I promised to write a few words about digital books today, so here they are.
Digital books are here to stay, whether we like it or not. It's clearly the way things are going in the publishing industry. I don't see digital books taking the place of the printed word any time soon, but the digital reader technology is improving. If you haven't already looked into it, you should. I noticed what looks like a pretty nice reader on www.sony.com/reader. It's "feature rich" -- but I can buy a whole lot of mass-market paperbacks for $299! Of course, a paperback doesn't look as cool as reader, but then again I'm not really very interested in looking cool.
I travel quite a bit and one thing that, for me at least, is a major drawback to using a digital reader is the "10 minute" rule on aircraft; having to switch off anything that runs on batteries during the first and last ten minutes of a flight. That's a lot of reading time even if you're on a direct flight. The cost of the reader is also hard to swallow especially as it's the kind of thing that could get popped into the seat-back pocket and forgotten in the rush to deplane (I lost a pair of Bose QC headphones that way -- ouch!) I won't be buying one any time soon, but I'm keeping any eye things. And one thing is certain, there are tens of thousands of titles out there. The revolution is here to stay.
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