Sony Reader Hints Towards the Death of Books

With most media being converted to digital formats in order to be made more portable, such as music and movies, it’s only a matter of time before books make a similar leap. Sure, there’s a certain comfort brought by carrying around a real book, but just like the warm-sounding vinyl records before them, they’re bound to become a relic owned only by serious fans. What’ll replace them? Digital books.

Digital books like this Sony PRS-505/LC Blue Digital Book Reader, to be precise. The Sony Reader can carry up to 160 books at a time, letting you choose exactly what you want to dive into on the subway rather than choosing one book and being forced to stick with it. Of course, unlike music, people generally are fine sticking with one book at a time, and books don’t require batteries, so the transition to digital readers might be a bit slower, but trust me: it’ll happen eventually. Your kids will think bookshelves are quaint. Scary but true.

This entry was posted by Adam on Monday, January 21st, 2008 at 6:39 pm

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e p unum 01/22/2008 07:39 AM 1 point
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True. Electronic books will replace paper books. Cells with large screens already are competing with newspapers and mags as we read their online editions with WiFi. That'll eventually mean less waste and disposal.
The winner in the electronic b0ok contest is likely the company that has access to the most literary resources. For now, it's Amazon. When either the Sony or the Kindle are within affordability, under $40. We'll start seeing a trend toward electronic books. Then it'll be a war among content providers. Until then, I'm happy to be listening to books on my MP3 player choosing among many websites ready to provide at low or no cost.

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Steve Rush 01/24/2008 01:17 PM 1 point
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Maybe, but not soon. A paperback novel won't break if I sit on it and requires only light. Improved solar cells might solve the battery problem, as they already have for the simplest pocket calculators. The real application of e-books would be to replace the burdensome load of textbooks that students from high school on have to lug around, but some subjects require a lot of graphics that don't reduce well. Maybe e-books will have to wait for the contact-lens display to become really practical, just as computers didn't get really portable until LCD displays became available.

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larry bakst 04/06/2008 05:03 PM 1 point
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What would really be great is a digital reader that READS the book--a digitalized talking book. There are high quality digitalized voice technologies, which while not as good as a professional human reader, would give digital books wider appeal and something that paperbacks can't do.

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David 06/03/2008 10:51 AM 1 point
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I would like to put a cookbook in that Sony and hang it on a kitchen cabinet door. Every time I cook it seems the counter space gets used up and my cookbooks wind up slipping around and getting stuff slopped on them. It would be nice to be able to go to the recipe index click on a recipe and automatically load that page from the cookbook.

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roy sadler 11/17/2008 03:28 PM 1 point
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i would love an e book show me one compatible with apple mac ?

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