Amazon Kindle Fails First College Test 256
theodp writes "If Amazon hoped for honest feedback when it started testing the Kindle DX on college campuses last fall, writes Amy Martinez, it certainly got its wish. Students pulled no punches telling Amazon what they thought of its $489 e-reader. But if Amazon also hoped the Kindle DX would become the next iPhone or iPod on campuses, it failed its first test. At the University of Virginia, as many as 80% of MBA students who participated in Amazon's pilot program said they would not recommend the Kindle DX as a classroom study aid (though more than 90% liked it for pleasure reading). At Princeton and Reed, students complained they couldn't scribble notes in the margins, easily highlight passages, or fully appreciate color charts and graphics. 'The pilot programs are doing their job — getting us valuable feedback,' said Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener. Martinez notes that Reed, Seton Hall, and other colleges plan to test the iPad in the fall to see if it can do better."
Piracy solves another issue (Score:3, Interesting)
A fast flipping display and cheaper unit would be a better fit.Any $150 Chinese android tablet would do. The books would have to be pirated, but college kids have been doing that for ages.
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I know - sell the DX with a stack of post-its! The students can write on the post-its, and stick them over the passages they want to highlight!
Dammit - now I'm sure Amazon will patent this, and nobody else will be able to use it!
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That is all in your head.
How do you work?
I look at a pair of LCDs all day, then I go home and use another one as a TV. Then I read books on my droid. I have none of these problems.
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That's not luck that is doing what you are supposed to do. Eye doctors exist for a reason.
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Re:Piracy solves another issue (Score:5, Funny)
> How on Earth do you know it's all in their head?
Because that's where their eyes are.
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My eyes unassisted are near useless already, nice pair of contacts and I see better than pretty much any unaided human. I have been staring at brightly lit displays for decades.
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Been using computers since 1979, from big green screen or amber screen monitors to B/W and color TVs on up to CRTs and now LCDs.
For me it isn't "yet" yet.
[John]
Holy Cow (Score:5, Insightful)
The tried and true method of doing things that is known to work outdid the new shiny?
Amazing......
Print was first, iPad Comes second, kindle last. (Score:2, Interesting)
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Essentially their criticism seem to boil down to:
sony got this right (Score:4, Interesting)
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How do you scribble notes? (I did not see anything on their site. Is it with a pen? This is one of the few cases I think a pen would be handy on a device.
If it was slightly bigger and had a way to quickly mark up the text, it would have real promise.
Re:sony got this right (Score:5, Insightful)
the Sony Daily Edition perfectly fits the bill.
It sounds like it would be great, if anybody but Sony made it. Sorry, but after they rooted my PC there's no way I'll buy anything with a Sony logo, ESPECIALLY computer gear. A company that would put rootkits on legitimately purchased music CDs would stoop to anything.
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Nope.
Give me a 8.5" by 11" screen. Sorry but for textbooks I want a full page not something I have to scroll. Why dont these companies make one that is the size of a full printed page of text?
Hmm (Score:2)
Disclaimer: I own a DX
Electronics != Best Solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Electronics != Best Solution (Score:4, Interesting)
True, that said it could have an amazing future in academia if they just come up with something good enough. I have hundreds of papers lying around, keep reprinting stuff I can't find, have plenty of notes on some and taking them with me when traveling is a pain. Honestly I am dying to have a nice device where I can easily read my scientific papers, tag them with keywords and bibliographic info for easy searches, add notes and what not.
The ownership issues would be more important (Score:5, Insightful)
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It does kind of make you wonder what happens at the end of your Term to your textbook. Are they going to have the publishers demand that they yank it?
Re:The ownership issues would be more important (Score:5, Insightful)
Teacher: "We'll be using History of the Modern World, Third Edition. You can verify this by viewing page 212. If it states that Eurasia has always been at war with Oceania, then you have the Third Edition. Anything else is wrong and you should click "Update E-Book" at your earliest convenience."
