been in 36 countries in the last 12 months and fly to Utrecht to lecture in a few minutes) but could list a dozen useful features of a smart book if I did have time, and hope that it, or a future model, has, or will have, them all.

PCs do these things already - but they're just not that comfortable as reading devices.

James - who wants a PC and an ebook, and will do different things with them

Agreed I've been wanting an eink tablet for some while now.