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"E-book readers have the capacity to carry thousands of books while still being incredibly lightweight." This is one argument I never understand. Why would you
by WD-42 13y ago
"E-book readers have the capacity to carry thousands of books while still being incredibly lightweight."
This is one argument I never understand. Why would you care if you can carry thousands of books at once? I rarely read more than one at a time.
I don't use ebooks. Physical books are still more attractive. You can abuse them without worrying about damaging them. And most importantly, when you have finished reading a spectacular book, you can give it to a friend to read.
- bonemachine 13y ago"Thousands" is a bit hyperbolic, for sure. But 2-3 is a far more typical use case, and even at that scale, the carry weight matters. Plus people are carrying phones (and increasingly, tablets) around these days, in any case. So that's where the value proposition kicks in.
- grammaton 13y agoNo, it's really not. A base model Nook can hold about 2000 books. If you have the older simple touch with an SD slot, you can expand that into the realm of....far more books than you'll ever live to read, quite frankly.
- bonemachine 13y agoTo clarify: I meant the implied use case (of holding thousands of books), not to the fact that modern devices can easily store that many.
- marknutter 13y agoMaybe not thousands, but perhaps 5-10? I bounce around from book to book quite regularly, especially technical books.
- patmcc 13y agoTravel. Going away for two weeks and taking 1 ebook compared to 8 or 9 paperbacks is really nice.
- robbyking 13y ago>Why would you care if you can carry thousands of books at once? Because you don't always know what you'll want to read next, especially while traveling. Additionally, most eBook users don't just read books on their devices, but also newspapers, magazines, blogs, and articles from services like Instapaper and Pocket. (And for what it's worth, you can lend most eBooks.)
- sipior 13y agoI used to think this as well, until I moved across an ocean. I'm a big fan of packing light nowadays.
- jballanc 13y agoI was going to say exactly this. After two cross-city moves and one cross-country move, my wife and I converted our sizable (~100-150) book collection completely over to e-books before moving overseas. The most annoying thing about physical books is that they are so dense. Movers (especially long-distance movers) will charge on both weight and space, so even though it may not seem like you have a lot of stuff, the added cost of moving a couple dozen books can quickly eclipse the expense of replacing them electronically.
- WD-42 13y agoI'm a fan of Living Light. I don't see why people hang on to old books, unless they are useful for reference (which is becoming more and more rare with the internet as a resource) Books do so much more good being read than collecting dust on a bookshelf. I give all of mine away.
- ghaff 13y agoThe lending thing IS an annoyance although many Kindle books have a limited loaning ability these days. Like others, I do often find myself flipping between books on a trip depending upon my mood and level of energy: serious lit, brain candy, non-fiction, etc. It's nice to have the choice on a device (tablet) that I would tend to carry with me in any case. I also like having an illuminated screen. The lighting is often terrible in hotels and other locations. That said--if I didn't travel a lot--I'd probably be relatively ambivalent about e-books. I like the de-cluttering aspect but I'm probably not going to re-read most books anyway and I find e-books generally a suboptimal format for things like cookbooks that I do keep around.
- grammaton 13y agoFirst of all, just because you only read one book at a time, doesn't mean that other people are the same way. Second, even if you only read one book at a time (like yourself, and me as well), an ereader like the Nook or Kindle is still significantly more compact than even a trade paperback. A 700+ page hardcover? Forget it, it's not even a contest.