![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jsburbidgeThere have been posts at Charlie Stross's weblog and (independently) on the Bujold list on this topic, so why not just join in?
I have nothing against reading e-books as such; I've read various non-DRM'd e-books (Gutenberg, Baen CDs from HC's I've bought, CC licensed texts, etc) over the years via a PC screen. But I can't see adopting them as anything more than a minor option when in front of a computer (or a PDA) anyway. This is for three reasons:
1) Availability/cost of e-book copies. It's all very well if you just want to read recent novels, Gutenberg classics, and software reference works (which tend to be available in Acrobat format from the publishers, although the cost is steep, especially if all you were to be doing would be mainly mirroring your current dead-tree library). But the availabilty of other books in my areas of interest isn't all that high (New Testament Criticism, anyone?) and the cost of mirroring my existing library (see my Library Thing account, for reference) would be hefty.
2) More importantly, I don't need to carry my entire library with me. I get along just fine by carrying a few books at a time with me. It helps that I don't just carry novels: right now I have a light SF novel, a David Lodge omnibus, and Surprised by Sin with me; frequently I carry rather more slow-going books for general reading. Paperbacks are convenient, and even hardcovers aren't bad (although I grant that the size of God's War in HC is one reason I've been slow reading it, I handled Anathem and the Baroque Cycle just fine). The setup costs to do the same thing with existing books in my library (i.e. select two or three new books to carry with me) , assuming either purchase costs or trouble OCRing texts I already had, would be prohibitive, and the latter would be usually illegal except for older editions of older classics, for which Gutenberg is, thankfully, there.
(For that matter, I don't even use an MP3 player much, although I carry two devices (phone, Blackberry) which can play them -- when your main interests are pre-Classical music, downloading isn't much of an option, and ripping MP3's from one's entire CD library is a little daunting. (I am so Not The Target Market for MP3 players it isn't even funny. It's like being very much Not The Target Market for the changes CBC has made to Radio 2, which leave me grumbling about lamposts and rope.))
3) Random access. Digital copies are fine for sequential access, and exact word searches, but books are very nicely set up for physical implementations of a binary search, especially if you have a good memory of the text.
I have nothing against reading e-books as such; I've read various non-DRM'd e-books (Gutenberg, Baen CDs from HC's I've bought, CC licensed texts, etc) over the years via a PC screen. But I can't see adopting them as anything more than a minor option when in front of a computer (or a PDA) anyway. This is for three reasons:
1) Availability/cost of e-book copies. It's all very well if you just want to read recent novels, Gutenberg classics, and software reference works (which tend to be available in Acrobat format from the publishers, although the cost is steep, especially if all you were to be doing would be mainly mirroring your current dead-tree library). But the availabilty of other books in my areas of interest isn't all that high (New Testament Criticism, anyone?) and the cost of mirroring my existing library (see my Library Thing account, for reference) would be hefty.
2) More importantly, I don't need to carry my entire library with me. I get along just fine by carrying a few books at a time with me. It helps that I don't just carry novels: right now I have a light SF novel, a David Lodge omnibus, and Surprised by Sin with me; frequently I carry rather more slow-going books for general reading. Paperbacks are convenient, and even hardcovers aren't bad (although I grant that the size of God's War in HC is one reason I've been slow reading it, I handled Anathem and the Baroque Cycle just fine). The setup costs to do the same thing with existing books in my library (i.e. select two or three new books to carry with me) , assuming either purchase costs or trouble OCRing texts I already had, would be prohibitive, and the latter would be usually illegal except for older editions of older classics, for which Gutenberg is, thankfully, there.
(For that matter, I don't even use an MP3 player much, although I carry two devices (phone, Blackberry) which can play them -- when your main interests are pre-Classical music, downloading isn't much of an option, and ripping MP3's from one's entire CD library is a little daunting. (I am so Not The Target Market for MP3 players it isn't even funny. It's like being very much Not The Target Market for the changes CBC has made to Radio 2, which leave me grumbling about lamposts and rope.))
3) Random access. Digital copies are fine for sequential access, and exact word searches, but books are very nicely set up for physical implementations of a binary search, especially if you have a good memory of the text.
