Eee-book reader
It’s frustrating that Asia and Australia (and lots of other places) seem to have been left out of the marketing of e-book readers. The Amazon Kindle – which allegedly has market dominance – is only available to less than 5% of the world’s population (and even in this tiny fraction of the market accounts for less than half of all e-book reader sales.) Even the Sony e-book readers (and the rest of the pack) are available to a mere 10% of the world.
I suppose the fact is that no-one selling e-book readers has a truly global vision of what this will, one day, amount to. Apple, when its ‘tablet’ is released, may well steal the market right out from under the current players. Meanwhile, its iPod Touch and iPhone are perhaps the only global e-book readers available.
But wait! What am I drivelling on about? I’ve been reading e-books for years and I don’t own an iPhone! The fact is that just about everybody in the first world owns a device that can be used as an e-book reader. You are probably using yours right this minute – and what are you doing with it? You’re reading!
Yes, the humble desktop PC, the ubiquitous laptop, that cute little netbook, and that PDA in your pocket, are all perfectly good e-book readers. You can load them all with e-book reader software like Adobe Digital Editions, Microsoft Reader, and Mobipocket Reader – but the chances are excellent that you already have a perfectly fine e-book reader installed: Adobe’s Acrobat Reader.
It’s true, these devices don’t use e-ink and some people really are sensitive to the flicker on computer screens (which can be avoided, at least for desktops, by using a screen with a very high refresh rate, by the way) but I’ve been reading from screens for decades now and the benefits of e-ink seem rather marginal to me. And, let’s face it, dedicated e-book readers are very expensive for what they are – a single-finction device, sometimes tied to a single e-book format. For about the same price as a good Sony or Kindle, you can get a nice netbook that will also allow you to do a million other things when you’re not reading, read all known book formats, and won’t be obsolete quite so quickly. (For the price of an iPhone, you could get two, and God alone knows what the Apple tablet will cost!)
Thank you, Graham. You make a very good point.
Call me old-fashioned, but I can’t see myself using an e-book reader until they make one with a left page and a right page. Which i realise would be expensive and impractical, but oh how much more like a real book!
Absolutely! Who needs an overpriced, market-cornering Kindle? With laptops getting smaller and smaller, there’s no reason not to use one as your primary eBook reader.
If Adobe Acrobat is too cantankerous for eBook reading, I highly recommend the smaller, faster, & more versatile Foxit Reader.
If laptops aren’t mobile enough, other handheld devices can be inexpensively modified into ebook readers, too, such as the Nintendo DS.
Thanks, Merrilee.
Dan, I’m sure two-pagers will come – once the screen prices have dropped enough and if people like yourself are still demanding them. I don’t think you’re alone in wanting this.
Nick, great info. Thanks.