Alliandre
Fledgling Freddie
- Joined
- Dec 28, 2003
- Messages
- 202
My overall impression is that they suck. Maybe it's just not being used to them.
I decided to order one yesterday, just to see if they'd be ok, but my suspicions have been proven correct. I'm not going to be taken away from real paper books.
Yes, it arrived in my email as soon as I'd paid for it. It's great. I download it, and it opens in acrobat reader. Great. I can read it straight away. But you don't get the satisfaction of an unpixilated front page. It's all zoomed in to fit the page width ways so I can't see the whole of the front of the book and get a better impression of it.
Now I scroll down expecting to start reading, but I forget about the few useless pages that you normally come across when you look at the first few pages of the book. The ones with the dedications and the second (why?) title page behind the first one. Of course in a normal book I could just flick past the first ten pages. I have since come to realise that you can click on the bookmarks down the side, and I've been cursing myself for doing all that hand dragging stuff beforehand.
When I do actually start reading, I start missing the friendlyness of something being on paper to read instead of straining my eyes staring at a screen, slowly falling apart as they've done many times while spending far to long on the computer, so I go to print off the book only to find that I can't. This is ridiculous. I know you have to prevent copyright fraud, but why bother? You could easily limit the amount of copies of document you could print out. You can photocopy an average book but they don't stop selling them. I'd like to be able to read my book off of the monitor as well.
However I was expecting this pettyness, so I read on for a while longer before realising that I want to go and do something else. I save the document, close it, and go do whatever it was I went to do. Today I come back to it, open it up and immediately think, "Now where was I? Oh no, you can't make a fold on e-books." So I decide to take a look at the notes feature that Acrobat Reader boasts about as I first open it up. I try making a note, then I go to save the document again. "Being as this is only a Reader, your notes will not be saved." Oh, great. What is the point?
I'd much rather read something on paper that will arrive nicely binded together, if a week later than an electronic copy that arrived immediately without as much freedom just because of paranoia about copyright fraud.
Does anyone else like using e-books? Or has anyone else ever used them at all?
I decided to order one yesterday, just to see if they'd be ok, but my suspicions have been proven correct. I'm not going to be taken away from real paper books.
Yes, it arrived in my email as soon as I'd paid for it. It's great. I download it, and it opens in acrobat reader. Great. I can read it straight away. But you don't get the satisfaction of an unpixilated front page. It's all zoomed in to fit the page width ways so I can't see the whole of the front of the book and get a better impression of it.
Now I scroll down expecting to start reading, but I forget about the few useless pages that you normally come across when you look at the first few pages of the book. The ones with the dedications and the second (why?) title page behind the first one. Of course in a normal book I could just flick past the first ten pages. I have since come to realise that you can click on the bookmarks down the side, and I've been cursing myself for doing all that hand dragging stuff beforehand.
When I do actually start reading, I start missing the friendlyness of something being on paper to read instead of straining my eyes staring at a screen, slowly falling apart as they've done many times while spending far to long on the computer, so I go to print off the book only to find that I can't. This is ridiculous. I know you have to prevent copyright fraud, but why bother? You could easily limit the amount of copies of document you could print out. You can photocopy an average book but they don't stop selling them. I'd like to be able to read my book off of the monitor as well.
However I was expecting this pettyness, so I read on for a while longer before realising that I want to go and do something else. I save the document, close it, and go do whatever it was I went to do. Today I come back to it, open it up and immediately think, "Now where was I? Oh no, you can't make a fold on e-books." So I decide to take a look at the notes feature that Acrobat Reader boasts about as I first open it up. I try making a note, then I go to save the document again. "Being as this is only a Reader, your notes will not be saved." Oh, great. What is the point?
I'd much rather read something on paper that will arrive nicely binded together, if a week later than an electronic copy that arrived immediately without as much freedom just because of paranoia about copyright fraud.
Does anyone else like using e-books? Or has anyone else ever used them at all?
)
