Do you think ebook reading is effective than Paper books?

[NeoDevin]

Paper books continue to function after getting wet (though the user experience tends to drop off substantially).

Until the pages dry together, and any attempt to open the book again results in many torn pages.

 

[Moonbear]

How many paper books are waterproof?

They're a lot cheaper to replace and you don't lose your whole library in one drowning episode if you drop the book in the tub. (...and, um, is there a shock hazard with the eBook readers?)

What about steam? If I'm soaking in the tub, it's a HOT bath.

 

[DaveC426913]

What about steam?

No, steam-powered books were briefly flirted with in the Victorian era but have since fallen out of favour what with the difficulty of the simplest tasks such as flipping pages, the risk of scalding and explosions was too great.

 

[lisab]

No, steam-powered books were briefly flirted with in the Victorian era but have since fallen out of favour what with the difficulty of the simplest tasks such as flipping pages, the risk of scalding and explosions was too great.

 

[Evo]

At work, our training has been through online computer courses for years. It makes so much more sense to do it online as technology changes so quickly and the paper it saves is significant. If I want to print a diagram for future reference, I can, but most of the material is obsolete within a year, so it is better not to bother printing it.

I still prefer books for bathroom reading and reading in bed, but I guess if I had a comfortably thin electronic pad for reading that I could change.

 

[Emelianenko]

I'd always choose paper, but if its a technical book, as useful as a search is, the ability to scribble in notes etc.. is far more useful to me. The free part of e-books is what makes them good, not the reading on a screen.

 

[Howers]

I hate reading on the screen. It is less authoritatize I guess, or atleast appears that way. If I find an ebook to be good after 2 chapters, I will gladly pay for the paper version.

 

[Mihael]

ebooks are for a person like me who doesn't have a lot money to buy books...

 

[physicsnoob93]

I hate reading ebooks. Very distracting.

 

[Astronuc]

There is one very convenient thing with ebook, it's the search function, especially for technical books used as a reference.

I prefer electronic files of papers because I have so many, that it would take a lot of space if I printed them out, although I do print key papers so I can write notes on them.

I also like the convenience of extracting text or figures when I use particular journal articles. One of my interns also wrote a macro (in Excel) that can digitize (x,y) plots, so that we can recreate data for our own analysis.

As for blinking, there is a certain minimum rate so that one's eyes do not dry out.


I do like conventional paper books for reading in bed. I do have a large collection of books.

 

[iBop]

I like comic paper books, I love drawing and once I wished I could be a painter.
But then my parents suggested me being a lawyer. My dream died away.

Every now and then I still read e-comics for both children and adults. Everyone actually could complain about what I am doing if I weren't an attorney,

 

[Moonbear]

ebooks are for a person like me who doesn't have a lot money to buy books...

They don't seem that much cheaper to me. Maybe for a hardbound book, they're a bargain, except you're not getting a hardbound copy then. They seem more expensive than paperback copies. I guess savings on the cost of paper are offset by the expense of maintaining servers and such to distribute the electronic versions? Or maybe they're just taking advantage and making a bigger profit as long as they can get away with it?

 

[Redbelly98]

I prefer electronic files of papers because I have so many, that it would take a lot of space if I printed them out, although I do print key papers so I can write notes on them.

Same here, I prefer electronic for journal articles because of storage space issues.

But for reading a book, give me paper. Can't quite put my finger on it, but with a paper book I have a good sense of where I am in the story (beginning, middle, end). With electronic, I feel rather lost in this way. Of course, electronic searching is a great feature lacking in paper books without an index.

I also like the convenience of extracting text or figures when I use particular journal articles. One of my interns also wrote a macro (in Excel) that can digitize (x,y) plots, so that we can recreate data for our own analysis.

Sounds cool. But how do you get the paper image into Excel in the first place? Or do I misunderstand?