{"id":230,"date":"2007-12-02T13:33:45","date_gmt":"2007-12-02T11:33:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/?p=230"},"modified":"2007-12-02T13:33:45","modified_gmt":"2007-12-02T11:33:45","slug":"ebooks-revisited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/ebooks-revisited\/","title":{"rendered":"Ebooks Revisited"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"kindle.jpg\"Nearly four years ago, after weeks of experimenting reading electronic books on my Palm handheld computer, I wrote a short essay here called “Hooked on Ebooks<\/a>“. I thought that the electronic book as displayed on a small handheld device was an idea whose time had come. I was wrong. Or rather, I was ahead of my time.<\/p>\n


\nLast week’s edition of Newsweek had a cover story<\/a> with a photo of Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, clutching his company’s brand-new Kindle device (pictured, left). The cover story went over much old ground — like how amazing it would be to have a device that could bring you any book you want within a minute, or that could carry a whole bag full of books (for a long trip) in a single, tiny device.
\nOf course, all this was true in early 2004 as well. The big difference is that the Kindle will have a much bigger, better and clearer screen<\/a>.
\nBut the basic idea — tiny handheld device, easy-to-download books whenever you want, carries loads of books — hasn’t changed.
\nAnd so far, the new products aren’t blowing me away.
\nThe Kindle only works in America. So does the Sony Reader<\/a>.
\n And the one device they seem to be selling over here in the UK is the iLiad (pictured, right) — and it costs a staggering \u00a3433 — that’s $870 to you over there in the US.
\nAmazon’s product costs its US consumers “only” $400 — less than half of an iLiad — but still a whopping sum. The cheapest of the three is the Sony Reader, now going for $280.
\nMeanwhile, I continue to read my ebooks on my trusty, still-functioning Palm Tungsten C. And you can pick up one of these on eBay for less than $100<\/a>.
\nI’ve bought books from two online shops in the last few days — one of which<\/a> is charging a whopping $20 to download the latest blockbuster from James Patterson. The other<\/a> — which I stumbled on via Google — is charging only $10, for the same book. There may be better bargains elsewhere.
\nI’ve read two ebooks this weekend already — and I remain hooked on them. But I won’t pay $870 to buy an ebook reader, thank you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nearly four years ago, after weeks of experimenting reading electronic books on my Palm handheld computer, I wrote a short essay here called “Hooked on Ebooks“. I thought that the electronic book as displayed on…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-web-exclusive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}