Of course e-books suck, Mike: Flame away
From prices to book-finding issues, yep, e-books suck in many ways (just like P in areas such as book-searching). Glad to see Mike Cane pitchin’ in! Go get ‘em, Mike—flame away. An impeccably run e-book industry would be just plain boring.
My own pet peeves remain DRM and eBabel. Yes, they both affect prices by imposing unnecessary costs on both consumers and business people.
$5 books? Depends. When the audience is large enough, even bestsellers should sell for no more.
Hardware limitations, such as insufficient contrast on current E Ink screens? That’s another gripe of mine. Right now the industry has no choice. With DRM and eBabel and $30 e-books, it does. Luckily the $30 ones are in the minority.
July 13th, 2008 at 11:43 am
And I’m giving it its own damned blog now too:
The eBook Test
http://ebooktest.blogspot.com/
No one gets out without a good beating!
July 13th, 2008 at 11:48 pm
Contrast problems… LCD can still rock. It should be possible to get over 20 hours reading with an LCD e-book reader, the original Rocket could do that.
Can’t say I have heard of anyone developing a reader using an LCD. A shame. E-ink has its place, LCD should as well.
July 15th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
In LCD readers, there’s the Ectaco JetBook and the Jinchan M218A, both 480×640 16-grey-level five-inch screens.