Re:The ownership issues would be more important (Score:5, Funny)
What would be really funny is if someone bought the novel 1984 on Kindle and then Amazon came and forced an update that deleted it!
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As far as I've read, it's the publishers that want this, not Amazon.
I haven't myself done a lot of research, admittedly (cause I don't really care, if they cease to want to sell me books for my Kindle, I can always download them from other sources), but a friend of mine keeps bringing up stories about publishers pushing for things like expiration dates on ebooks.
We've been here before, oh so many times. Cassette tapes will kill the music industry. Video tape recorders will kill the movie industry. Illegal m
Upgrades? (Score:2)
"This is precisely the sort of dynamic, positive thinking that we so desperately need in these trying times of crisis and universal broo-ha-ha."
Seriously, Amazon is touting these basic features as 'upgrades'. Like Apples 'wait...you want copy AND paste???'
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Amazon labels them as "upgrades", because they are. The basis for comparison being the previous version of the software, no matter how gimped that was. Hell, they still don't get it. Collections? Great, I can make a Fantasy "folder", and inside that other folders for each of the authors or series. Keep it nice and tidy. Err, no. No hierarchy possible. What the? What century are they living in? It's still an upgrade though, and a much wanted one.
Apple, on the other hand, would have done the same and held a h
Correction to Summary (Score:2, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Now my kid buys a $300 "required" book only to be told it has NO resale value come next semester because it is the "old edition". With Kindle, et al, that planned obsolescence can take place FASTER.
Yes, but so much more conveniently...
No longer will your kid have to stand in long lines at the college bookstore waiting to be ripped off. Now he can be ripped off in the comfort of his own dorm room.
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The most expensive book I was forced to purchase was, perhaps $120. Most were between $50 and $80.
Was my experience atypical?
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If you were an engineer yes, it was atypical. If you weren't an engineer then sounds about right.
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Really? I was a CS/EE double-major. Even the books that I bought once and used for 2 or 3 related courses were still less than $120 each.
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Re:I can see it now... (Score:4, Insightful)
Downside: you can't resell the "book". Upside? The Pirate Bay and a netbook. Who needs a Kindle?
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Actually, it will be the opposite. No longer will textbook manufacturers have to update so quickly in order to make the books obsolete. From now on, the book is YOUR edition
YOU will own the book meaning nobody else can have it. It will have no resale value because you paid for in on your account and nobody else will be able to use it unless they can sync a kindle/ipad/ereader on your account.
Profs might actually like this better because books might change less, and book publishers might even give you
Can the iPad beat the Kindle? (Score:2)
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At that link, I'm seeing a family of heavy convertible Windows laptop/tablets of the type that haven't been selling in the last decade that Microsoft/PC vendors have been trying to promote them. At 3 times the cost of an iPad or a Kindle.
Massive fail.
$498 way too high for a unitasker (Score:4, Insightful)
I am surprised anybody buys it. You can buy an iPad for about the same price, and the iPad does far more.
Arguably the kindle is better for just reading - still.
Sears has the "Aluratek LIBRE eBook Reader PRO" for $99, and buy.com has the "Ectaco jetBOOK LITE e-Book Reader" also for $99.
http://www.sears.com/shc/s/p_10153_12605_00309013000P?vName=Computers%20&%20Electronics&cName=PortableElectronics&sName=MP3%20Players&psid=FROOGLE01&sid=IDx20070921x00003a [sears.com]
http://www.buy.com/prod/ectaco-jetbook-lite-e-book-reader/q/listingid/84607877/loc/111/213401968.html [buy.com]
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I am surprised anybody buys it. You can buy an iPad for about the same price, and the iPad does far more.
Arguably the kindle is better for just reading - still.
