Here’s a little bit of history…

Back in 1990 Sony put together some very cutting edge ideas into the cutting edge technology of the time and came up with an electronic book. Here’s a picture of one. I remember looking at it in a Sears, when Sears actually was one of the places that had a good selection of new technology.

The electronic book looked like a rather bloated CD Walkman in fact it was called the Sony Data Discman.  It’s screen was an LCD display of 30 characters by 10 lines, and a 26-character keyboard and did pretty basic text in black and white, well, not white more like a grayish silver.  The ‘books’ you purchased came on cd’s, you stuck a cd into the device and then you could make yourself blind reading war and peace on it.

And as you can imagine, the device didn’t sell many, nor did it stay on the market… at least I haven’t seen one in a decade or so.. except for that one picture I found on the web.

Which brings me to why I’m writing this… Amazon and  Sony are bringing to the market updated versions of their e-books.

Let’s take a look at a few of the Amazon Kindle 2′s features are:

  • Revolutionary electronic-paper display provides a sharp, high-resolution screen that looks and reads like real paper.
  • Simple to use: no computer, no cables, no syncing.
  • Wireless connectivity enables you to shop the Kindle Store directly from your Kindle—whether you’re in the back of a taxi, at the airport, or in bed.
  • Buy a book and it is auto-delivered wirelessly in less than one minute.

And a little bit about Sony’s ebook reader..

Ultra portable

The Reader Digital Book offers a unique, on-the-go reading experience and is the perfect travel companion. With a compact and lightweight design, you can take it almost anywhere and read your books whenever and wherever you want. More compact than many paperbacks, it weighs about 9 ounces6 (without cover), is 1/3” thin8, and holds up to 160 eBooks4. You can easily hold it in one hand, and with its rechargeable battery, you can turn up to 7,500 continuous pages on a single charge2.

Impressive, paper-like display

The Reader Digital Book provides a new way to experience reading. It boasts an impressive 6-inch display1, utilizing breakthrough E Ink® technology that’s almost paper-like, making it easy to read, even in bright sunshine. In addition, the screen allows for high contrast and high resolution, with a near 180º viewing angle. The text can also be magnified for sight-impaired readers.

Wow.. pretty nifty eh?  But this is what screams in my mind “COMPUTERS ARE STUPID”…  Who wants to haul around a electronic reader that uses ‘electronic paper’, if dropped could break (well maybe not the electronic paper), needs to be charged, needs to be configured to access a network to download ebooks..   It’s as if we have more solutions than we have problems!

Granted, it’s a great idea to save paper, but saving a tree would be easier by just switching to pulp from hemp to make paper rather than wood pulp from trees (Thank you Mr. Hearst for pushing us all away from hemp paper and right into our ecological unsound wood based paper products). 

On the other hand, how many chemicals and nasty stuff is put into the enviornment by making these electronic books?   We all know that publishing books on paper does cause waste and polution, but -reality check- darn near EVERYTHING does.

So they are selling a scaled down tablet computer to view books.  I happen to like paper, the way it feels, how I can dog ear a page and come back later, start reading where I left off, or find that I put the book down and now the page isn’t marked.. and have fun searching through the book myself.. And old books have that smell, don’t know what it is, probably mold and dust, but it’s a reall cool smell.  Will the ebooks have a feature to give of a smell if you’re reading an older text?  Bring back smell-o-vision!  whoo hoo!

I will most likely, sooner or later, get dragged into buying one.  But I won’t go smiling and all happy, I will drag my feet and wonder what the heck am I doing?  But it won’t happen until the readers get significantly COOLER and the price of the electronic versions of the text drops below a buck.  C’mon, what am I paying for when I purchase an electronic book?  Electrical patterns that’s it.  And if for some reason it gets deleted, I don’t have it.  Sure, they will make it so you can get a replacement copy, but it WILL be a hassle. With a book, I buy it, it’s mine.  Mine to give to a friend to read, mine to donate to the library, mine to mail it to a nefew or grandkid for their birthday all wrapped up and nice.  ebooks won’t let you loan a copy of your book, you’ll have to send them the whole ebook reader, and who wants to loan their buddy a $300.00 piece of electronic equipment so they could read a story…

Wouldn’t you be able to do the same thing with a cheap mini-laptop (I’ve seen them for under $400)…. Plus you get the ability to surf the web, run programs and well, do other stuff!

I just don’t get ebooks… neat, but makes no sense.