On his blog (Link below)  Shawn Blanc who has a blog  dedicated to all things Mac,   very much to my surprise admits to preferring his Kindle to his iPad for reading ebooks with.

It seems that about three months ago he bought a Kindle Touch ereader in order to be able to make an honest comparison with reading on his beloved iPad, and being a fair minded individual, he took it seriously, and stuck to reading on his Kindle.

To his considerable surprise, he discovered that the Kindle was a real pleasure to use for a number of reasons, specifically he gives the following reasons for his fondness of his Kindle (his words, not mine):-

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Every year all the makers of ereaders produce new models, but are they actually “new” enough to make it interesting for us to go out and replace our last year’s ereader with this year’s model?  I think not.

In the beginning was the Sony ereader:

In the beginning (he said in his best Biblical voice) we had a range of ereaders, which were all quite distinctive in one way or another.  A Sony was different to a Kindle and so it went.  But as time went by, and more and more people bought ereaders, and the basic technology developed, the dedicated ereaders all began to resemble each other in almost all respects.

From the point of view of one such as I, reviewing the latest ereaders has become a pretty dull business.. they are all so similar really, it is like reviewing portable DVD players…..

We now have the situation in which I think that there is not really any room for serious development for the dedicated ereader.   After all, they all function beautifully and fulfill their basic requirement (enabling us to read ebooks comfortably) pretty well perfectly.

Sure, some might wish to have beautiful colour screens, which we now almost have, and a faster start up, but that is about it really on the hardware side.   So I feel that in about another six months or so, once full colour e-Ink type screens are available, we will reach the end of the hardware development of the dedicated ereader.

New Firmware for ereaders… But is it relevant?

I am equally sure that the makers of dedicated ereaders will try and find useful, or at least useful sounding new software tricks to give us the idea that the latest ereader is worth trading our older models in for, but really I don’t see this as a really useful thing.  I know people who are still perfectly happy using ereaders they purchased years ago..

How many of you are still perfectly happy with your old Sony 505, or Kindle1 out there?  Lots of you I reckon.

Dedicated ereaders or tablets?

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Pay a monthly fee and in exchange be able to read one or more ebooks at no extra cost – what is known as The Subscription Model.  Or Ebook of the Month Clubs?

As my faithful readers will know (post on Amazon Prime), Amazon have just launched something like a subscription scheme as an addition to their Prime Membership deal, but this is very limited, both geographically (only for the USA) and in terms of content as well, only having about 5000 ebooks to choose from.

The only other version of this idea that I can bring to mind just now is a small start up in Spain, called 24 Symbols, which offers subscribers the opportunity to read on a computer or smart phone ebooks that are stored on a Cloud, and thus not downloaded onto the reader’s device.

Probably a nice idea, as far as it goes, but so far they apparently only have about 1000 ebooks on offer, all of which are from the public domain, so in other words, ebooks that you can get for yourself at no cost from sites like Gutenberg.

They are offering several schemes, free reading with advertisements, pay a monthly fee and you get the ebooks without advertisements.

Personally I don’t really see the benefit of this sort of scheme, as there is nothing in it for the big publishers, so they are not joining in with this, so the choice of ebooks remains very limited, and from the deeper levels of ebookania.

Ebook of the Month Club:

I suspect that an ebook version of Book of the Month type schemes is more likely to succeed, as it is interesting for publishers – their books get sold that way, and needs no advertising to support it, simply take the model of Book of the Month Club and replace the paper book with an ebook.. And there you have it.    A system that has proven itself over the years, infra-structure already in place, simply stop sending paper, and start sending data….

Link to 24 Symbols:  http://www.24symbols.com/

Link to Amazon’s ebook Prime: Click here

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So, subscription or Ebook of the Month, which would you prefer?

The joys or miseries of reading paper books rather than ebooks in bed:

I have briefly stopped reading my trusty Sony 650 as – sadly – I came across yet another bookshop that was closing the other day in Brisbane who were selling off their stock for as little  as $1 per book, which naturally I couldn’t let pass without buying a load of books.

So now I have a pile of lovely paper books to enjoy.

But, there are problems……….

However, having only read on my ereader for the last four or five months, I have discovered several reasons why I love my Sony so much – as opposed to reading paper books.

The first of these is simple comfort and ease with reading.

I tend to do the bulk of my reading in bed at night, and lie on one side as I do so.  This is easy with an ereader, just adjust the reading light onto the screen properly, get comfortable, and then all I have to do is press the Page Forward button at regular intervals, simple.   With a paper book I am constantly having to readjust the reading light as I move from the left hand page to the right hand page, I also have to hold the damn thing in place and keep changing my grip as I move from page to page…

I also find myself pressing the bottom of the page with my thumb, forgetting that this is a paper book I am reading, and thus keep being reminded of the amazing comfort and ease of reading with an ereader.

It doesn’t stop me enjoying the book I am reading, of course, but it is harder work, and much less relaxing.

Also, given my habit of falling asleep whilst reading, I almost always lose the page I was reading when I fell asleep…  So I have to hunt for it the next morning as I indulge myself in a short bit of reading before getting out of bed and starting the day.

I also miss the ability to increase the font size at will.   Many paper books have passages in italics or smaller fonts, which in bright light are no problem but at night with a relatively dim reading light, this is a real problem – especially for old geezers such as myself.

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Miratech have had a good look at how people read with an iPad and  a Newspaper and the results are quite surprising.

It seems that when we read a newspaper on a device such as an iPad, we skim and hardly bother to read any articles properly, and not surprisingly, we retain very little of the information that is there.   On the other hand, when reading a newspaper (a real one, on paper), we actually read the various articles and what is more, equally unsurprisingly, we retain much more of the information in those articles.

This experiment was well set up, it seems to me, to give reliable results, to quote from their White Paper:

Our study analyzes the differences between iPad and newspaper reading patterns. We asked a representative sample of participants to read similar information from a printed newspaper, and from its iPad version. Half the participants were asked to read the iPad first and the other half were asked to read the newspaper first.
Participants in the study were already iPad users, so we avoided any bias associated with learning how to use the iPad (discovering the functions, playing with the zoom, etc.).
They were allowed to freely manipulate both the paper and iPad versions, and we monitored their behavior as they read. We used eye tracking technology to follow their gaze path. After reading, we measured how well they remembered the articles and ads.

So, in rather more detail, here are some of the results:

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The original Kno monster ereader has died?

I have been following, or at least trying to follow the development of the Kno ereaders – you may remember them, a couple of insanely huge ereaders aimed specifically at students and teachers.

Sadly it is starting to seem to me that this amazing pair of ereaders are yet another example of an idea (good or bad) that was announced with much loud trumpeting and noise, and then sort of quietly faded away into an embarrassed silence.

I gather from their press department that they have managed to ship a few examples of their ereaders, but I have no information about how many those few may actually be, and what sort of reactions they had from those lucky few who have managed to get their hands on one or other of these ereaders.

The last news (for want of a better word) was way back in January, when I was told that they were experiencing supply problems with their ereaders, and that they would let me know when they were in a position to start serious spreading of these wondrous devices…. since when, total silence.

Also, there have been no new updates on their blog…….  All is stationary apparently.

Thus, I conclude that the two Kno ereaders will probably never actually happen in any real sense, which is sort of a pity, as they were really rather extraordinary devices, which I for one would have loved to have got my hands on.   But that is not to be, I suspect.

For what it is worth, here is the link to their website:  http://kno.com/