h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I remember reading about the new sony e reader a few weeks ago and thought it was a good idea and then yesterday I read about it again in a different magazine and made me think that in a few years time it should become popular but I am sure there must be some draw back but I can't see any. I would love to know what people think. I personally would love to buy one but at the moment I would prefer to wait until it comes down in price and that more bookshops start to sell the e books so the e books will also come down in price due to the compitition. I also would like to know how long it will take until it becomes popular.

How does it work as regards copyright restrictions?: There are thousands of free E-books of stuff now out of copyright, and I wonder if with this they'll try go tthe route of ITunes with over-the-top copy protection limitations and not let you use any E-books unless they're carrying some kind of digital signature... Which I guess a lot of the free out of copyright E-Books don't carry

To be honest I have no idea about the copyright restrictions with the e books but with them being free is just like a normal book really because you can easily pass a book to a friend for free and then that friend can pass the book onto another friend and so on. I would say to the publishers not to bother with to copyright the e books like the itunes because as said with passing books on for free but I do think they should make some way in which to copyright the e books otherwise it is pointless selling them at a price.

There are places you can get free ebooks, and places where you can buy them.

There are several e-readers on the market already. Those I have seen have no backlight. This means that the batteries will last a long time, but you can't read them in the dark.

The main thing I'm worried about with the copy protection, is the way with music recently its been designed to make pirates out of all of us, by its over the top ness... To give an expmple I had a song, which I'd written, and recorded... and a friend couldn't get it to play on his err I think it was some Ipod type MP3 player, as it kept kelling him he didn't have a valid digital rights certificate... I wrote and recordedt the bluddy song and he certainly had my permission to play it etc., If the digital rights thing as for music is taken across to E-Books, then such things might arrise, as free E-Book content providers ain't going to cough up the kinds of money required to get things given proper digital signatures Of the people I know who read a lot... I cna't see them giving up hard copy paper books too easily, Though having seen my Brothers bag when he comes home from Uni for a weekend I could se the advantrage of his having been able to have the two dozen books on a single device rather than filling up an 80 litre rucksack Actually, maybe I can see more of an advantage to an E-book reader for things like texbooks, technical books, and such like... and I guess if they get popular for such styles of books it'd be easy to imagine them then gaining ground in popularity for fiction books too

If you used Windows Media Player at some point in the recording process, there is a setting in there somewhere which automatically copy-protects everything ripped/recorded on it. This is on by default, but can be unchecked.

I can't remember the specific name and don't have WMP installed, sorry, but if you run through the options it should be obvious which it is.

Hopefully that will help someone.

Would anybody want to use the e reader.

if the screen were backlit and the text size could be made bigger and other such stuff i would very much use one, but as it is i will stick with paper books for now.

mini

I am at the moment sticking with paper books only until the price comes down on the e reader. The text does get bigger but I will try and find out if there is a backlight.

would be muchly useful for textbooks etc, especially if stuff like foreign language dictionaries could be made available in a format where you could increase the text size etc. for that kind of thing you would need to be able to search the text though.

mini

I agree that it would be perfect for text books as they can be very heavy at times and as 2legs pointed out that they fill up the whole bag.

I went on the sony website at http://www.sony.co.uk/product/rd-reader-ebook/prs-505 and I found out that the e reader doesn't have a backlight because it is suppose prevent the headstraining light flicker like there is on a pc screen but they explain it better on their website. There is also an article here at http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=library-to-go but the proper article is in the june magazine.

yeah i heard about the goods and bads of the e-reader on a bbc podcast a couple of weeks ago. www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/intouch think thats where i heard it from.

mini

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/intouch

hopefully the link will work now.

mini

Thankyou for the link.

Which week did you here it from.

umm, *checks iTunes* 21/10 and 13/8 hope that helps.

mini

Yes thankyou.

I guess I actually used 'E-Books' quite a bit when I was a student, but just on the laptop rahter than a bispoke E-Book device... err probably wildly illegal in terms of copyright especially as I think I've still got a dozen or so textbooks lurking on the PC... I scanned in a number of the larger textbooks I used, including one I kept having to get on loan from the national library, as there was only one copy of it in a public library in the UK I didn't scan the entire book into the PC though, as taht would hav etaken months but took various chapters I needed and was then able to give the book back to the litrary for re-loan rahter than hogging it for months and months during my research I did a simular thing with some of the university library books which were for courses I did but of which they never seemed to have sufficient copys to lend Certainly made it handy as I could take a few dozen books/sections of books back to my parents etc on the laptop without having to carry a mount giant bac with them in I use my MP3 player now sometims for carrying audio books on, but its not got a big enough capicity to hold many at a time

With the increase in wi-fi & broadband, I wonder if text books won't just be available to call up as required, rather than have stored in an e-book.

Apart from the reduction in weight & volume I can't immediately see any major advantages for reading novels and certainly not yet worth the cost. Could catch on if you can still go to a library & choose books to have on loan for free (i.e. temporarily loaded into the e-book).

I daresay it will be the means of reading in the future, but perhaps not in my lifetime.

I'm not sure it necessarily makes sense to have text books in a book format. Hyperlinked pages seem much more effective for learning. Don't understand something? Click it and find out. Can't find something? Stick it in the search bar.

Whereas hyperlinked novels are...hmm.

I have an Iliad Ereader. Expensive, but the best purchase I have made in a long time. While not quite all-singing and all-dancing, it does an awful lot (most of which I have not even tried yet).

I mainly use it for techbooks, hardware books, RFCs and taking notes - the usual work stuff. So far almost everything I have needed has been pdf and there is no problem reading them (even the A4 pdfs - the text is small but perfectly legible). It will also read html, and their are other readers you can download onto it which still further increases the versatility.

I have also used it for recreational reading - but mainly Project Gutenburg and other free resources. Though I did *ahem* acquire Lord of the Rings for it, as three of my copies are the all-in-one tomes (and the other is the ones with the Alan Lee et al pics in) - which are a tad unwieldy.

If you are intrested I would recommend http://www.mobileread.com/ for more information on all the ereaders available. Until later....
BCNU - Crescent