I just finished reading a 688 page (according to Amazon's listing of the paper book) scifi novel on my phone yesterday, it took me about a week of leisurely reading. It's only one such novel in a long, long, long list of ebooks I have been reading on my phone since mid-2007.
I have read all sorts of other books in such a format. It ends up saving me lots of money, and if I just reformat the text to something I am more comfortable with (i.e. a pdf 2 pages side by side), it can be awesome. No need to drag 10+lbs of textbooks to classes and I can store hundreds of books between my iPhone and my laptop from the aforementioned textbooks to leisure reading.
Yes, I do prefer to have a paper copy of some books, but when resources are limited, there isn't much you can do. Online copies/ebooks can be amazing in that respect. I had a subscription to Safari Books Online until I found out either ACM or IEEE (can't remember...) had access to most of the books I wanted, and I also discovered my college library had Safari access that I also occasionally use. To me it costs less to access those hundreds of books online than to buy a single dead tree book every year, and I live in the United States.
Comments
I just finished reading a 688 page (according to Amazon's listing of the paper book) scifi novel on my phone yesterday, it took me about a week of leisurely reading. It's only one such novel in a long, long, long list of ebooks I have been reading on my phone since mid-2007.
I have read all sorts of other books in such a format. It ends up saving me lots of money, and if I just reformat the text to something I am more comfortable with (i.e. a pdf 2 pages side by side), it can be awesome. No need to drag 10+lbs of textbooks to classes and I can store hundreds of books between my iPhone and my laptop from the aforementioned textbooks to leisure reading.
Yes, I do prefer to have a paper copy of some books, but when resources are limited, there isn't much you can do. Online copies/ebooks can be amazing in that respect. I had a subscription to Safari Books Online until I found out either ACM or IEEE (can't remember...) had access to most of the books I wanted, and I also discovered my college library had Safari access that I also occasionally use. To me it costs less to access those hundreds of books online than to buy a single dead tree book every year, and I live in the United States.