3 ms·

I'm not so convinced it's obsolete. I read all my fiction digitally, sure, but for technical/reference books, nothing has yet beat the UX of a paper book, and

I'm not so convinced it's obsolete. I read all my fiction digitally, sure, but for technical/reference books, nothing has yet beat the UX of a paper book, and I'm unconvinced that anything in the near term future ever will. I think you really have to treat books that are read sequentially vs consulted in random-access patterns as different beasts.

Fomite 10y ago
This. I love eReaders for novels and the like, but for the "Six reference books out on my desk" work, paper is still king for me.
- nl 10y ago
  I think you might want to try more, bigger monitors. I have a 15" MacBook, a 30" Asus and a 27" Dell. I often have multiple PDFs open along with an IDE and don't miss physical reference books anymore.
  - Fomite 10y ago
    I've got two 27" monitors, plus the display on my laptop. Still prefer physical reference books.
  - teacup50 10y ago
    Depending on which workstation I'm using, I've got anywhere from 6880x1440 to 7680x1440 worth of pixels in front of me. Still prefer physical reference books. Note that I'm not referring to API or library documentation; that's a different sort of thing.
ashark 10y ago
Works in verse tend to be better on paper. Formatting is often important, and sucks in ebooks. Even if it were better, there's no way to do things like choose which line a page splits on (well, not without potentially even-worse formatting weirdness). It'll vary by device and user settings. Physical books can help with recall of material, fiction or nonfiction, in my experience. Location of text on the page, size and appearance of the book, weight/texture of the paper. Footnotes/endnotes remain terrible in ebooks, mostly, and this doesn't only matter for non-fiction. Commercial, big-name ebooks full of stupid errors, as if they came from some early proofreading copy of the text a couple months before it went to the printer, are surprisingly common. No ebook has ever looked or felt important. Printed books can. Sentimentality? Maybe. But it can be motivating, and it can help get one in the right mood for a book. You can't arrange your fiction/poetry/philosophy ebook collection chronologically by date of author's first major work and place it on shelves where everyone in the house sees it daily, and thoroughly learns, over some time but with little effort, that so-and-so wrote after what's-his-face. An under-appreciated feature of physical books only because too few people choose this most sensible of shelving strategies :-)

Fomite 10y ago

This. I love eReaders for novels and the like, but for the "Six reference books out on my desk" work, paper is still king for me.

nl 10y ago
I think you might want to try more, bigger monitors. I have a 15" MacBook, a 30" Asus and a 27" Dell. I often have multiple PDFs open along with an IDE and don't miss physical reference books anymore.
- Fomite 10y ago
  I've got two 27" monitors, plus the display on my laptop. Still prefer physical reference books.
- teacup50 10y ago
  Depending on which workstation I'm using, I've got anywhere from 6880x1440 to 7680x1440 worth of pixels in front of me. Still prefer physical reference books. Note that I'm not referring to API or library documentation; that's a different sort of thing.

ashark 10y ago

Works in verse tend to be better on paper. Formatting is often important, and sucks in ebooks. Even if it were better, there's no way to do things like choose which line a page splits on (well, not without potentially even-worse formatting weirdness). It'll vary by device and user settings. Physical books can help with recall of material, fiction or nonfiction, in my experience. Location of text on the page, size and appearance of the book, weight/texture of the paper. Footnotes/endnotes remain terrible in ebooks, mostly, and this doesn't only matter for non-fiction. Commercial, big-name ebooks full of stupid errors, as if they came from some early proofreading copy of the text a couple months before it went to the printer, are surprisingly common. No ebook has ever looked or felt important. Printed books can. Sentimentality? Maybe. But it can be motivating, and it can help get one in the right mood for a book. You can't arrange your fiction/poetry/philosophy ebook collection chronologically by date of author's first major work and place it on shelves where everyone in the house sees it daily, and thoroughly learns, over some time but with little effort, that so-and-so wrote after what's-his-face. An under-appreciated feature of physical books only because too few people choose this most sensible of shelving strategies :-)