I could see the benefits of an ereader for novels and similar type of reading, but for any type of research book that would benefit from taking notes in the margins, underlining, or simply being able to see two or three pages at once, they are utterly useless. And lets not even get into the need to sometimes have more than one book open together... how the heck would you accomplish that with an ereader?
Rubbish.
(At least until the tech advances and is cheap enough to own multiple ereaders, but thats a ling ways away)
@Hazdaz Although no longer on the market, I do this with my Irex DR800SG. Developers have done a pretty fantastic job improving the GUI to include tabbed reading on top of the annotation capability (and ability to move those annotated PDFs back onto a computer). Even with several PDFs (large files, dozen of pages) and epubs open, I have under half a second screen refresh. The DR1000, as I understand, has all of this and more.
I'm in a PhD program and use the reader for pretty much all reading of any materials for class, research/grant preparation, and also for personal reading.
Flipping back and forth to differenr pages is not the same as having multiple pages open at the same time. And sometimes you can't quite find what you are looking for but quickly flipping through a chapter you can find it... 1/2 a second sounds fast for an ebook but no way can that be as fast as a real book.
Also how do you handle sketches, instead of text notes?
Jotting down a note/sketch/whatever on paper is quick and dirty. Even attempting to do the same on an ebook, i would imagine is much more involved process.
I'm sorry but this technology is way too early and limited at this point in time. I could definitely see some huge benefits to going digital - like being able to search - but for now I feel the negatives far outweigh the benefits.
@Hazdaz Do you need more books to have open when you are learning and it is not convenient for you to have tabs? So then you would need more eReaders for your comfort. Anyway usually when I used to read textbooks, I was bookmarking pages which were relevant for my study. So the flipping back and fort or jumping to any other page was not and searching exercise. The same I can do on my iRex DR1000. Can place bookmarks and then very easily with two clicks I am able to go to any relevant page which I need and with the same speed as I would need to flip hard text books.
@Hazdaz I suspect you don't have multiple copies of the same book opened to several different pages. That'd be silly. E-readers have bookmarks. 1/2 second sounds fast for Sony or Nook or Kindle, but Irex just has something going (and, in fact, Engadget really does a pretty lousy job when reviewing features of the DR800SG).
I sketch on the DR800 just as I would on paper, except that it's using electrons. If I want to sketch or write notes, there's a notebook/sketch pad. If I want to write in the margins of a journal article, I just click on the pen (usually already done) and write or sketch -- freehand, not from a keyboard. Doodles happen as easily as writing letters.
The technology isn't too early or limited. Most corporations are just sacrificing what an academic (or possibly business person) might find exceptionally useful in favor of the minimums that the mass market will request (and thus gear a device toward a lower production cost for a lower consumer cost to sell more units, etc.).
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I could see the benefits of an ereader for novels and similar type of reading, but for any type of research book that would benefit from taking notes in the margins, underlining, or simply being able to see two or three pages at once, they are utterly useless. And lets not even get into the need to sometimes have more than one book open together... how the heck would you accomplish that with an ereader?
Rubbish.
(At least until the tech advances and is cheap enough to own multiple ereaders, but thats a ling ways away)
@Hazdaz Although no longer on the market, I do this with my Irex DR800SG. Developers have done a pretty fantastic job improving the GUI to include tabbed reading on top of the annotation capability (and ability to move those annotated PDFs back onto a computer). Even with several PDFs (large files, dozen of pages) and epubs open, I have under half a second screen refresh. The DR1000, as I understand, has all of this and more.
I'm in a PhD program and use the reader for pretty much all reading of any materials for class, research/grant preparation, and also for personal reading.
@nursehorrible
Flipping back and forth to differenr pages is not the same as having multiple pages open at the same time. And sometimes you can't quite find what you are looking for but quickly flipping through a chapter you can find it... 1/2 a second sounds fast for an ebook but no way can that be as fast as a real book.
Also how do you handle sketches, instead of text notes?
Jotting down a note/sketch/whatever on paper is quick and dirty. Even attempting to do the same on an ebook, i would imagine is much more involved process.
I'm sorry but this technology is way too early and limited at this point in time. I could definitely see some huge benefits to going digital - like being able to search - but for now I feel the negatives far outweigh the benefits.
@Hazdaz Do you need more books to have open when you are learning and it is not convenient for you to have tabs? So then you would need more eReaders for your comfort. Anyway usually when I used to read textbooks, I was bookmarking pages which were relevant for my study. So the flipping back and fort or jumping to any other page was not and searching exercise. The same I can do on my iRex DR1000. Can place bookmarks and then very easily with two clicks I am able to go to any relevant page which I need and with the same speed as I would need to flip hard text books.
@Hazdaz I suspect you don't have multiple copies of the same book opened to several different pages. That'd be silly. E-readers have bookmarks. 1/2 second sounds fast for Sony or Nook or Kindle, but Irex just has something going (and, in fact, Engadget really does a pretty lousy job when reviewing features of the DR800SG).
I sketch on the DR800 just as I would on paper, except that it's using electrons. If I want to sketch or write notes, there's a notebook/sketch pad. If I want to write in the margins of a journal article, I just click on the pen (usually already done) and write or sketch -- freehand, not from a keyboard. Doodles happen as easily as writing letters.
The technology isn't too early or limited. Most corporations are just sacrificing what an academic (or possibly business person) might find exceptionally useful in favor of the minimums that the mass market will request (and thus gear a device toward a lower production cost for a lower consumer cost to sell more units, etc.).
Also, I agree with @hecki.