Sears has the "Aluratek LIBRE eBook Reader PRO" for $99, and buy.com has the "Ectaco jetBOOK LITE e-Book Reader" also for $99.
http://www.sears.com/shc/s/p_10153_12605_00309013000P?vName=Computers%20&%20Electronics&cName=PortableElectronics&sName=MP3%20Players&psid=FROOGLE01&sid=IDx20070921x00003a [sears.com]
http://www.buy.com/prod/ectaco-jetbook-lite-e-book-reader/q/listingid/84607877/loc/111/213401968.html [buy.com]
The reason that the kindle / sony reader / nook are better than these $99 readers is because they use e-ink. Which really is a different feel for reading and viewing. If you haven't seen it then you don't realize how much of a difference it brings over the other display types. It is also why they are better at just plain reading then the iPad ever can be just because of eye strain levels.
Re:$498 way too high for a unitasker (Score:5, Insightful)
I dunno. $498 still seems insanely high. I can get a netbook for $199, or a really nice laptop for $450.
http://www.techdealdigger.com/pr/cheap-acer-aspire-one-aod250-1151-101-inch-black-netbook-deals/3391 [techdealdigger.com]
http://www.dealhack.com/archives/2010/05/133_hp_pavilion_dm3_ultrathin.html [dealhack.com]
In many ways netbooks and notebooks are superior for reading ebooks, especially ebooks in PDF format. Of course, netbooks and notebooks do far more than just read ebooks.
BTW: the $99 readers use e-Paper, which seems like it might be e-Ink by another name.
a tool for the wrong job (Score:2)
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netbooks have too small of a screen to really read on
10.1" is too small to read on? I have read an entire book on my ipod touch with 3.5" screen, and I have awful vision.
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and I have awful vision.
Perhaps there's a reason for that.
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Depends on what you're reading. Many textbooks are formatted for paper that is not much smaller than 8 1/2 x 11. Grabbing a not atypically sized one (Dummit & Foote's Abstract Algebra) gives pages that are about 7.5x9.25 in, or about 12" in diagonal. Displaying that on a 10.1" screen gives almost a 15% reduction in magnification.
For a more extreme example, take a typical CS conference paper. Printed on 8.5x11 paper (13.9" diagonal) in 10 or 11 pt font, two column format, reducing that to the size of 10.
Trial 3 (Score:3, Insightful)
2nd trial: ipad (will fail)
3rd trial: pen & paper WIN
the dog is replaced (Score:2, Funny)
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I think "The cloud deleted my homework!" sounds more plausible.
Professors hate textbooks too (Score:5, Insightful)
There also exist moronic profs who require you to buy the textbook, purchase a code for the online help, AND buy the study guide/homework guide, and then NEVER USE IT. I've found this in the English department more than once. These people need to be burned at the stake.
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That said, a good set of textbooks in your profession can be useful. I used many of my books to look stuff up years after I left school. Also, some textbooks are not so useless. The problem set are often worth the cost of the textbook for students who really want to learn the m
I have the ideal solution! (Score:4, Insightful)
I have the ideal solution for students, or for anyone who might want to enjoy reading a book and then sharing it with others when you're done, or if someone wanted to study a book and quickly switch back and forth between pages, highlight to your heart's content, and scribble notes between the lines or in the margins.
There is this newfangled substance called "paper." If only books could possibly be "printed" on uniformly-cut "sheets" of this paper, and then "bound" together with glue and yarn, and perhaps be encased in a protective cardboard or lightweight wood or even plastic "covers." Then, you could turn the pages without having to fiddle with gestures or buttons, you don't need to worry about batteries, and since you OWN the book and cannot connect it online, no one can decide the book needs to be recalled and remotely delete it. Not only that, you can lend the book out to others, or even sell it when you no longer find any use or enjoyment from it. DRM would not stand in the way of exercising either Fair Use or your first sale rights.
I know my idea seems somewhat quaint, but who knows - - it might just catch on!
