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E-books, those flat electronic tablets designed for reading downloadable, software-based books, are often packed with advanced displays and other leading-edge technology.
Wikipedia "e-book" Entry wrote:
An e-book (also: eBook, ebook), sometimes called an electronic book, is an electronic (or digital) equivalent of a conventional printed book. The term has occasionally been used ambiguously to refer to either an individual work in a digital format, or a hardware device used to read books in digital format, more specifically called an e-book device or e-book reader. E-books are an emerging and rapidly changing technology, that can branch to include other formats, such as online magazines, such as the Grantville Gazette, published by Baen's Books, or digital books designed to be listened to as audio books.
Every time a new e-book comes out, a ripple of chatter spreads through the gadget enthusiast community. Technology news sites cover such product and research announcements like major news, similar to the announcement of a new iPod or smart phone. Engadget and Gizmodo blog them without fail. Even The New York Times tech columnist David Pogue and The Wall Street Journal tech columnist Walt Mossberg have taken the time to test and review e-books.
Companies like Sony, Panasonic, Hitachi and Fujitsu have devoted millions of dollars over the past couple of decades developing what they hope will be a device that replaces the paper book -- the first disruptive shift in the way people read books since the Gutenberg Bible in the 15th century.
Here's a lineup of the major e-books on the market (or almost on the market):
Sony Reader
eRead StarEBook
Jinke Electronics HanLin eBook
iRex iLiad
Panasonic Words Gear
Bookeen Cybook
Hitachi Albirey
Fujitsu Flepia
ComputerWorld.com wrote:
There are many subtle, minor disadvantages to e-books. For example, they're expensive. The hardware costs hundreds of dollars. Worse, books tend not to be hugely discounted in electronic form. The paperback version of "The Google Story: Inside the Hottest Business, Media, and Technology Success of Our Time," by David A. Vise and Mark Malseed, costs $11.20 on Amazon.com. The same book in electronic format on eBooks.com costs $9.95. You save $1.25. The reason is that the value of a book lies mostly in the intellectual property, not the wood pulp that constitutes the physical book. So e-books aren't cheaper.
They believed, and they were right, that technology would make all these things possible. But few stopped to think: Do people really want to eat sawdust? Do people want radioactive fallout after every minor car accident? Do people want to sit on plastic furniture?
Likewise, do people want to "curl up" with a battery-operated plastic screen?
The obvious answer is no.
And that's the simple reason why e-books will never even come close to replacing paper books.
Ah... and have you ever used an eBook? Do you even know what one is? I've never used one in all honesty.
I once used the Sony product at a Barnes & Noble book shop and I though the screen was very nice to look at but the subject of the demo book did not grab at me.
With all due respect, I don't think e-books are bound to fail. More and more people are using them as the time goes by. And, one good thing with e-books is: you don't have to worry about your friends borrowing them and not returning them back to you because you can give them copies instead.
Last edited by turbino on Sat Jul 14, 2007 8:17 pm; edited 2 times in total
The biggest way the e-book will fail will be if companies can't integrate it into PC's -- and if companies can figure out a way to make it long-term readable.
The e-book concept could be... ridiculous, and then perfectly normal at the same time. There's no need for these new devices to come out, just for books, when we already have outstanding market dissipation with another device that can already do it -- the PC. The only thing that you really need is a legible, eye-friendly color combination and lighting arrangement, and support for "audio books."
E-books are just a natural part of media evolution -- but there'll be nothing to replace paper books, I think. And that's a good thing. There's nothing quite like book shops and libraries -- and they can live in peace with computers.
Also
The failure of ebooks in the marketplace is the result of a poor analysis of the context that has resulted in a poor product being offered. ...
goliath.ecnext.com
goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-6310387/ Ebooks-read-em-and-weep.html
Book publishers, scared of the ease of cut, paste, send, demanded it. Understandable. But few customers wanted locked-down devices, or bizarre file formats that offered nothing over plain text, Word documents or Adobe's PDF. Here's reader Geof Glass, whose initial enthusiasm, about a service that "sold" out-of-print books, evaporated when he found out the conditions:
Quote:
"Like Windows XP, these books are activated and tied to a computer. You can activate a book on up to 6 machines, but after that you have to plead your case with Adobe if you want to read a book anywhere else. ... If ebooks are to succeed, they must be lasting and useful to those who buy them. Books with DRM are not."
Ebook user Daniel P. Smith reported at length the disaster that befell him when his e-book reader met its maker.
Quote:
"A month ago, my eBook device suddenly said something about file corruption and stopped working. I pushed the "reset" key, reinstalled the firmware updates, and reinstalled my books and everything seems fine, but I can see the handwriting on the wall. If this device ever fails, I believe that the chances of getting access to the $500-odd worth of books I've bought for it--at the same prices as dead-tree versions--are essentially zilch, as they're keyed to the hardware serial number of the device."
The company that sold him the e-books simply went out of business. Dead e-book systems burning down with your entire library locked inside? Do Not Want.
The digital millenium copyright act (DMCA) prohibits circumventing copy protection, even if the material so protected is public domain or otherwise free. It's potentially illegal to copy the DRM'd text of the King James Bible, Macbeth, or the Declaration of Independence, for example, if doing so requires you to crack that DRM. And sometimes, the intricacy of that DRM is startling.
Microsoft's system, for example, had a 5-level hierarchy of DRM systems, which resembled an intensity scale for natural disasters or the diagnostic criteria for degrees of mental illness. Their related patents make ex cathedra moral pronouncements, implying that e-book DRM is necessary to protect the existence of literature and describing the copying of text as "stealing."
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I've never used one in all honesty.
