3 ms·

I doubt he will print as much, so your e-reader will have less environmental impact. All that plastic and components are certainly the equivalent of several, if

by Otek 5y ago

I doubt he will print as much, so your e-reader will have less environmental impact. All that plastic and components are certainly the equivalent of several, if not hundreds of reams of paper.

rpadovani 5y ago
I don't think he bought the Kobo only for reading webpages tho, so you cannot really do a direct comparison like this.
canadianfella 5y ago
> hundreds of reams of paper. How did you come to this conclusion?
dredmorbius 5y ago
Cost is a very rough indicator of footprint. A modest e-book reader runs about $200. That's the cost of about 3 cases of 20# letter-sized paper (10 reams/case), or 15,000 sheets of paper. At ~300 pages/book, that's about 50 books cost equivalent. Note that printing output tends to run higher, at $0.01 -- $0.25 per page (higher for colour inkjet and laserjet). Depending on ones reading patterns, the cost (and environmental impacts) of an ebook reader could well come out ahead. It's also generally easier to carry such a device than the equivalent number of printed books or documents.
- Thrymr 5y ago
  And the marginal cost of adding articles to a device if you are already using it to read books is very low.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    Correct, up to storage limits. That's not a minor consideration from me as I can easily fill 64--128 GB of total storage (about 30GB seem to be system + apps). That's not all books --- I keep a fairly large number of podcast episodes downloaded. But at about 5 MB/book, even an apparently generous storage quickly shows limits. I passed on the ReMarkable as its 16 GB storage (about 8GB available) only permits 1,600 books at 5 MB/book. (And that's without podcasts or audio.) The BOOX has a 64 GB onboard storage, maximum. I've got that near capacity in about 6 months, though a large share of that is podcasts. My preference would be 256 GB. Plus far better content-management capabilities on the device itself. I think I could live within that. Retail cost is $20, falling by about half every 2 years. The minimising of eBook storage makes absolutely no economic sense.

by Otek 5y ago

I doubt he will print as much, so your e-reader will have less environmental impact. All that plastic and components are certainly the equivalent of several, if not hundreds of reams of paper.

rpadovani 5y ago

I don't think he bought the Kobo only for reading webpages tho, so you cannot really do a direct comparison like this.

canadianfella 5y ago

> hundreds of reams of paper. How did you come to this conclusion?

dredmorbius 5y ago

Cost is a very rough indicator of footprint. A modest e-book reader runs about $200. That's the cost of about 3 cases of 20# letter-sized paper (10 reams/case), or 15,000 sheets of paper. At ~300 pages/book, that's about 50 books cost equivalent. Note that printing output tends to run higher, at $0.01 -- $0.25 per page (higher for colour inkjet and laserjet). Depending on ones reading patterns, the cost (and environmental impacts) of an ebook reader could well come out ahead. It's also generally easier to carry such a device than the equivalent number of printed books or documents.

Thrymr 5y ago
And the marginal cost of adding articles to a device if you are already using it to read books is very low.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  Correct, up to storage limits. That's not a minor consideration from me as I can easily fill 64--128 GB of total storage (about 30GB seem to be system + apps). That's not all books --- I keep a fairly large number of podcast episodes downloaded. But at about 5 MB/book, even an apparently generous storage quickly shows limits. I passed on the ReMarkable as its 16 GB storage (about 8GB available) only permits 1,600 books at 5 MB/book. (And that's without podcasts or audio.) The BOOX has a 64 GB onboard storage, maximum. I've got that near capacity in about 6 months, though a large share of that is podcasts. My preference would be 256 GB. Plus far better content-management capabilities on the device itself. I think I could live within that. Retail cost is $20, falling by about half every 2 years. The minimising of eBook storage makes absolutely no economic sense.