Image taken from some site found using Google Images.
There have a multitude of e-book readers, or e-readers, in the market today. Most notably is, of course, the Kindle by Amazon.com, probably because it came from one of the enormous-est online retailers. Besides this, there are other e-readers as well, both niche and open, like Foxit’s, Sony’s and the Nook from Barnes & Noble. Currently, all of this employ the same technology for displaying text: e-ink. Only available in black-and-white, e-ink is useful for this purpose for two reasons: supposedly readable in all lighting conditions and its extremely low power requirements, only requiring power to change. Thus, among gadgets with which we are used to having battery life in terms of hours, e-readers stand out by having battery life in terms of days. e-ink technology is also sufficient as reading text does not require any sort of animation, except when “turning the page” of the e-book.
I’m quite the gadget nerd. So why is it not appealing to me?
Before I was e-crazy, and long before I even have some sort of income to supplement my gadget lust, I was a bookworm. And in some ways, I still am. I grew up on Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl, Franklin Dixon, Archie comics, and, if you remember, The Bookworm Gang. I lapped up stories on the Famous Five, the Hardy Boys, the Wishing Chair and the Faraway Tree. My family wasn’t well off enough to buy all the books that I crave, except for a subsidised subscription to the Bookworm Gang, so the library card became my salvation. I have lots of cherishes glimpses of the library from my memories. Even now, going to the library is also fun, albeit for different reasons. I also love frequenting second-hand bookstores or used book sales, to grab old Archie comics or other books on the cheap. They may be torn and dog-eared, but somehow it adds a bit of character to it, like it has gone on some fantastical journey before reaching my hands. Poor aesthetics can never take away the joy of turning the page to devour its content.
Seeing, holding, turning the paper of an actual book. Smelling it. These are the properties that can never be digitized (unless maybe if this happens). Sure, not everyone indulges in books this way. Some prefer to just consume the content; how it is consumed is entirely irrelevant. I went to a book store with a friend once, and on impulse, I purchased Wolverine: Weapon X. He actually chided me, asking why I would spend over $30 buying a comic. If I wanted, he has a lot of comics on his harddrive that he could have passed on to me. But the feel of holding an A4-sized hardcover is totally different from the digital format.
However, I do recognise that some books would be more useful as e-books. Textbooks, for example, would benefit as one would be able to annotate and take notes on the e-textbook. These notes can then be indexed and searched. They can also be uploaded and shared over a network. One can organize these notes into whatever format is desired, for easy reference and collaboration, probably sync’ed using Evernote or even Microsoft OneNote. Textbooks are also typically heavy to carry around. I know. My university textbooks never leave my hostel room. In digital format, physical limitations is completely irrelevant, replaced by storage limitations instead. But since flash memory is super-cheap now, if an e-reader can accept additional storage devices, or have loads of storage built-in, this would again be a moot point. E-readers are definitely useful in that regard.
DRM is another fiasco one will have to contend with. After Amazon demonstrated its ability to Force Wipe one’s purchased e-books, my waning lust for an e-reader dimmed even more. What if a representative from Borders breaks into your house to take away that copy you’ve bought? I’ve already tolerated buying digitally-distributed games on proprietary platforms. I don’t want a book to go the same way. I don’t want a Steam-like error message, stating “servers are too busy, please read the book later”. I still haven’t found an easier method to purchase DRM-free music, relying on a friend in the US to email me Apple gift certs so I can purchase them from iTunes. It took a long time for music to go DRM-free. How long will it be for e-books? Will it ever?
For now, I am unconvinced of the merits of an e-book reader. All the models look unimpressive to me. With rumours of an impending tablet-like device, could Apple sway me? Hmm…
