are you downloading books yet?

[thepaladin]

In short..........no.

The E folks have been predicting the end of "paper books" for some time now. I chose not to participate. It may be pointless, but as much as possible I'll stick with the "real" over the "virtual" The one exception I would make is that some books which are no longer in print can be found...but given the chance I'll still go with a used copy, ober an electronic one. My wife needs audio books but so far i've managed to find them on CD, who knows how long before they two are "obsolete".

Just me. If the time ever comes when we are all reading lit, from our PDAs, Blackberrys (or is the Blackberries like real berries?) etc. it will be a much porrer world.

 

[Marlon]

I was recently looking at the new kindle and their kindle library. Looks as though there are quite a few and some older ones for free-$2.50 or so. Of course most of the new ones are $10. Decided no-go on the kindle as I'm just not sure that I want to convert my library yet. But I'm glad to hear the iPhone can use kindle books -- hopefully the iPod Touch can as well (since I decided to get that instead of the kindle). I'd go for the iphone but can't since it is at&t.

Oh, and in answer to the question -- not yet, but I'd like to be able to do some. As others have said there are some I'll always want on the shelf. Of course, the ecopy may just be one of the several versions I have of those.

 

[steve12553]

I picked up quite a few old free ebooks for my Palm Tungsten. Of course I dropped it and the screen is unusable. I may replace it at some point because it was very comfortable to read with. Very light with a reasonable but not too large screen. It was about the same price as the Kindle but it also kept my schedule, played MP3s and would take an SD memory chip which by now will hold a medium sized library. It also enticed me to read when I should have been working. Holding its back away from me made it impossible to tell if I was working or not.

 

[Marlon]

One other experience the ereaders will never replace is the fun of the hunt in a good used book store.

 

[Rosemary]

No I am not! I'm sure it cannot compare to sitting down comfortable, with a 'real' book in ones hands!
As for saving of trees to make the paper for the books - what is used to power up electricity we need to use the internet? Something that we should be saving perhaps?

 

[dask]

I haven't and I don't intend to. I hate reading stuff on a screen... it's hard on the eyes and there are too many distractions to focus on what I'm reading. I'm a horribly inefficient online reader. Plus, I just LIKE having a book in my hands. I'm kind of old school like that I suppose... I still buy cd's rather than downloading songs too The hard copy artifact just looks so nice on a shelf.

This is pretty much a mirror image of my stance on the subject. Reading books on my computer is no more appealing than micro-fiche (yech!). Of course being a non-stop book collector since 1965 doesn't help much either. I buy CDs like soulsinging and have no emotional fetters making files of them and putting them on my hard drive so I can make my own CDs. And I never dumped my vinyl collection when CDs came out --- in fact I invested in a USB turntable to convert them into digital so I don't have to re-buy everything. Small pops and scratches don't bother me. I grew up with them.

 

[dask]

One other experience the ereaders will never replace is the fun of the hunt in a good used book store.

Ahhh, truth of the highest magnitude! But it is addicting so proceed with caution.

 

[BookStop]

I'm toying with the idea of getting my other half a Kindle for an upcoming celebration. They are a bit expensive though, but the Sony Reder isn't much differnet. I don't know. I know he'd like it, but will it save money and be convenient?

 

[Lady of Winterfell]

Oops! My apologies to Lady of Winterfell, I just now saw the other thread and the Suvudu reference.

Enjoy!

No apology needed Joe.

I'm toying with the idea of getting my other half a Kindle for an upcoming celebration. They are a bit expensive though, but the Sony Reder isn't much differnet. I don't know. I know he'd like it, but will it save money and be convenient?

My brother in law just got the Kindle 2 and he really enjoys it. He likes being able to read books on it as well as get newspapers on it.


As for me...

I have only once tried to read an ebook on my computer, and I didn't enjoy it, nor did I finish the book. I really do prefer the paper book. At the moment, I can't see giving up paper books any time soon. I'm with Hoopy, I'd rather be surrounded with books, than have just one reading device that stores them all. I would like to have my own library at home, but at the moment I just don't have the room.

 

[mygoditsraining]

I bought my girlfriend a Sony PRS-505 (or whatever the model is) reader for her birthday as she downloads and reads a lot of Romance stuff on her PC anyway, so I thought it would be easier on the eyes for her.

Anyway, so far it seems like a good buy. I'm holding off until either the Kindle 2 comes to our shores or the BeBook sees a new model released; I'm not especially chuffed with the way Sony have handled DRM on their library but for the missus it's apparently not a big issue.

I must admit I'm not fussed about hanging onto a purist ideology where it's either/or between an electronic reader and print. I read enough on the monitor to realise that if I can get my news, blogs, and the entire project Gutenberg library on an e-reader, it's not going to prevent me from picking up print editions of books I like or want to read in the bath. I mean, we're onto our fifth big IKEA bookcase in the flat, and we still have to double up on some shelves; does using the PC or a reader mean we're going to never need a sixth? Not likely.

On a side note, I've been using the Stanza app on my ipod touch, and the tiny, backlit screen is just too hard to focus on for long enough to get through anything weighty. For fairly well-spaced text, such as short plays, it's pretty good, though.

 

[Hypnos164]

I don't currently buy eBooks.

Its not that I have any serious objection to the idea of reading from a decent screen (and I'd love the convenience of being able to carry a shelf full of reference works around with me for work).

The reasons I haven't done it so far are pretty much:

£300 for the reader buys a lot of books

eBook prices are not really attractive; the RoI on the reader is pretty slow if you only save a pound or two per book

I already own paper copies of most of the reference works mentioned above and replacing them with e versions would run to £1000's

Lock in / DRM / Formats ... Kindle looks most attractive to me (if only it was available in the UK) not because of tech specs but because of the confidence that with Amazon behind it the choice of books will be large and the supplier won't disapear overnight leaving me with a usless brick.

That still leaves the DRM problem ... if the one holding the encryption keys goes away or decides to turn the infrastructure off *poof* all your paid content just goes away.

I accept the DRM on my Audible subscription because its such amazingly good value compared to buying audio books on CD . It also helps that there are means to get around the DRM and extract MP3 copies for backup/archive purposes

 

[Xelebes]

Somewhat. The good thing about real books is that they don't require batteries. Oh how I loathe batteries.

 

[Jen526]

I'm interested in doing ebooks more, but I would need a portable reader (no way I'm going to be tied to a PC screen to do my reading). Kindles and other readers are just *way* too expensive to invest in without being 120% certain that I'd get long-term use out of one, and I'm only at about 70% right now.