Kindle found to be worse than paper textbooks

41–42 of 42 posts

Re: Kindle found to be worse than paper textbooks

#41

Post by hugh3 » Sun, Sep 19, 2010, 1:54 AM UTC

nooneelse wrote: post #21

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…

About page size... I wondered when the iPad first came out about the screen size vs paper textbooks. I thought it would be too small given my memories of carrying all those big, painfully heavy books around. But I wanted to check my intuitions against some facts. And I happily remembered that I have an old _An Introductory Course in College Physics_ from 1958 on the shelf. The pages from 1958 measure 5 1/4" by 8 1/4"…

You're right, there's no need for undergraduate textbooks to be nearly as big and as heavy as they are -- they merely got that way in order to justify their enormous pricetags. With a book like Tipler I'm pretty sure the material could be rewritten in a book half the size.

Physics textbooks rapidly get smaller and lighter the more advanced the material gets, though.

Re: Kindle found to be worse than paper textbooks

#42

Post by sprout » Sun, Sep 19, 2010, 7:57 AM UTC

forgottenpaswrd wrote: post #33

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,…

You're presuming a specific text-to-screen width ratio. I tend to favor reading at very high font size on the 7" netbook I'm presently using.

Also, my finger/hand/arm never gets in the way while scrolling.

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