E-Books vs Printed Materials

I think either one is fine, if a E-book gets a person to start reading again because of its digital format that is excellent.

I prefer having the actual book because I find it less straining to not be looking into a LCD/LED screen for several hours.

Well it generally seemed like not a large amount of people compared to other torrents. I think this is mostly due to the fact that people these days don't read as much as they watch tv/movies or play video games. I doubt they're losing a ton of e-book sales or anything and I'm sure things that aren't very popular aren't being pirated all that much.

So not so few people that the torrents are at risk of dying quickly but not so many that I think any company will ever care (well at least until e-books or whatnot become the primary way of reading).

I enjoy printed much more than its E-book counterpart. Especially if the book is old and the pages are a aged brown, The wonderful smell that it produces is amazing to me. E-books on the other hand just show off your new apple product.

Question is, Personal Library or fairly heavy apple product thats over priced?

Printed books dont exactly have a major restriction when it comes to the reader's taste. E-books do have this restriction and also buying one means it has to come from a certain online store therefor meaning it may not carry the book you want.
Plus, Book stores give discounts and i like that :3.

I like printed books. They will be worth more in the long run. I also like the flipping of pages.

Thinking back to my school days, and having to lug fat text books around, i think an electric piece with all of them in it would have been great. it might have influenced my doing homework, or lack there of. as for books to read for fun, i'd rather have the old paper and ink.

Or there could be people like me who stare at a screen of pixels enough during the day that makes me require at least one hobby which doesn't cause eye strain.


Can't people turn the brightness down on those things?

Reading in general can cause eye strain, it doesn't have to be on a screen.

I've never used an E-Book, but I don't think I'd like them anyway. Turning to specific pages would be a hassle and stuff.

I actually think turning to a specific page would be easier in an e-book, but thats just me.

At the very least, human's eyes can stand for looking at printed materials longer than looking at monitor screen ..



Yes, but you know ... sometimes oldies are hardheaded ones, they don't want to accept changes and technology development .. they keep it with their pace and still choosing what they think easier ..
flipping page >> turn on electronic devices (nice,easy and cozy)
and yep, ridiculous cost still stand, i will try out an e-reader if i have money later .. thanks for the advice

I still think children's books and pulp novels (you know, those crappy romance ones and sci junk ones) will keep printing alive: they're a commodity people like to be able to buy on the run, often, and discreetly.

I never could take E-Books seriously as it just doesn't feel... like reading? I don't know but E-Books rarely manage to capture my interest for anytime over 5 minutes. I tried reading a Sherlock Holmes story on my friend's Kindle but in the end I just went back to my books.

And besides, no E-book, comic/manga/hentai scan can beat the feeling of having a real hentai magazine in your hands.

I read physical books because to me, it has a certain charm to it and it DOESN'T RUN ON BATTERIES!!!!

I don't mind using electronic devices every once in a while but only when I am on the way and it is important to read it on the way as well.

I like physical books better.

However, my reader now has a dozen books and fanfiction in it, which I can carry anywhere. And its smaller than any hardbound, and thinner than most soft covers. I don't have to worry about mold (which a lot of my soft cover books are suffering from), it doesn't occupy have my living space (again, my older books), and, well, lets face it, I can download stuff from the internet, some of which simply are extremely rare/difficult to find IRL. If you're in the US, books are easier to find, but overseas? Almost impossible at times unless Amazon has it, then I have to pay over the internet (which I don't trust with my credit card), not to mention the shipping is sometimes worth more than the book. Shipping is so prohibitively expensive that the only time I buy a book from the US is when someone is going here for a vacation and I ask them to carry-on it in their luggage instead. Seriously, $40 for shipping for my last batch of US-bought books? Fuck that.

So while I like physical books better, my reader is just so dang convenient.

Well, if you go and compare such things, you must first look at a wider picture.

What we are comparing is alike the old ways of doing things compared to the new ways.
Well, if we compare then to today, I'd say we pretty much fucked up on a few things.

Ebooks are a great initiative, don't get me wrong, but if all the books were to be put into a single machine, what would happen?

Stories would loose their soul.

That is the purpose of a library. have you ever been in one? Like a very big one, with tons of rough covered books, stairs to go up the shelves, clercs telling you to be quiet?

Have you smelled it? Have you felt the atmosphere in there? The books "radiate" their stories and create the wonderful place that is a library. Libraries make books alive. they keep them there, on a shelf, like a promise of a good day, for someone to come and pick them up.

You can't replace the sight of a bookshelf filled with books that you've purchased and read personnally.
I would be extremely afflicted if my collection of books was to dissapear to be replaced.
Books have souls, and they have memory. They remind you of who you were when you bought them, what you thought when you first read them.
Books are...the image of their reader.

You can't replace books with a machine.
I just can't explain it its...visceral, it comes from the heart, when I imagine a world with no libraries, no books anywhere.
It wouldn't be a world to live in.

I prefer physical copies of the books. At least I know the book itself may be decent if it's been published and is in a book store or in a library, but with an e-book, you don;t really know the quality that you're getting.

My mother has a Nook, and she really enjoys is, but if she sees a book she really wants, she buys the physical copy.

But with what Gubi said, you just don't get the same feeling with an e-book than with a real book. Seriously, I've never been at the edge of my seat, as it were, when I was reading Dan Well's works, or the shear emotions running through me while reading Shadows of The Wind. Nothing compares to it.

Out of anything, e-books just have the convenience, but books have the soul.

Printed materials does look more natural and that has been identified since long ago, back then, people write things with the media of rocks or dry leaves (in my country), it's way of interpret someone's ideal, then it was a dynamical evolution towards our intelligence.

hence E-books does have the convenience side on it, it's up to you to choose between them, for all I know E-books does have the positive side, that they're not using any wooden material known as papers, thus they're more nature friendly in some way.

Sony is already doing that, although only across their products I believe. (You can see the details on all it does here).

As for the main question... I prefer books. Its more comfortable to read on a paper than on a shining monitor, specially if you're going to be reading for a long period of time (which I often do). For the same reason, I don't think the printing industry will die, unless they come up with a monitor in which it is as comfortable to read as in paper, but I don't see why the book sales would increase either.

Its just like any other good new invention, such as when horses stopped being used for transport due to new inventions. If they bring a better way to read things, then books will be substituted by it, there's no point in spending so much in paper production, printing and storage for books if you can have everything on a small space that doesn't consume any of those resources.

I'm old school so books it is for me. I think there's a certain feel of a book that you just don't get staring at a computer monitor.
Also being able to note down your thoughts on paper is very useful.