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I understand the sentiment. And yes, I love books. God, I love books. I have shelves and shelves of them and sometimes I consider them almost a literal (haha) barrier to stupidity. No kidding, but I think some people get scared when they see my books and fell uneasy standing amongst them. There is rarely any greater pleasure for me than to sit in my library and read.
And yet eBooks are tempting. My love of gadgetry aside, the ability to large portions of my library with me at all times would be Nirvana. Y
The pilot programs are .. getting us .. feedback (Score:3, Insightful)
The iPodization of Print is Failing (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone is trying to create their own iPod/iTunes like market for eBooks. It's a silly strategy that has little future because books and multimedia are very different technologies.
* The killer application is actually publishing your book as a computer file instead of inked on dead trees, not creating a device that is only remarkable in that it is compatible with your DRM scheme.
* Finding ways to sell your books to the largest market possible should be the goal.
* The only thing that differentiates and the sizes of the walled garden markets is the number of devices that are compatible with their DRM schemes.
* DRM is defective by design for most eBooks as it can be defeated a touch typist with some time on their hands. Music and movies actually require a much higher level of skill to crack.
It's like everyone missed Apple's secret weapon with iPod: $1 songs and $2 TV Shows - and tons of free podcasts. Pricing on eBooks, aside the occasional sale at O'Reiley is nuts.
In short, book publishers need to rethink the need for walled gardens. They add little value, given that portable devices that can read open formats have existed since the 1980s, and the current crop of slates and ePaper devices are not much different than a regular computer anyway.
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My requirements for entry are low: An SD slot (I'm not willing to budge here), ability to read most formats I can buy, or download content in, and access to an online store where ebooks are priced according to how much I value them; 50% or less than paperbacks, since there is no physical print and distribution system involved. It's the last part that each and every publisher's ebook reader not only fails, but fails proudly at.
Re:The iPodization of Print is Failing (Score:4, Insightful)
You seem to be under the impression that 50% of the cost of a paperback book involves printing and distribution. Well, hardly.
The cost of books is pretty much divided between the (re)seller and the publisher with a thin little sliver for the author. The publisher has the editorial and preparation costs which are pretty high, a well as the promotion and placement of the book. There is some profit there, but books aren't all that high-margin for the publisher.
The seller tends to get a big chunk, as much as 30 percent because they have to stock the books.
Printing? For a paperback book it is less than $1. Shipping? You put 50 books in a box and it costs $8 to ship across the country. That works out to about $0.16 a book.
So when Amazon is selling a paperback book for $7.99 and the Kindle version is $4.99 that is a discount well below what the printing and distribution would have cost. With hardcover books at $24.99 and the Kindle version at $9.99 it is even a more significant difference. Today, I believe the publisher is eating most of this discount and Amazon is still making out very well on the books. There are a few they are making almost nothing on, but they are doing it to keep the Kindle supply chain stocked up.
What is very interesting is the number of free books that Amazon is distributing for the Kindle. These cost them real money on a per-sale basis with both the server load and the wireless charges. But there are always 10-15 books that are free available and these aren't the public-domain ones.
MS Courier (Score:2)
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They didn't scrap it, they never had a project in the first place. It was just a mockup to deny apple some mindshare.
Academic tool? (Score:2)
Never even considered it one. To me its nice way to read e-books with out the usual eyestrain from a traditional LCD. Most of all that i have read have been stories, or 'tutorial' style tech books. Flipping around would be murder.
Oh, i never wrote in my books in school, i had a notebook for taking notes.
Beating a dead horse (Score:2)
I've said this before, and I'm saying it again, eReaders really need to support PDF's and Word files a lot better than they currently do, especially if they want to get their devices into a college or have anything other than a black and white book novel read...
It doesn't matter if it's a college text book, a role playing game manual, or any type of publication that uses complex images/tables/graphs/charts/etc you need a PDF or Office type of file (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) file and you need to view it well.
