My wife bought me an iPod Touch for Christmas last year, and I love it. We've subscribed to a bunch of podcasts, which we watch to keep up with the news and such. And the kids enjoy playing games while waiting for our food at a restaurant. Recently I found a new use for it.
As you may have seen, Amazon recently released the Kindle 2. At $359, well, I'm totally not interested. Do you know how many real books I could buy for $359? But I already own the Touch, so I set out to see what book readers are available, and I came across Stanza. It lets me search for and download e-books, whether paid or free. So I downloaded an old friend of mine, Dumas' "The Three Musketeers" and began to read.
What did I like? It was easy to find and download the book. The software is easy enough to configure. For example, it let me enlarge the font size to accommodate my old eyes. It works equally well in landscape or portrait mode. It's certainly a small form factor, easy enough to slip into my pants pocket when I go to work. It's backlit, so I can read at night without turning a light on.
What did I not like? There's just not enough screen space; I'm clicking "next page" every 5 seconds. It's an electronic device; I have to be more careful with it than I would with a paperback.
Verdict? I dunno. I will probably read some other books (translate: other *free* books). But I'm unlikely to do it a lot, and equally unlikely to spend money buying an e-book. I wouldn't buy an iPod Touch just for this reason, but since I already own it, it is certain be handy to have around while waiting in line somewhere or on an airplane ride.
1 comment:
i'm with you. even reading the ol' Good Book is a struggle sometimes, and my eyes are supposedly young.
I don't think either of us we'll see books depart in our lifetime.
Post a Comment