I
really love to read books. Since I was a kid I have read plenty of them and by
now this is my best way to chill out and to relax.
The world is changing and brand new technologies are more and more
popular. That’s why I want to talk a little about e-readers and electronic
books called e-books.
http://data1.whicdn.com/images/133696541/large.jpg
I
know many people who are confused when they hear about reading e-books instead
of real, paper books. A funny fact is that at
first I had exactly the same opinion about e-books - I love the smell of paper, I like to hold a book in my hand
etc. But once I saw my friend’s kindle I totally fell in love with this device
:) And not only me - also my mom has one and totally loves it!
First
of all it is EXTREMELY handy and comfortable to use. I have always read books
that are rather thick - I mean more than 500 pages and because of it they are
simply heavy (especially when your favourite position to read is lying and
keeping a book up above your head :D ). And here comes the kindle that helps
you with changing the heavy book into a small-sized piece of plastic, or even
with the luggage exceed - I love reading in summer on the beach, but books
always took a third of my suitcase.
As for the layout, I would say there is almost no difference between a printed-paper page, and the kindle screen, because of e-ink
technology. As long as it resembles a printed page
perfectly, it is a way easier for your eyes as it doesn’t emit any light unlike back-lit tablets that shine in your eyes.
The
other advantage is lower power consumption - it is enough to charge e-reader’s
battery once a month.
The
other advantage that e-books give us is a very simple access to foreign books.
On Amazon you can buy a book in a second, and it is delivered to your e-reader
on-the-go. And it is cheaper – than in Empik or shipping it to Poland from another country.
It
is also super-easy to read a foreign language
book on kindle. It has built in dictionary, and you can check the word
immediately (in english-polish dictionary, or english-english - it is up to
you). In “kindle paperwhite” there is even an option called “vocabulary
builder” that automatically saves the words you have checked and creates a list
of words with a sentence from the book (you have a context, what is really
helpful learning tool).
It
is also a cool solution for emigrants. When you
live in another country, and the Polish Internet is not enough, it is so good to have
a possibility of getting a Polish book just
in a few minutes.
In
my opinion there might be also a few
disadvantages of reading e-books.
First
of all, I am attached to the beautiful, well printed and designed books. On a
kindle everything looks quite the same (by now, maybe it would change in the
future). But it might be an advantage in some
cases – it has solved my problem with ugly books :) I have always had a problem
that books I like to read are extremely awfully published - the paper, the
design, the readability is just horror.
That’s why kindle helped me with this nightmare. But I have to admit, when I
find a beautiful - and well designed printed book, I would buy it to have more pleasure from it.
The
other disadvantage could be us surrounding ourselves by millions of electronic
devices. I don’t know if it’s good, bad or neutral, but it’s always a subject
of discussions.
The
situation is quite similar when it comes to magazines. Electronic versions of
magazines are getting more and more popular. They are often even more engaging
than paper ones, as long a you can watch an extra video, click on the link
written down. These magazines are also super interactive, it is not only a pdf,
an exact reflection of paper version, but something prepared and designed especially
for a platform it’s been put on.
Here you can find some inspirations about ipad magazine
design.
It
is really hard to find any video that would show how useful it could be, but
here is a small introduction to how it might
look.
In
my opinion the best way of trying if you like it is downloading the app and
checking by yourself what
it looks like. There are some free trials that are worth seeing. If you want to
buy any of your favourite magazines, be careful. It is better to check before
buying what kind of e-magazine is your fav publisher, because not all magazines
are “interactive” and sometimes you can hit the paper-pdf-reflection one, that
is not as good as it could be.
Comments
E-ink receives lots of recognition for its efficiency and being good for reading.. For me, however, the biggest negative is that it's basically only for reading, and it's a separate device to carry. That is why I prefer to read on a tablet/PC. I am not bothered by backlight, and the messy fonts are solved by high DPI displays that are kicking in now.. with 2K on a phone/tablet, there is no way to find fonts seem to look wrong.
Which Kindle do you recommend? I think I want one for Christmas :) I have checked that there are few of them and I do not know which one I should choose.
