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Kindle found to be worse than paper textbooks

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Re: Kindle found to be worse than paper textbooks

#31

Post by ezy »

confusedcitizen wrote: post #19

Maybe I'm being a prude, or maybe it's just inertia, but does everyone have an easy time replacing a textbook with an electronic device? An argument can probably be made about how ever-advancing technology might make note-taking (and the like) easier, but I often have a hard time detaching myself from the (very) personal experience a book ends up being. I don't just mean the contents of it, but also the feel of havin…

My feeling is that, if I could have an electronic version that you could mark up appropriately -- I would start to get the same feeling about the personalized electronic copy as well.

However, there is one huge problem with textbooks on things like an iPad, that I've already run into in other contexts, and it has nothing to do with feel, or annotation (which still sucks on an ipad): You can't have more than one book open at one time. Not multitasking in the ipad sense, but literally, two ipads. Can't do it unless you spend another $600.

My feeling is that these device are the future, but two(three) things need to happen -- you need to be able to write/draw on these just as well as you can on paper (or close to it). And they need to be dirt cheap enough that everyone has three of them handy (and can have them communicate seamlessly).

Re: Kindle found to be worse than paper textbooks

#32

Post by forgottenpaswrd »

markbao wrote: post #10
gamble wrote: post #8

The academic publishers are in for a swift attitude adjustment when the average student realizes that scanned copies of almost any undergrad textbook can be found online. It seems strange to me that so many 18-22 y/o's won't pay $0.99 for a song, yet they're still paying $200 for a textbook.

I wouldn't say so. Pirating textbooks is much harder than pirating music. The entry point is $0.99 for pirating music; it is $150+ plus scanning (or somehow obtaining a PDF version of the textbook) for textbooks.

I would say the entry point is less than 100$(nikon coolpix) plus making photographs. Scanning takes so much time. Good ones uses 600$ canon or nikon(you can share use a friend digital camera)

Today people can share(or rent) relatively expensive scanners(1000$) with ultrafast feeders(any book in less than a minute) it they don't care about destroying the original book(just "guillotine them"). I had so many books that I did it with hundreds of them, my entire collection will be digital some day.

It hurt the first time I did it, but there are so many advantages(you can move with all your books, no weight, search funtion, indexing, digital notes)

Re: Kindle found to be worse than paper textbooks

#33

Post by forgottenpaswrd »

sprout wrote: post #18

Media, be they iPads or Kindles or paper, are not nearly so important as content. For the average student, I doubt that either the Kindle or the iPad can add any content that will offset the cost of the device. The cash-strapped college student would be best served by a cheap netbook, or if the student insists on a variety of media appliances, perhaps a laptop with a large screen. That should be adequate for any sort…

"The cash-strapped college student would be best served by a cheap netbook, or if the student insists on a variety of media appliances, perhaps a laptop with a large screen. That should be adequate for any sort of interactive content, and a plethora of free content."

This student will be best server for a cheap tablet, not laptop or netbook. You need "portrait mode", instead of panoramic to really read fast and well, there is some reasons for that(), but laptops need to be only panoramic because of the keyboard.

It is not a coincidence that all document papers are portrait, and xerox Palo Alto graphical UI computer was portrait. Computers are panoramic because at first they used commercial TVs(Steve Wozniak monitor) because it was already mass produced and cheap.

()with columns like in a newspaper you are able to read "between lines" because you eye see in a circle area. You don't need to move left and right, just down. Your eye doesn't need to adapt to different level of dept, and some more.

Re: Kindle found to be worse than paper textbooks

#34

Post by sukuriant »

ja27 wrote: post #25
hugh3 wrote: post #7

I use a nook for reading novels, but can't imagine using it for a textbook. Apart from the fact the page is too small, it just takes too long to flip back and forth looking for something, and that's the primary mode in which people use textbooks. Besides, I still have my undergraduate textbooks from ten years ago on my shelf and occasionally look something up. If they'd been in an electronic format I'm sure it would…

A Kindle (or other similar e-ink device) would be great for textbooks that you didn't jump around in, like literature or history. But even jumping between reading and exercises is a chore. Typing notes is horrible on the Kindle's keyboard. But I could see a future where a student carried perhaps two 8"x10" e-ink displays in a package no bigger than a composition notebook. They could have two different page views of t…

The main reason I completely turned down the kindle was the note-taking method. It's poor, in my personal and arrogant opinion. When I'm writing notes in books, it's just that, writing them. I want to use my hand to carve out words in a way that's not as impersonal as typing a text.

For that reason, I'm looking into the new Sony eReaders[1], specifically the 650, because they have a touch-screen that you can write on and not-too-bad note-taking capabilities. For the price, I think they're going to be the best of the eReaders for higher education, if people can just find them.

