In a word "electronic books" that are actually designed to be read like a "real" book. Most definitely NOT computer screens, or PDA screens!
Once upon a time there was one such device being manufactured that, even though it was a first generation device, fulfilled many of the promises and dreams of "electronic books", including the perception of "reading like a book". See my recent reply to some of the factors that have thus far kept these, and similar devices, more or less unknown and unappreciated.
Since dreaming about a book similar to the one in Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age" when I was about five, I've kept a close eye on the technology down through the years, and even had a financial interest in the technology at one point, and the NuvoMedia device, which is now defunct, IMO, is the only one thus far to come close to the promise.
If you are a student of human history, as most of us come to appreciate as we get older, and if you have sufficient perception to appreciate the astounding impact of the Gutenberg press on mankind with regard to communication, then you have an inkling of what the impact of the "electronic book" can foretell.
I lean my ReB against the sugar bowl and turn the pages by hitting the button with the fork handle. There NO flicker whatsoever on the screen. No lights are necessary to read it at night because the screen is backlit (SWMBO's love this feature); fonts are adjustable in size if you need reading glasses, as well as in style; the device turns itself off after ten minutes of no page turning if you go to sleep; the battery last for a week of reading to sleep at night; if there is a word I need to lookup, touch the word and a dictionary pops up with the definition; I can also skim pages and underline and bookmark passages, and make notes on any of the 50 or so novels it holds; it recognizes my handwriting/printing; the device feels like a folded back paper back book when in hand, AND I have a leather cover for it, which means ALL my books are leather bound! :)
... and this has been going on for six years ... since 1998.
I cut the articles out of my woodworking mags, organize them as to genre i.e. shop projects, furniture, ect. And using plastic sheet protectors place them in loose leaf binders. I have about 5 years worth in 6 binders. The binders are the 4" ones that open with the rings attached to the back cover. Saves a lot of space and I have no trouble finding articles. If I leave them in the shop the sheet protectors keep mold from forming on the pages.
Do books on tape have anti-piracy tech? It seems to be a lot easier to pirate a audio cassette than a CD, yet books on tape must make money or they wouldn't exist. I actually wish they would offer the books on tape as books on CD as I have a CD player in my truck and not a tape player. The only tape player I own sits next to the TV and the wife would have a seizure if I were to turn it off to listen to a book.
I've found some of the ReBs on Ebay, and before I consider a purchase, could you tell me what type of battery they use? Some are missing power supplies, what would be a good substitute?
Ebooks are not for everything, but I started using them for novels on my Pocket PC. For some reason I found them easy to read, especially when I am eating breakfast or excercising on a stationary bike. It is much easier to hold and turn the pages under those conditions. The problem I found was that popular novels were costing as much as a hardcover. Although I bought a few, I felt that that did not make sense. Don't want to argue the logic here, but I know that did not help expand ebooks. I don't think they make sense for magazines like Fine Woodworking, etc. But for novels, I felt they were great. Anything with pictures resulted in a less than a satisfactory experience. The pictures were just too small.
As much as I hate to say it, I would be extremely cautious as there no user support left for the ReB whatsoever, only that which GemStar saw fit to provide since they decided to shut their operation down, so you will be on your own.
formatting link
am very familiar with the devices, have had them apart and even added memory from one to another which is not supposed to be possible at user level, but since they are no longer manufactured, I would hesitate to recommend that anyone purchase one unless it is money you can afford to lose ... that, in itself, is a damn shame, the more I think about it.
The battery is built in and is NOT user changeable. However, I have one that is six years old and the battery is still operating without problem. Do NOT buy one without a power supply/battery charger!! Might want to check to see if you can still register the device so that you could buy content as there is encryption involved in some of the available content. You must have a computer with a serial port to load content and you must have the "Rocket Librarian" software loaded on the computer to communicate with the device via serial port.
As far as content, you can no longer buy best sellers from Barnes and Nobles, Amazon, or Powells, however you can roll your own using the old software and digitized public domain text from places like:
There was no logic ... it defied all common sense, but that's the current publishing industry for you.
They didn't, but they could, and eventually will. Actually, there was one device, the "SoftBook", that would do magazine format, but it was very expensive and as big as magazine. GemStar killed it also.
it's a literal one. take it as smarty pants if you want, but when you make an argument based on semantics you should be precise in your use of language.
Just one note: This is a BS excuse. If you standardized on a cartridge format that does not exist yet, the you can effectively prevent copying, specially of something so relatively undesireable as the text of a book. How do I know? Just look at the gaming industry. They have a problem with PC games because everyone has CD burners and many hackers can program a PC to circumvent copy protection. But they do _not_ have a huge problem in console games.
How hard is it to copy an XBox game? Well, XBox games are stored in a special DVD format called DVD9. This is a super-high density storage technology, giving each DVD a potential data storage space much larger than what they would ever want to put into a single game. Why did MS go this route? Because consumer burners for this technology are many years away. Unless you're a techie gamer, this is probably the first time you hear of DVD9. If MS' gamble pays off, DVD9 will never become a consumer technology. The result? The damned ganmes are extremely hard and expensive to copy. Anyone even thinking about copying the games better think about that $50K investment, and maybe put his money in a legal business, maybe producing legal DVD9 disks for game makers?
All right, let's look at another gaming techniology not often pirated: The video game cartridges (like Nintendo or Atari). These things have special plugs not very easy to find. In order to copy the contents, you have to know your electrical engineering really well, because you will have to create a custom device to read the data. Then you have to create a chip and a circuit board to hold the copied game. Then you have to figure out how to actually make the copy. By the time you're done with all of that, you spent much more than the danged game cost you!
Now, let's say that given today's technology to combine one of these two methods with encryption... You are home free. Let's say your e-books cost the same as a normal printed book. Will pirating the content be worth it? Absolutely not!
So I don't buy the "protect our intellectual property" argument one bit.
If anything, publishers are trying very hard to do the following:
1) Charge per person, not per copy of the book. They would love to charge per set of eyes that reads the book.
2) Make it self-destructing. Books that last forever are a pain in the ass for publishers because even though you keep it for 20 years, you only paid the initial cost.
3) Make it absolutely non-resellable. When Amazon started it's used book marketplace (you look up a book and Amazon shows you the price of a used book together with the new book), publishers started crying because the used book marketplace would eat into their sales, and they were right.
So, my guess is that publishers are trying to change the business model, to one very much like software, where the intellectual property owner retains huge control over how you use the software (ie, MS Office "dials home" every time you install it, and refuses to continue working if you modify your computer too much).
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