They still need to fix math symbols (Score:3, Interesting)
Biggest issue I foresee with ebooks is that, currently, none of them handle math symbols correctly. Imagine trying to read an economics text or calculus text without proper mathematical formatting. If you can't, check out the Nook for an example of how it looks. Fractions, even at the biggest text size, are smaller than 1/8" and almost entirely unreadable. Sigma notation looks like gobbledygook.
Until that is fixed, I don't see any school adopting ebooks, much less a technical one.
The Kindle is too slow and DRM hurts (Score:5, Informative)
It can take even longer to add a highlight, plus the additional annoyance of using the little joystick for navigating. A stylus would be great if it were possible to use it with this type of display. I notice the same slowness on the Kindle for PC software (even on a fast machine), but at least I can use the mouse there.
The Kindle is terribly unresponsive for typing notes. It can't keep up with two slow thumbs on those awful little keys and you nave to pop open the symbol screen just to get a comma because there is no key for it (among many other common symbols).
Worst of all is the DRM. The Kindle saves each highlight to a plain text clippings file which might have been useful for study notes. About one third of the way through a very large (and expensive) ebook, I found that my clippings file was full of messages stating that I had exceeded my limit for clippings for that book. I guess they put some limit in there in order to prevent people from using highlights to extract the whole book into the clippings text file, thereby defeating DRM. What it really prevents is legitimate study. Due to this stupid technical deficiency, I should have been noting these passages by hand in a notebook. But the Kindle didn't warn me that this limitation existed, nor did it stop me when I reached it.
The Kindle hardware is an interesting novelty and I see potential in the technology, but it is not good for serious reading or for study. It's too slow and the DRM puts me back in the age of pencil and paper anyway, so why bother? Picking up the actual book is more efficient and convenient than using the Kindle.
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Agreed, the extreme sluggishness of the Kindle 2 user interface is the first thing I noticed when I bought mine.
Failed? (Score:2)
But if Amazon also hoped the Kindle DX would become the next iPhone or iPod on campuses, it failed its first test. At the University of Virginia, as many as 80% of MBA students who participated in Amazon's pilot program said they would not recommend the Kindle DX as a classroom study aid (though more than 90 percent liked it for pleasure reading).
Because the iPhone was recommended as a study aid? Being the "next iPhone" does not mean it has to be recommended for study. Duh.
Poor Engineering Communication with Management (Score:3, Insightful)
It is disappointing to see Amazon finding out only now that engineers will want to scribble on pages, highlight items, need color, etc.
Amazon employs hundreds if not thousands of engineers, most if not all of which could have told senior executives this.
Unfortunately, many companies in Silicon Valley are being run by executives who have forgotten their companies were built by engineers, and consulting with them once in a while might be useful.
This is not meant to be flame-bait. It is from personal experience and the experiences of other engineers, e.g., Bob Colwell and the inability of Intel to acknowledge the failure of the Itanium processor line before it wasted billions of dollars and several years of engineering time (read Bob's book The Pentium Chronicles for more detail.)
-Todd
This is a downside? (Score:3, Funny)
students complained they couldn't scribble notes in the margins, easily highlight passages
Good. It's a book. Stop defacing it.
Bloody vandals.
Nothing worse than buying a second-hand textbook and finding out the fuckwit that owned it before you has destroyed it through inept, irrelevant and inaccurate highlighting and notes.
And no, buying new isn't an option when you're a student with all your income going on accommodation, food and condoms.
Re:Odd choice (Score:4, Funny)
Well, according to several e-mails that made it to my spam trap, there seem to be many surefire ways to get a free iPad or Kindle. Seems all you have to do is sign up for some marketing promotions and surveys...
Re:Odd choice (Score:5, Funny)
"You don't read textbooks in the same linear way as a novel," said Roesner, 23, a graduate student in computer science and engineering.
Honestly, I tend to agree. Not having tried a Kindle myself, my opinion means little. However, I strongly suspect that I would encounter the same frustration that these people did when using it instead of textbooks.
