[LINK] 5 Reasons Why E-Books Aren’t There Yet

[David Boxall]

On 4/06/2011 5:10 PM, Kim Holburn wrote:
> A bit like the old maxim: "Next year will be the year of the Linux Desktop", here is another: "why e-books aren't there yet".  But they are there aren't they?  For years people used to say: "I could never read a book on a computer".  Even after it was pointed out that most of us read much more than a book's worth of reading on a computer every week, even more than that these days.  True, our reading is much more disjointed than a book but then in electronic format we don't have to call it "a book" or "an article" or "a magazine" anymore.  Still here is an interesting "article" from a "magazine".  Some of the issues relate to complicated DRM that many ebook publishers often insist on.
>
> http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/06/ebooks-not-there-yet/all/1
> ...
Horses for courses. Let's face it, physical books aren't perfect either. 
They're just what we're accustomed to.

I have two eBook readers, a cheap Kogan 
<http://david.boxall.id.au/Kogan%20eBook%20Reader.html> and an even 
cheaper MiGEAR <http://david.boxall.id.au/MiGEAR%20BSTE100.html>. 
Neither is perfect. The battery life of the MiGEAR might be an issue if 
I ever got to read for more than an hour at a time. I don't, so its 
superior font handling makes it my favourite.

DRM issues only arise for people who buy eBooks. Why do people _buy_ 
eBooks, when there's more in the public domain (or otherwise cost-free) 
than anyone could read in a lifetime?

There's still the bookcase problem though. :)

-- 
David Boxall                    |  The more that wise people learn
                                |  The more they come to appreciate
http://david.boxall.id.au       |  How much they don't know.
                                                         --Confucius