I’ve not had a chance to play with a Kindle, but seen a lot of them in the coffee shops of Seattle (Amazon will soon be moving to a neighborhood very close to mine, in South Lake Union.) My first impression was: cool, but a bit small. Now here comes the Kindle DX with a 9.7″ display and better integrated PDF. Now if Amazon will just offer an easy method for connecting to the arXiv, and I can scrounge up $500 bucks (can I put a Kindle on one of my grants?), I might think of getting one. One question I couldn’t find an answer to was whether one could use the “basic web browser” in the Kindle DX to download PDFs.
O brave new quantum world!
I totally don’t understand the Kindle hype, especially if you mainly want to read pdfs and don’t care about buying DRMed books from Amazon. There are other ereaders like the irex Digital Reader that you can write on too!
Exactly: I care about DRMed books! (Hopefully more textbooks and scientific books.)
Nothing will ever replace the feel and smell of a good book. In fact, I find reading anything on paper is much easier on my eyes than a screen. I even print out many of the scientific papers I read. Paradoxically (because I am not yet 40), I feel safer having records of all my students’ grades, syllabi, etc. on paper while my nearly 60-year-old colleague feels safer if there’s an electronic copy somewhere. Anyway, feel free to enjoy your iPhone and Kindle and all that jazz. Just make sure you don’t drive the printed word out of existence.
I know it’s not hard to find, but some choose not to fight immorality with immorality, just sayin (as the quantum pontiff it is my god given duty to play at holier than thou 😉 )
Indeed; read up on electronic paper.
“Indeed; read up on electronic paper.”
But to a true bibliophile (or bibliomaniac as my father has been called) it’s not only about being easier on the eyes. The look and feel of paper are hard to replace. Yes, they’re not terribly environmentally friendly (though I am all for electronic forms which would vastly reduce the amount of paper used).
Is the screen that good? For $500 you’re in netbook territory, no?
Why can’t you put it on a grant?
It seems unlikely that Amazon will add arxiv access. Maybe Apple will come out with a large-screen “iPhone” and then *you* can give us arxiv access. 🙂 If these platforms were more open (no $99 Apple fee), then open-source scientific apps would take off much more easily.
Exactly: I care about DRMed books! (Hopefully more textbooks and scientific books.)
Why? Ask your students where they get their un-DRMed versions of their textbooks (because obviously I have no idea where one can find such things). It is not that hard to find and is the reason that book DRM will eventually be as dead as music DRM.
“Nothing will ever replace the feel and smell of a good book. In fact, I find reading anything on paper is much easier on my eyes than a screen”
The kindle doesn’t use a screen like the ones you’ve used before.
The views at Villa Sophia must be awesome. [I googlemaps’d South Lake Union]
You should read 8W8 – Global Space Tribes on your Kindle on the plane. I am sure you will love the experience from that moment. http://www.8W8.com or simply go to Amazon.com
We copyfighters are fighting immorality with illegality, actually. We have the moral high ground, it’s just not recognized by the law of most countries yet. ^_^
the Kindle is too darn expensive. Otherwise i would get one.