With regard to business school, Futurama said it best:
All I want is to be a monkey of moderate intelligence who wears a suit... that's why I'm transferring to business school!
Re:Odd choice (Score:4, Interesting)
I tend to find textbooks to be an outmoded form of communication anyway. In the classes I'm in we tend to switch between lab work, reading individual papers, reading smaller subject-specific paperbacks, etc. Most of the traditional thick / hardbound textbooks I've bought in the past year have just sat on the shelf. It's important background information that doesn't help you understand the political climate of China, why graphic designers work the way they do, or how to build flash applications.
Maybe Amazon should be targeting the smaller, single-use books in some way. Maybe buying individual chapters, so that professors can tailor a curriculum more tightly. Or having one-stop information compendiums that make it easier to buy everything for a specific class. Spend 100 dollars, and get the relevant chapters from 2 different textbooks, a few individual copies of relevant softbacks, and PDF archive versions of specific web pages that the class will use.
Re:Odd choice (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe Amazon should be targeting the smaller, single-use books in some way. Maybe buying individual chapter
Not a bad idea at all. Unfortunately, Amazon's impetus here isn't to make academia easier for students - it's to drive more sales of Kindles and Kindle media. Amazon loves the Kindle because they have a fat profit margin on books (shipping costs less than bandwidth, no material cost), and tighter control over distribution and dissemination. Combining your idea with Kindle content doesn't address the main complaint that was documented by the article. Namely, textbooks are not often read linearly. They require more random access, and that isn't as easy on a Kindle than in a physical textbooks (or chapter pamphlets as you suggest).
Re:Odd choice (Score:5, Insightful)
Hint: Not everyone cares about the politics of china, graphic designers or flash.
In mechanical engineering my books were/are invaluable. There is yet an online resource (and I've searched) that has as much material laid out as well as it does. Equations for four bar linkages, friction disks, thermodynamics, heat and mass transfer, etc haven't changed much in the last decade (or longer).
One HUGE regret I have is selling some of my books for pennies on the dollar. When referencing material that you spent a semester learning, nothing beats opening the exact book you used to help you remember.
Heck when I had to retake a course because I transfered schools I kept my original text book and used it in the new class along side my new book.
One thing that did irk me is that we did never use the full book, even in follow up courses.
ME 352 would have Book A and we'd use chapters 1-10, but ME 452 would have Book B and we'd use 10-20. Even though they were the 'same material'.
If I had the cash and was a professor I you could make a killing off of leasing books to students. Estimate that over the next 5 years you're going to have no more than 300 students / semester. Figure that 100 books will be stolen lost or damaged and you won't change from said book.
So you buy 400 books at 100 each, you're out $40,000. Lease books to students for $20* a semester. After 5 years you'll have made $20k profit and still have usable books.
My private elementary school had the some of the same books for close to 15 years. Each year you HAD to cover your books with grocery bags and take care of them. If a 3rd grader can take care of a Math book for an entire year, a college student can do it for a semester.
*$100 with $80 refund. They're going to come out better than if they bought and sold from the book store. You're going to turn a huge profit.
We still use textbooks in law school (Score:2)
They call them "casebooks," and they're a combination of (1) commentary discussing the field a bit, and (2) cases which have been exerpted to make them say whatever the the casebook authors are trying to say. Their quality and honesty vary.
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Re:Odd choice (Score:5, Informative)
Let me include a bit more of that quote...
"You don't read textbooks in the same linear way as a novel," said Roesner, 23, a graduate student in computer science and engineering. "You have to flip back and forth between pages, and the Kindle is too slow for that."
That rings very true to my own educational experience. Also, based on my own experience and from watching other students in the past, when you're looking for something specific in a textbook you're most likely going to flip through looking for a picture, diagram, or a certain page layout. You may even remember approximately how far in from the front or back of the book the section is you're looking for (ie. you may remember it's about half an inch or one finger's thickness from the back of the book). None of these visual cues would work as well with an ebook reader, and as Roesner said, would be a lot slower.
