Ebooks
<<I haven't tried to read from an Ebook yet, so I will hold off on giving an opinion. I am a "bookaholic", and a "early adapter", so I will take a look at it soon.>>
I indicated in an earlier post that I had bought an RocketBook to investigate the market. So far I have had a good experience. Setting it up with the CD-ROM supplied was Mac-simple and in a few minutes I was online to the RocketBook site downloading free titles. For most titles the transfer from my computer to the RocketBook was quick enough but the Complete Works of Shakespeare, which took about a minute to download via my DSL line, took 15-20 minutes to transfer to the RocketBook (g). The screen is very readable and a huge improvement over the likes of my Palm III.
I think more interesting than the experience of an old fart like me was my 14 year old daughter's response. She saw the RocketBook in its cradle, asked me what it was and, after I showed her, she booted me off the computer. After browsing around the RocketBook site for a while she downloaded several titles and was off to bed with the RocketBook as her reading material. She is a steady reader so the fact that she was reading was not a surprise but the acceptance of the RocketBook was interesting. I think the response of this demographic group may be more predictive of the success of eBooks.
If her reading assignments for next year are available as ebooks I will buy them and let her take the RocketBook to school this year. The ability to search, underline, bookmark, and annotate text will help get those papers written. I would love it if her high school would go "all eBook". That backpack filled with 25+ pounds of forest product is getting to be literally a pain. If I hear of generalized adoption, officially or not, among her crowd, I will take that as a good sign. But who knows?
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"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular"
--David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s. |
