Computing
I want an ebook! I mean, a real, physical device that simulates a book with an LCD screen etc, etc. I can't bear the thought of bringing my laptop with though I've stashed all my novels in electronic format because it's just too bloody big.
Some thoughts about the technology involved:
One could probably get an E-Book like device with a tablet (short digression: Dell bought the "tablet PC" keyword on Google but the tablet PC link on Dell's ad either does not exist or does not bring the browser to any pages that involve tablets. Their advertising is sooo bad), except that you can only read one page at a time, which blows. At least you can annotate, and play music while you read... I originally thought that a dedicated device would be cheaper than a full fledged tablet, but once you have document reader software (and you need software because the formats aren't standardised. You don't want to have a stack of "format reader" ROM cartridges, do you?) , you might as well have a proper processor in there. And a processor means an OS, and all the software goodies that come with it, and since you're going for a chip with OS, might as well tack on wireless, huh? So a low end tablet can be used essentially as a book reader (so can a palm, one supposes, but the screen size is horrible).
Then again, a low end tablet costs as much as a high end notebook, so you give up handwriting recognition for a permanent keyboard and the ability to run really good software (warcraft and halo come to mind, but you can use it for work too) and then we're back at the notebook to read documents problem again. *sigh* Methinks my budget line and indifference curve for "tablet vs. other mobile computing devices" must be coincident or something.
Why does this all come up? Well, I want to buy Baen e-books and bring them to school to read. But I probably don't want to bring my laptop with me. It seems pointless to lug a whole laptop along to read the occassional 15 minutes of stuff between classes. (not to mention that start-up already consumes so much power that I'd drain my battery on starting up and shutting down alone.
As for people who type lecture notes into laptops: man, can you actually read that stuff? Can't draw pictures on a laptop screen, can't annotate, etc. Just doesn't make sense to me.
Oh well.
I want an ebook! I mean, a real, physical device that simulates a book with an LCD screen etc, etc. I can't bear the thought of bringing my laptop with though I've stashed all my novels in electronic format because it's just too bloody big.
Some thoughts about the technology involved:
One could probably get an E-Book like device with a tablet (short digression: Dell bought the "tablet PC" keyword on Google but the tablet PC link on Dell's ad either does not exist or does not bring the browser to any pages that involve tablets. Their advertising is sooo bad), except that you can only read one page at a time, which blows. At least you can annotate, and play music while you read... I originally thought that a dedicated device would be cheaper than a full fledged tablet, but once you have document reader software (and you need software because the formats aren't standardised. You don't want to have a stack of "format reader" ROM cartridges, do you?) , you might as well have a proper processor in there. And a processor means an OS, and all the software goodies that come with it, and since you're going for a chip with OS, might as well tack on wireless, huh? So a low end tablet can be used essentially as a book reader (so can a palm, one supposes, but the screen size is horrible).
Then again, a low end tablet costs as much as a high end notebook, so you give up handwriting recognition for a permanent keyboard and the ability to run really good software (warcraft and halo come to mind, but you can use it for work too) and then we're back at the notebook to read documents problem again. *sigh* Methinks my budget line and indifference curve for "tablet vs. other mobile computing devices" must be coincident or something.
Why does this all come up? Well, I want to buy Baen e-books and bring them to school to read. But I probably don't want to bring my laptop with me. It seems pointless to lug a whole laptop along to read the occassional 15 minutes of stuff between classes. (not to mention that start-up already consumes so much power that I'd drain my battery on starting up and shutting down alone.
As for people who type lecture notes into laptops: man, can you actually read that stuff? Can't draw pictures on a laptop screen, can't annotate, etc. Just doesn't make sense to me.
Oh well.
posted by Enforced Equanimity at 9:52 AM
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