Ebooks - caveat emptor

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Colin_Fraser

PlanetFigure Supporter
Joined
Feb 1, 2004
Messages
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I have been skeptical about ebooks since their inception and now I know why. I bought my wife a Sony eReader a couple of Christmas' ago and she has enjoyed it. This spring, Sony bailed on their business, selling their eReader store to Toronto-based Kobo and promising a seamless customer experience. I tried to use their link to move my wife's purchased book library of 250 books to Kobo. Guess what....50 (including a disproportionate number of pricey ones) did not transfer because Kobo does not offer them in their catalogue. So when her eReader dies, so do her rights to the view the books. We have 3 other kobo readers in the house. Guess how many books I will be buying for them going forward? Ereaders are great for free books but if you want a book to be available for a long time, buy paper. Otherwise you are at the mercy of company decisions on staying in a particular business and on maintaining their catalogues. You don't own the book...you are just renting it and the lessor can pull it with no recourse.

Venting complete.

Colin
 
I have tried ebooks, magazines etc and I can't say I am a big fan of the media. I have no problem with technology in general but give me good old paper any day. I just find there is something claustrophobic for me in trying to read or view material.
 
I enjoy both, my Kindle has been very handy but you can't beat a book for reference etc
Steve
 
I remember when Random House bailed on hardcopy technology--oh, wait! That never happened! Yeah, I prefer the real thing. I never dropped a book and had it stop working, for example.

Prost!
Brad
 
Interesting information, Colin. It confirmes my doubts about that stuff. I avoided them so far - the regular long term power cuts in missions abroad made my real books extremely useful... nonetheless sorry to hear about your problem.
Cheers, Martin
 
It's actually not a big deal as the $ loss is only about $100. But it serves as a bit of a warning about "improved" ways of doing things.

Colin
 
I myself am a fan of the old paper technology... there's just something about a real book... it's a tactile thing I guess. The older the book the better. Even trying to read a large article on the computer, I am inclined to print it out.
Mind you... I would have rather the police of my youth had an E-version of the telephone book... it might have made our little "chats" less painfull :blackeye::dead:;)

Colin
 
Don't get it
When you buy an ebook, the copy is downloaded on your machine; it's alway save to download the copy on the external memory
And you can buy and download from every publisher, your download is yours . Don't tell me that when you buy a book " paper" , you leave it at the shop untill you feel
the time is ripe to read it .
I have 1000 of books on paper and 1000 in digital form, lot of those ( digital) are completely free( the classics )
 
Don't get it
When you buy an ebook, the copy is downloaded on your machine; it's alway save to download the copy on the external memory
And you can buy and download from every publisher, your download is yours . Don't tell me that when you buy a book " paper" , you leave it at the shop untill you feel
the time is ripe to read it .
I have 1000 of books on paper and 1000 in digital form, lot of those ( digital) are completely free( the classics )

Good as long as the proprietary reader technology is supported. They aren't PDFs that you can save across machines as back-up, quite sensibly to avoid piracy. Sony will no longer support it's reader technology.

Colin
 
I'm a voracious consumer of books in all forms, hard copy, ebooks and recordings.
Hard copy is certainly the best for reference but I really find the convenience of the ebooks hard to beat.
Having tried a few e-readers / tablets I've settled on the Kindle Fire, conveniently small and a sensible price, fits into jacket pocket. Decent sized screen with good images, email and web. At the 'Barras' weekend market in Glasgow there's an 'independent trader' who sells CD's with 000,s of ebooks on them including whole collections. A good few hundred on each disc. These can be copied over onto your reader.........not that I'm condoning such rascally practice.
 
The eBook is a great addition to the way we can access the written word.

Digital Rights Management or drm is another story! Based around the control of video and audio Copywrite it's rapidly becoming a major issue for users!

Paper books can be lent, and resold! Drm crippled ebooks are good for one user or in your case one machine!

Unfortunately this encourages piracy as most people don't want to pay twice for the same item.

:-\
 
I thought long and hard before purchasing a kindle a few years back, but extremely pleased I did.
Great to read on the train to and from work, perfect for holidays, and I'm reading more.

Malc
 
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