[oneofus]

I've become very interested in ebooks recently ever since iBooks came out for the iPhone and I upgraded to the iPhone4 with the brilliant new retina display (which in short makes reading smaller text much easier and enjoyable). I'm itching to write a guide on ebooks for the site and would love to hear from anyone who's addicted to them and reads them regularly.

[geordie_online]

I am a technophile and I love the world of gadgets, however, also being a book lover made me very sceptical of e-books. I would not have an issue about publishing my own material as an ebook, but hypocritically, the idea of downloading a book to a mobile device for myself did not appeal. A paper back is pretty portable in its own right. The ability to have my current reading material on a portable device that I could always carry about was outweighed by the inability to clearly read the text on the screen and the eye-straining glare.

My outlook has changed a little after I had a chance to play with an e-reader at a recent staff development event. I was facilitating a session on portable technology in learning and managed to borrow a box of equipment from another college. In the box was a BeBook e-reader. I was amazed at the clarity and softness of the text, and the ability store so many books. It was a little slow to react to 'page turns' as the electronic ink rearranged itself, but I may have been sold on the concept of this type of device. I will need to read up on the devices available, but I do feel it may be added to my Christmas list and I will start downloading ebooks.

As for ebooks on Mobile phones - the screen size of my Blackberry does not lend itself to reading novels, but works brilliantly for short stories, such as those offered by Flashfictiononline.com

It would be great to here what others think about ebooks.

[oneofus]

I tried out a Sony Ereader in the Sony store a few months back and found it to be a horrible experience. The e-ink technology, whilst great for eye-strain and battery power, just looked like 15-year-old technology. The Apple iPad has a much better user experience yet does suffer from having a backlit screen which can induce eye-strain. I don't own an iPad (costs lots of money, I've got little justification to get one) but I do have the iPhone4 with the new retina screen. Reading ebooks on the older iPhone just wasn't viable as you had to have the text so large only a few paragraphs would fit comfortably on the screen. The new iPhone is much more pleasureable yet not in the same league as the iPad.

Saying that however, I still think having a solid paper book in your hands is still the best reading experience. There's something to be said about having a library of books at hand but if you're reading novels, then just how many will you get through to make ebooks more convenient to carry than traditional books? Perhaps for reference books (I work in web creation so have a lot of reference books around) but flicking through paper books is still much quicker. But on the flip side, you can search ebooks which is very useful.

Thanks for linking to the Flashfiction website, I've actually been looking for a short-story ebook site as like yourself, portable devices do lend themselves to short-story reading very well.

[wrylilt]

I just love the smell and feel of a good old paper book. I spend most of my time (both for work and home activities) online or on a computer so I like a real book sometimes...

[lilly michelle]

Hi am Lilly,



I've become very interested in ebooks recently ever since iBooks came out for the iPhone and I upgraded to the iPhone4 with the brilliant new retina display.

This post has been edited by Vandalin: 31 August 2010 - 06:20 AM