[1] http://tinyurl.com/2usvro8

Re: Kindle found to be worse than paper textbooks

#35

Post by gcheong »

forgottenpaswrd wrote: post #32
markbao wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say so. Pirating textbooks is much harder than pirating music. The entry point is $0.99 for pirating music; it is $150+ plus scanning (or somehow obtaining a PDF version of the textbook) for textbooks.

I would say the entry point is less than 100$(nikon coolpix) plus making photographs. Scanning takes so much time. Good ones uses 600$ canon or nikon(you can share use a friend digital camera) Today people can share(or rent) relatively expensive scanners(1000$) with ultrafast feeders(any book in less than a minute) it they don't care about destroying the original book(just "guillotine them"). I had so many books that…

A friend of mine in Japan had 50 books scanned to OCR'd pdf for him by a scanning service (scanning was desctructive). Took 2 weeks and cost 200yen/book.

Re: Kindle found to be worse than paper textbooks

#36

Post by imd »

gamble wrote: post #13
markbao wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say so. Pirating textbooks is much harder than pirating music. The entry point is $0.99 for pirating music; it is $150+ plus scanning (or somehow obtaining a PDF version of the textbook) for textbooks.

In my experience, every textbook an undergrad is likely to use is already available on a file sharing site or torrent.

Undergrad here; not true. I'm currently building a scanner because I hate carrying my textbooks around campus, and any one book is heavier than my laptop. I did search for pre-existing scans, but most of them don't exist. By the way, scanning is only $150+ if you count the cost of a camera. If you already have one for other reasons, or can borrow one, you can make legible copies for free, or spend a little to make a platen and fixed camera mount for better copies in less time.

Re: Kindle found to be worse than paper textbooks

#37

Post by markbao »

gamble wrote: post #13
markbao wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say so. Pirating textbooks is much harder than pirating music. The entry point is $0.99 for pirating music; it is $150+ plus scanning (or somehow obtaining a PDF version of the textbook) for textbooks.

In my experience, every textbook an undergrad is likely to use is already available on a file sharing site or torrent.

In mine, it's not. 80% of the current textbooks I'm using (freshman textbooks, at that) are unavailable on any filesharing site.

Re: Kindle found to be worse than paper textbooks

#38

Post by forgottenpaswrd »

confusedcitizen wrote: post #19

Maybe I'm being a prude, or maybe it's just inertia, but does everyone have an easy time replacing a textbook with an electronic device? An argument can probably be made about how ever-advancing technology might make note-taking (and the like) easier, but I often have a hard time detaching myself from the (very) personal experience a book ends up being. I don't just mean the contents of it, but also the feel of havin…

People have associations and feelings about the things they used in their lifes. That's human, we don't know it and like to feel that we are "rational"(witch we are too but in a higher level layer) but we associate the same Paulov dogs did.

I loved so much fried chicken I got a so badly indigestion that I don't like it anymore(my mind associated it with bad feelings, so much pain)

My grandpa gave me a book before dying, and that made that book (and to a lesser extent all books)special. My first girlfriend send me notes on a book. My family read a lot of books. I learn a lot from books, enjoyed some books a lot, and in general had good experiences with them.

But young people will have good experiences with ebooks-tablets as good as we had with books. Maybe their first girlfriends will send then furtive IM messages they will later remember later in life, whatever. They won't understand how we can use those old and stupid things that can't display movies or read text.

They will have children with different devices and we will die and nobody will use books anymore.

Re: Kindle found to be worse than paper textbooks

#39

Post by gamble »

markbao wrote: post #37
gamble wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, every textbook an undergrad is likely to use is already available on a file sharing site or torrent.

In mine, it's not. 80% of the current textbooks I'm using (freshman textbooks, at that) are unavailable on any filesharing site.

I'm speaking anecdotally, of course. I've had pretty good luck finding scanned versions of my engineering textbooks, to put onto my iPad. There's only been a couple of obscure or OOP books that haven't been available. It does take some digging, of course. The initial sites were quite open about it, but the publishers have driven it underground onto private sites.

Re: Kindle found to be worse than paper textbooks

#40

Post by electromagnetic »

Loic wrote: post #2

Very short summary: - with the iPad you can do interactive books which are basically the new "interactive CDROM" you had some years ago. - with the Kindle you cannot easily flip through the pages and write notes on them, this is why it does not improve the traditional textbook. Nothing new, you know that after 15 minutes using the devices. But I must say, to read novels, news and stuff like that, you cannot really be…

I'm looking into getting a Kindle and I knew all you said before I've even picked one up. Perhaps it's only amongst us HNers, but this was a given fact for me before ever taking hold of the device.
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