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when you're looking for something specific in a textbook you're most likely going to flip through looking for a picture, diagram, or a certain page layout. You may even remember approximately how far in from the front or back of the book the section is you're looking for (ie. you may remember it's about half an inch or one finger's thickness from the back of the book). None of these visual cues would work as well with an ebook reader, and as Roesner said, would be a lot slower.
you could search for it.
Not always. I love my paper versions of old AD&D material. I got some rtf and MS helpfile versions of some AD&D material with a Core Rules CD a long while back. It was neat to search for specific text until I realized my spacial memory is stronger than my textual: I couldn't remember what certain things were called "Tome of Infinite Magic? Libram of Unending Magic? Oh well, I know it's in the misc magic items section..." I know which section of the book I'm in just by the pictures. I bet you
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And that's how I use my iPad. I run Shadowrun games and dabble in a few others. For the purposes of getting set up for the game, I use the PDFs and a notebook (lately I've been using my iPhone and Evernote). But during the game when I need to look something up, I know where it is in the book and can flip to it then back and forth a few pages until I find the right spot. With search, it finds every instance in the PDF and I have to slog through the search looking at each page until I find the right one. Mayb
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Re:Odd choice (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree that the ability to search is killer. The downside is what the GP was trying to say - often you remember what a page looked like that had information you needed on it. It's far quicker to turn to the section of the textbook it's near and just flip through a dozen pages than it is to try to come up with a keyword which will be on that page, and no other pages.
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You may even remember approximately how far in from the front or back of the book the section is you're looking for
Absolutely. Not to mention the fact that frequently used pages will naturally open up when you get close. Kind of a pre-computer weighted search. It's pretty amazing how well designed books are.
Old-timer here. Oh... wait... (Score:5, Funny)
You could touch a book without smearing finger oil on a screen. There was no DRM; no one implied you were a criminal if you read someone else's book. If you wanted to have a copy of a page, you could photocopy it and write on the photocopy, actually write, with real ink.
I know this will sound amazing, but you didn't have to have a device to read a book! You could just read it. Books didn't have batteries; there was nothing to charge; there was no battery to go bad and carry back to Apple for an expensive replacement. You could read a book outdoors; you didn't need to worry about the weak display of an Apple LCD screen.
If you dropped a book, it would almost certainly not be damaged. There was no quirky, limited operating system that had to be updated. There was no file management. You just opened the book and started reading it.
There was no early adopter status, with people going around implying they were socially superior to you because they had a device. You didn't need to worry about new versions of a device that did a little more, but just a little, because there would be an even newer version a few months after that. Books never became obsolete because someone stopped supporting an old file format.
You didn't need electric power to read a book. You didn't need to worry about exploding batteries with their poisonous metals. There were no charge cords, or waiting for re-charging.
There were so many books that thieves usually didn't steal them.
You didn't have to pay the huge Jeff Bezos tax or the huge Steve Jobs tax; you didn't need to contribute to a billionaire only interested in having more billions.
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And carrying 50lbs of books around all day was oh so much fun.
By the way: Get off my lawn!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
comparing a Gutenberg bible to a hand-crafted, illuminated art-work bible is like comparing a Model-T to a Bentley. there is nothing superior about it, beyond its significance in a historical sense that probably took at least a few decades to come into perspective. part of being special is being rare or limited in supply, if not completely unique.
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Further, since your complaint about campus libraries is their lack of fiction, you really want to set up the interwebs as better for that? Are you one of those guys that gets off to furry Harry Potter/Pokemon crossover fan-fics? Because other than really piss poor erotic f
Re:Odd choice (Score:5, Informative)
Well they are completely right to complain about this: "they couldn't scribble notes in the margins, easily highlight passages".
You can do that with the products from IREX [irextechnologies.com] which, BTW, also happen to be much more open than the Kindle (no DRM bullshit, based on Linux, you can install new/better applications, etc.).
