Devices To Take Textbooks Beyond Text 115
An anonymous reader writes with a New York Times piece about the tumultuous transition to electronic devices, instead of printed materials, for text. "Newspapers and novels are moving briskly from paper to pixels, but textbooks have yet to find the perfect electronic home. They are readable on laptops and smartphones, but the displays can be eye-taxing. Even dedicated e-readers with their crisp printlike displays can’t handle textbook staples like color illustrations or the videos and Web-linked supplements publishers increasingly supply. Now there is a new approach that may adapt well to textbook pages: two-screen e-book readers with a traditional e-paper display on one screen and a liquid-crystal display on the other to render graphics like science animations in color."
Re:Change one word and download? (Score:3, Informative)
This semester's accounting book was like that already for me. The book itself came unbound (just a pile of sheets with holes for a three-ring binder), and had a two-semester subscription to the online version of the textbook. The problem is that the subscription by itself was only $20 less than the book and you had to have it to do the homework. After the next semester, I'll be stuck with a worthless pile of paper (not even as good as a worthless textbook.)
Re:Why not have a pc / netbook that can do more fo (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why not have a pc / netbook that can do more fo (Score:4, Informative)
Cause an E-Reader uses E-Ink, which only uses electricity when the text changes. It doesn't take any power to show static text, just change it. (unless, of course, you use the low power backlight)
Nobody wants to charge their textbook a couple of times a day.
Re:Why not have a pc / netbook that can do more fo (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why not have a pc / netbook that can do more fo (Score:2, Informative)
Why even get that when I can take a book out of the library for a lot less?
Because students tend to not check textbooks out of libraries. They buy them for the semester at considerable expense, and then have to lug them around all day. Or did you miss the use-case that this article is about?