With finals and the holidays rapidly approaching, those heavy, huge, and outrageously expensive textbooks that have been serving as ballast in bags campus-wide will soon be rendered useless. When it comes to trading in these textbooks, wouldn’t it be nice to chop off that heavy, huge and outrageously expensive part? Some new technology may be pointing in exactly that direction.
E-books, whether their subject be fiction or fact, are not new. Many textbook manufacturers have e-book editions of their texts available for purchase online. Some libraries have even begun offering an e-book selection to their patrons.
However, the means for reading these textbooks comfortably have been pretty dismal. In order to have the texts for class, a student must have a laptop or e-book reader.
It may seem that this is not much of a barrier, since laptops seem to be everywhere, but reading on a laptop is no picnic. The brightly lit screen can wear on the eyes and scrolling up and down and back and forth trying to read or find a page is much more frustrating and takes longer than flipping back and forth in a physical textbook.
That leaves us with the humble e-book reader. These devices have not truly broken out to popularity for good reason. Their screens are small, leading to the same scrolling problems as laptops. In most cases, they have the same screen lighting problems. Many of these devices require you to buy your e-books from their company and the e-book reader will not read e-books purchased anywhere else.
They are not nearly as small, slick or aesthetically pleasing as iPods are. Many people would rather just read a regular book, preferring the tactile experience and respite from technology that books bring. Not to mention the fact that real books don’t require batteries.
Obviously, there is a lot of room for improvement and it seems to be coming. Amazon’s newest pride and joy, the Kindle, is an e-book reader that incorporates some new and interesting features that seem to be a prelude to textbook tech in the future.
Though it has many of the flaws of it’s predecessors, the Kindle seems progressive in several ways. For the steep price of $399, you can buy the e-reader itself, along with the ability to use Amazon’s wireless network to purchase e-books anywhere at any time.
According to Amazon’s website, this reader incorporates a new “electronic paper display,” which is supposed to imitate real paper in every way, presumably eliminating the light problems that can make e-books difficult to read. A computer connection is not necessary to access the e-books, so it has no need for the long syncing time of the earlier readers.
It weighs only 10.3 ounces. It holds up to 200 titles. It has access to books, blogs, and newspapers. There are no monthly bills for the wireless.
Okay, so what are the flaws of this seemingly miraculous device, then?
Remember how the reader can be purchased along with the network services for $399? That’s all that comes with it. No books, no newspapers, not even blogs: nothing, except for free access to wikipedia and access to teaser pages to get you to buy more books to read on it.
What about physical collections? Isn’t there some way to get the books in a personal collection into this thing? Nope, favorite titles must be rebought in e-book from, if that is what the owner seeks to page through.
Everything that can be read on this device must be purchased over the Amazon network. No such thing as a free lunch, people. But what about students and textbooks, again?
Confession time: it doesn’t really have much to do with students at all at the moment. Though it has over 90,000 books available, it has very little textbook choice. Though english classes may be pleasantly surprised to find most of their classic and modern fiction and biographies available, most necessary textbooks are not Kindle-friendly yet.
However, imagine a few years into the future: could there be a time where this changes? It would certainly be nice to be able to trade in those huge tomes for one tiny device or maybe even be able to access library e-books for free.
It would truly be a tragedy if physical books were lost forever to their electronic counterparts. It is wonderful to be able to pick up a real book and get lost while flipping through its pages, but not many people tend to do the same with textbooks and it might be kind of nice to have instant access to the news.
Though this device and others like it may not be on many college student’s Christmas lists this holiday season, it may see a boost in years to come. Keep an eye on this technology. If and when it becomes mainstream, those huge, heavy, and outrageously expensive textbooks may become a thing of the past.