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Posted by: Sinisa Cekic Nov 23 2011, 11:56 PM

I often meet people with Ebooks in hand, at stations, parks, cafes .. I am not old-fashioned,but when i wanna to read I want to take a good old book, it has its own charm!

So guys , books or E@ ?

Posted by: Jeff Nov 24 2011, 12:36 AM

Completely agree. Books!

Posted by: Todd Simpson Nov 24 2011, 04:47 AM

Get em while you can because they are sadly going the way of the CD. (e.g. away) I still love some of my CD's and all of my Books (actual printed, bound, books) but I realize it's mostly about the nostalgic feeling. For folks raised on E-Readers, (those being born right now) they will get misty for their KINDLE (the way we get about books/cds) when the HOLOGRAPHIC BOOK replaces all E-Books. Such is life right?

The good news is, while they are still being printed, we can still get them, and they don't require batteries! And libraries will continue to have dead tree versions of things for decades to come. But yeah, no fighting the future.

http://www.isuppli.com/home-and-consumer-electronics/marketwatch/pages/e-reader-rise-leads-to-decline-in-book-publishing.aspx

Posted by: tonymiro Nov 24 2011, 10:52 AM

I use both. As we live in Spain an ebook is really helpful as it saves having to buy English language books in the UK and then bring them back. However I still prefer the tactile nature of a traditional book so I buy Spanish language books, magazines and newspapers as traditional print. I also find that despite the 1 Million books available for ereaders that many books - especially academic philosophy texts - just aren't available electronically.

FWIW my wife has a Kindle and I use a Sony e-reader - thta way we can cover pretty much every electronic format.

Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Nov 24 2011, 04:06 PM

I haven't tried using e-reader, so cannot really comment on that, but I like reading magazines and books in their paper form It would be great to have an e-reader that is not creating any fatigue when reading (as opposed to monitor PDF's i.e.)

Posted by: Fran Nov 24 2011, 04:12 PM

I use an amazon Kindle as my novels e-reader, and absolutely love it.

I can set the size of the characters. No more going blind reading small print papaerbacks, thanks.
The screen looks like paper (e-ink), it's NOT back-lit.
It remembers where I left all my unfinished books.
It can carry more books than I'm even able to read,
Takes much less space in my luggage, weighs less than a real book (specially for thick death tree books)
It has a built in dictionary in various languages which shows me the definitions or translations in just one click, plus
It saves me a ton of space for other stuff in my house. I'm sick and tired of dusting my death tree book shelves.
I get loads of free books from amazon & other sites. All legal.
I can buy any book instantly and have it delievered just with a single click, from the e-reader itself, WiFi. No need to search the book shops anymore.


What can I say. Just love it.

Posted by: Sollesnes Nov 24 2011, 04:26 PM

I do prefer books, but as the books I usually read (academic) gets to e-book, I will probably change. It's much better for the environment, and that alone is reason to try to change

Posted by: thefireball Nov 24 2011, 04:48 PM

I can see the advantage. I've never owned a Nook or Kindle, or even used one, but my friend has a Nook. He reads A LOT. So he can easily take many books with him wherever he goes with no bulk. If I read a lot I would consider a Nook (because a Kindle is limited to Amazon), but I can make one thick book last me for months on end. So I prefer the good old hardcover book. I usually read a few minutes before I fall asleep.

Posted by: Ben Higgins Nov 24 2011, 06:03 PM

I love books and having the cover and/or artwork gives the thing a vibe of its own. I can totally see the appeal of Kindles though.. you don't have to find space in your house for all these ebooks, and you don't get arm ache from holding pages open for hours !!

Posted by: Daniel Realpe Nov 24 2011, 06:43 PM

The Kindle has its appeal definitely. I mean, You can carry 1000's of books in the space of a small notebook, that is crazy looking at it objectively,

but for actual reading experience, I wouldn't say it's too different but I will miss putting the physical paper marker instead of some command I have to input

Posted by: Gabriel Leopardi Nov 24 2011, 07:21 PM

I love books but I think that the advantages of things like kindle are so cool so I won't have problem to start using it.

Posted by: Sinisa Cekic Nov 24 2011, 11:40 PM

QUOTE (Fran @ Nov 24 2011, 04:12 PM)

Posted by: casinostrat Nov 25 2011, 12:03 AM

I see the advantages that products like the Nook and Kindle e readers offer and I have tried them, but I still like my real books. Just like Sinisa said, I like the smell! Seriously though I just like having a real book in my hand when I read. I also like CDs rather than digital downloads of music, but judging from another thread I saw today on the forums I'm thinking the days of CDs are doomed as well. I guess now when I'm playing "Still got the Blues" by Gary Moore I'll have the blues for my real books and Cds!

Posted by: Dannyhimself Nov 25 2011, 12:57 AM

Again, i'm another tangible book fan. Like Ben says, i love the artwork thats put on book covers. I also like to physically see how much i've read of a book so far, and feel the bulk of it gradually accumulate in my left hand.

I feel that if everyone was to covert to ebooks then less authors would be discovered by the public. I don't think that the public would be willing to pay full price for a book by an author that they perhaps haven't heard of. With tangible books however a second hand market exists where the reader can pay much less for their books and are more likely to take a chance with new authors.

I know thats how i feel anyway. I buy a lot of my books from charity shops, recently i bought the latest Alex Cross novel written by James Patterson for 50 pence. Personally i didn't much like his writing style as his books are too fragmented, having a large amount of chapters, but the opportunity is still there for people to discover new authors they enjoy and possibly buy other books of theirs upon release. (which = more $$$ for the authors!)

Posted by: Todd Simpson Nov 25 2011, 04:09 AM

There is good news on boths sides really Print books are going way but it's going to take a while, so we will still get printed material for a while yet. Also, millions are in print so plenty there. On the e-side, they are actually better in many tangible ways and I'm sure we will get over new material eventually not coming in dead tree format, after all we can keep our existing libraries and just add to it with ebooks/mags and it won't take up any more physical space than it already does

Posted by: Cosmin Lupu Nov 25 2011, 09:44 AM

For me both versions have advantages:

1) Owning a library is amazing books smell wonderful..BOOKS HAVE THEIR OWN PERSONALITY! You can't compare the experience of reading a book with anything else!

2) When you travel or need to carry a huge amount of info in a small package, say hello to Kindle it's a very good solution.

Appreciate each thing for its value and life can be so wonderful!

Posted by: Fran Nov 25 2011, 10:27 AM

QUOTE (Sinisa Cekic @ Nov 24 2011, 11:40 PM)

Does it smell like a book ?! (older books have a wonderful smell )