Disclaimer: I don't work for IREX, I'm only an happy owner of an iLiad.
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Disclaimer: I don't work for IREX, I'm only an happy owner of an iLiad.
It's been a long day, I thought you said iLaid. I have a revolutionary new product idea.
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Another choice that might be better geared to students is the Entourage eDGe. If memory serves it was created with students, especially in science fields, in mind. It has one ePaper screen and one tablet-esque LCD screen, and apparently it's received decent reviews from students, though I have no personal experience therewith.
Recent article [businesswire.com]
Official site [entourageedge.com]
Excerpt from article:
The enTourage eDGe is the first device to merge an e-paper and LCD screen to create a dual-screen device that combines the functi
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Slow to load sometimes
Had to specially format PDFs to give enough room to write in (a big deal if you read dozens of articles/week!)
Not all articles (in fact, not nearly enough) worked well with the special formatting
Pages are "smaller" tha
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
And honestly, with this being published... the iPad will have this ability before the kindle devs even get out of the first meeting about it.
That's the advantage of having a huge developer base for your platform. I'm betting the guys that wrote GoodReader are already on it.
Give me a graphical MatLab on the iPad and it will utterly kill all the other eReaders that exist in academia circles. Let me open and view CAD drawings and board layout and schematics and it will rule the engineering side as well.
Hon
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The Kindle IS based on Linux. The Kindle DOES NOT require DRM. You need to get your facts straight. And unlike the cheaper readers, the Kindle actually has a gigantic library attached to it through that free 3G connection.
E-ink readers are great for pleasure reading, because you read front-to-back. They are not good for reference books, because it is difficult to "flip through" pages in them. The search feature also is inadequate, as the slow screen makes interactive search feel cumbersome.
Makes Sense (Score:2)
So you mean they chose MBA students to test the applicability of a device for students' use?
They would have tried special ed kids, but they didn't want all the user reports written in crayon.
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So they settled for user reports written in Powerpoint?
I don't think it is any better. in fact I think Crayon is a much better tool for reports than powerpoint.
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My wife is a "real graduate student" (she's doing her doctorate work in radiocarbon calibration), and although she got a Kindle for reading scientific papers, she says it sucks way too much at that. These papers usually only come in PDFs, which the Kindle has a hard time displaying properly - the best her small Kindle can do is display one quadrant at a time, which is basically useless. Sometimes you can get the papers as an HTML page, but the Kindle's HTML parser isn't that great and you have to remember t
Re:Odd choice (Score:4, Insightful)
Pretty much anybody who has used an e-book reader for more than five minutes could tell how this marketing effort would end. Fanboys excluded, because no doubt a Kindle lover or an iPad tit will be along any minute to relate how they now use only their device of devotion, and say how great it works for reference material.
E-BOOK READERS ARE SHIT FOR REFERENCE MATERIAL!!!!
Learn it.. Live with it. The electronic backpack is not here yet.
A paper book has every reader device beaten hands down for text books. Novels are a different story.
In all honesty, they are great for pleasure reading. I've gone through I can't remember how many books in the year and a bit I have had mine. Never a second of buyer's remorse. But for reference material, forget it.
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See, the nice thing about the Kindle is that its easier to purchase legitimate books than it is to pirate them. That is a good thing, yeah there is still DRM and the like, but in all honesty, devices that make it easier to purchase and use purchased content then pirated is a step in the right direction because it means that they have finally realized that the customer is not their enemy.
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If there is DRM they have not realized that at all. They are just hiding it better.
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Well, it doesn't look like it occured to Apple to address this use case so perhaps it's a horserace at this point.
Or perhaps some other dark horse will sneak up on both of them.
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I don't see the iPad being especially more useful since students can hardly take notes like a two year old finger painting. Even attempting to type on the thing is hardly practical either, and certainly worse than using a regular netbook.