I agree with you, I cannot imagine studying or learning anything from e-book. And I mean kindle/tablet/pc, I need to have it on paper, to do some notes and highlight important things. But there is an option to highlight phrases on kindle, and it saves them on the special "highlight list". So you won't miss a sentence you have highlighted :) I guess it might work with non educational books, when you find something interesting you can somehow "save" it :)
If you are not convinced I can bring my kindle to the uni one day so you can check it out :) I personally have kindle 4 (I have bought it 3 years ago) that is no longer in amazon store, I have just checked and it's gone :)
http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/kindle/dp/2012/KS/technical-teq._V399250964_.jpg
I have chosen it because it was the cheapest one and I was not really convinced if I am going to use it. And I really liked that it doesn't have "touch system" :P But it is harder to check words on it, because you have to use controllers and there are no "extra features" like vocabulary builder :( [but on the iphone app that the device synchronises with, it works perfectly ;D ]
I don't know much about kindle voyage because it just has been released, but a main difference between kindle [classic] and paperwhite is the light :) The paperwhite has a light system that lights on the screen (not in your eyes) - what's really cool, and it's faster than the older one (classic) and in my opinion the price is good in comparison to it's quality ;) So if I were you I will definitely buy kindle paperwhite, because my brother has it and I really like it :) According to feature of having wi-fi or wi-fi+3g -> in my opinion wi-fi is enough :)
And Amazon UK has free delivery to Poland :)
Yes, that would be awesome if you could bring it to the Uni but let’s talk about it in private :).
When I read I like to hold real paper i my hands. I like its texture, smell of ink, shiny cover, that I can flip pages and it's not an electronic device. If I have a choice I always choose an old style magazine.
Some resources say that it is easier to remember facts when you learn from a real book.
And have you tried to read a book / a magazine from the cover to cover? Or you didn't give it a try?
But I'm still not into it. I prefer to read normal printed books. I love quality paper. nice covers. The experience of reading has such much more value for me. All day long I'm surrounded by devices. Computer, smartphone, tablet, telly. When I want to chillout I want to be somehow devicefree. I don't want to be bothered to remember to charge yet another device even though it's only once a month or something like that. At some point I get fed up with electronics devices and I don't want to use them...I usually read books at home so it doesn't matter for me if I have the content synchronised. But I can appreciate the idea, I use it when I revise foreign words:) I am better with electronics magazines. I think that they can be simply better than printed ones regards both content and layouts. And I get new articles much more frequently. I loved the link you gave us "51 Beautiful and Interactive Examples of Digital Magazine Design". I looked up all of them. What was your favourite one? When you are at home you still use your kindle or printed book?
You asked which one do I like the most - it is hard to say :) Because design is one think and readability and coherent layout sometimes can't go together :) And I haven't seen those examples "live" so I am not really sure, most of them are really nice looking :) And what about you? Which one did you like the most?
But I understand that you prefer printed books :) I am also not against them, I really appreciate good ones on paper :)
I agree it's hard to decide on one...I like GQ layout.
I like to read that magazine:
http://www.net-a-porter.com/magazine/274/archive
And in 1 week i've red like 2 books and half. That thing was great, i could just lay down and do not care about light changing. The battery of that things was alright, all features like built in dictionary is just swell, only things that was annoying is response time. Because i am a bit used to faster processing speed on phones and tablets, ebooks are slow so i click to much and sometimes skip a chapter or change a book.
I have thousand of pages in small and light tablet. Books, they look good on the shelf, I cant imagine this day to walk with a heavy bag.
Easy access to many publications, exceeds any advantage of books.
I read some e-magazine, and interaction is one of coolest feature that i love it.
As for learning from real book, I think that it is partially true. Basically, I have noticed that reading any paper book about programming made me remember more information or it lasted for longer.
Nowadays, I can make transaction whenever I want and download book to my device a few minutes after payment. This is really amazing. I totally rely on e-books and buy traditional publications only when I see some beautifully designed publication of my favourite writers.
And what do you mean by saying that it's more profitable for authors? Never have though of it actually... I'm not sure if I understood it correctly but is it connected to publisher? Can an author publish a book without anybody's help? What about quality then? Damn, I am not really into this stuff, magic to me :D Can you explain it more precisely? :)
Of course, I read many articles in the internet, but I really love to take paper version of magazine or books, to take a cup of coffe or cocoa and read, read, read. It’s the best time for me. Unfortunatelly I haven’t enough time to read as often as I want.
Comfort of reading is another advantage of ebooks - e-readers are handy and you can use them anywhere.
As for disadvanteges, some people just prefer too read paperbooks, because they find this form more attractive. I'm not one of them, but I understand the point. Also, there was some interesting research which seems to prove, that when you read traditional-paper-book you remember more information (http://lifehacker.com/5898644/read-a-physical-book-when-you-really-need-to-remember-something).
I also own a tablet and I download some magazines on it.
It is cheaper than buying regular magazines, very handy to carry around, it makes the magazines very accessible, you can check everything on the Internet and you don't collect paper stuff that is hard to throw away (who on earth would easily get rid of some beautiful magazines like Kukbuk?!).
As you see, I cannot find any disadvantages of Kindle nor tablet magazines. I use this technology all the time and I am VERY happy it exists.