story about ereaders was in times or huff post tech section sometime over the past 7 days wherein the author argued the ereaders are a bomb point....NOT ME lol Im the complete opposite to you though......I dont get ereaders when you can have an ipad for a *few* bucks more, but thats a personal thing. I think though that for barnes and nobles and borders their readers were a big disappointment to the balance sheet
clive
It really is a ymmv thing for sure - and I do get that. Don't get me wrong, I think tablets are quite the cool item -- but the only people I really see drooling over them are iTouch owners who are disenchanted with screen size and resolution.
As cool as the iPad is -- the size is too large for my liking. The Playbook is a great size, but why spend $600 or more for a device that I probably would never use?
As an aside, good friend of mine gave an iPad to his wife for Christmas last December. She loves it -- but has never had a laptop - so it works as a way for her to tether to the internet and do web-stuff beyond email. While she adores it, the screen is always so doggone filthy with fingerprints all over it that sometimes you can't see clearly through the smudges. The next technology needs to be a screen surface that resists fingerprints.
Let's not forget Sony has already done this, although at a higher price. The only thing is fingerprints. I can handle fingerprints on my iPad/iPhone but on my e-reader dust and fingerprints are very distracting, probably because of the non-backlit e-ink. Sony does use a stylus, but it is annoying to get out all the time. To turn pages I still prefer a button of some sort, which I think this new Kobo does have.
fallingwickets wrote:I dont get ereaders when you can have an ipad for a *few* bucks more...
I have both. The iPad is a great portable computer, but it's a lousy e-reader. The Kindle is a great e-reader, but it's a lousy portable computer. I don't see them as competitive devices in any way. For what it's worth, if I had to choose between them, I'd choose the Kindle. The iPad's cool, but I do more reading than all that other stuff. And I used to be an e-reader sceptic, who thought the iPad would wipe them all out.
Interesting how everyone is locking into the cloud thing. Apple will reportedly be releasing a version of iTunes along with the iPhone 5 which will feature "cloud" storage.
So here is some inside skinny on this cloud thing. In IBM (where we coined the cloud concept) we used to sell this concept as "shared hosting services" where a bunch of clients shared the same environment including hardware, middleware, etc. It was able to save large organizations significant amounts of IT spend by outsourcing the service. No doubt a ton of advances have been made over the past decade or so, but believe me, this cloud thing is not like it's a new-wave idea -- it's been around for quite some time now - it's just finally getting some airtime as it's seen partly as more secure and safe, and partly as more green. Interesting how perception can make or break an idea.
funkthulhu wrote:...
I must say, I am really impressed with the e-ink screen. It is very, very easy on the eyes and the format promotes rapid reading.
Which is the main reason I prefer my Kobo to reading on a LCD based device. The new pearl e-ink gives the e-printed word even more flexibility and better quality for an e-reading public.
jww wrote:...it's just finally getting some airtime as it's seen partly as more secure and safe...
Wendell, I don't understand. Why is letting someone else, like Amazon, store your data considered more safe and secure than doing it yourself?
For example, if all your music is stored "in the cloud" it is much safer there (at say Google, or Apple servers with all kinds of backup and redundancies built in) than in your home or stored on a mobile device that could be lost, stolen, or in the case of your house, broken into or burned down. Also, when you get a new computer, laptop, mobile device, you wouldn't need to transfer your music, books, etc., etc., over to it as it is all stored remotely and can be accessed from anywhere. Think Gmail, having access to your email everywhere and anywhere there is a computer. In the case of books, if you upgrade your e-reader, all the books you purchased in the past will be available on that reader once you enter your account info. Also, your data will be available across multiple devices (did I mention that already?).
jww wrote:Interesting how everyone is locking into the cloud thing. Apple will reportedly be releasing a version of iTunes along with the iPhone 5 which will feature "cloud" storage. So here is some inside skinny on this cloud thing. In IBM (where we coined the cloud concept) we used to sell this concept as "shared hosting services" where a bunch of clients shared the same environment including hardware, middleware, etc. It was able to save large organizations significant amounts of IT spend by outsourcing the service. No doubt a ton of advances have been made over the past decade or so, but believe me, this cloud thing is not like it's a new-wave idea -- it's been around for quite some time now - it's just finally getting some airtime as it's seen partly as more secure and safe, and partly as more green. Interesting how perception can make or break an idea.
It's fast data connections - fixed-line and mobile - that have made cloud computing a reality.
GA Russell wrote:Richard, I guess the premise is that Amazon has more redundancies than the individual has. Right?
Yes. Right now I'm nervous about having my "digital family photo/video album" stored at our home, if we had a fire or a theft I would lose it all. I have made a backup on a portable harddrive and taken that to work but I don't update it often enough. Problem is the photo library with videos is 250+GB much to large to upload to some sort of backup server using my home connection, but not too large to be backed up, or stored "in the cloud" in small chunks, say every time I download pictures from the camera. My MacBook pro and Mac Mini do something similar using Apple's Time Machine/Time Capsule right now. Everytime something changes on the disk it uploads those changes to a backup file stored on a hard drive in the Time Capsule in the background when the computer is running. I'm sure Apple's upcoming iCloud service will address this, but I imagine having that much online storage will cost $$.
Personal cloud storage services is just the tip of the iceberg. You guys oughtta see what we (IBM) are doing with Watson, health care, and a ton of data centres around the globe. It's unreal.
This cloud thing is finally prime-time -- and Sam Palmisano sounds so smart when he talks about it -- not sure he gets it entirely himself, but he sure can sell it.
Storing my ebooks in a cloud does interest me indeed. I don't expext that will be a reality until another iteration with the Kobo.
