Interested in ereaders

[Evan Leibovitch]

Hi,

I've been heavily involved in e-books for some time, and even created an
ePub version of the Criminal Code of Canada just to get a feel for the
innards of the format.

I've owned dedicated eBook readers but I gave them up for multi-purpose
tablets (my current is an original Nexus 7, running the very-cool Paranoid
Android ROM). The e-ink monochrome screens of the dedicated readers were
nice, but not longer sufficiently good to compensate for the lack of
flexibility. In addition to book reading (Aldiko, Acrobat) I use my tablet
to watch videos (YouTube, Netflix, BeyondPod), edit documents (Google Docs
and now the free QuickOffice), read the days news (Taptu, Reddit is Fun).
And of course browsing (Dolphin), where the screen is far easier to work
with than a phone and I can often use the regular sites rather than the
oft-crippled "mobile optimised" versions.

Both ePub and PDFs allow for their documents to contain embedded Internet
links; these are generally useless in a dedicated eBook reader whose
browser is either horrid or non-existent.

The original gaps between tablets and dedicated ebook readers was price and
screen quality, and in both areas the gap has narrowed considerably. I now
find the low prices of dedicated ebook readers the result of subsidy in
return for locking you (or at least heavily steering you) towards the
hardware makers' bookstore. This is certainly the case for the Kindle,
though you can get Kindle for Android and have the best of both worlds.

There is a reason why MP3 player sales are rapidly dying; phones can do
just as good a job, and can do other things as well. The same future awaits
dedicated ebook readers except for specialized niches (ie, school and
library use where non-eBook functions and remote access are to be actively
dissuaded).

HTH

- Evan



On 23 September 2013 16:15, Molly Tournquist <mollytournquist-ifvz4xmYPRU at public.gmane.org>wrote:

> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: Lennart Sorensen > Sent: 09/23/13 12:22 PM
> > I think if you wanted text to speech or audio books, then the ereader
> > isn't what you were looking for in the first place. It would make much
> > more sense to add text to speech to a decent MP3 player instead.
>
> Then how is your issue excluded by the topic? Rockbox as the prototypical
> remedy for an exagerated divide between ereaders and mp3 players was
> suggested right at the start.
>
> If you wanted a device built made with read-out-books in mind, something
> with a fairly large unlit/monochrome LCD screen would be natural.
>
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: Kevin Cozens > Sent: 09/23/13 12:06 PM
> > If I want to listen to MP3's I have my Palm based PDA for that.
>
> It still has some things that close modern alternatives(like sub 6 inch
> android tablets) are catching up on?
>
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: Neil Watson > Sent: 09/23/13 12:46 PM
> > 3. The screen is too small for text books, but OK for novels.
>
> What I've heard is that text book usage is crippled by screen size, page
> jumping delays *and* lack of color.
> --
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-- 
Evan Leibovitch
Toronto Canada

Em: evan at telly dot org
Sk: evanleibovitch
Tw: el56
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