e-reading and me

I have never owned a device marketed solely as an e-reader device.  I have owned a lot of handheld devices, though.  One of my favourites was a Palm t|x.

Palm t|x

It currently sites somewhere in a box in my basement, its battery completely drained… dead.  But, it was great.  It was the first portable device I used on which I read several full-length novels.  For example, I reread a whole science fiction novel series on that device.  Then, I went on to Edgar Allan Poe and H. G. Wells (mostly because those authors have texts in the public domain).

Why did I use it to read books?  Because I was using the device constantly for other things and I always had it with me.  If I had ten minutes to kill, I could pull it out and read.  Not sure how I had the extra time but I remember reading a few Poe novels over the course of a year… but I never sat for five hours, or something, reading books on my Palm.  And I still buy paperback books and they are still they the best thing to have at the beach.  Sand is a bad thing to get in electronic devices.

My iPad 2 is another story:

Apple iPad 2

My iPad 2 is becoming the device I use more than my PC.  If I wasn’t taking any MET courses, I do not think I would be using my PC for much of anything.  I am not sure, but was it Steve Jobs who said PCs will soon become the workhorses–a machine you only use if you have something very big, complicated or intensive to accomplish.  But tablets will become (are!!)  your everyday device for most things.

UPDATE:  I am looking for the “PC as workhorse” quote somewhere… I want to know who first said it… the idea that PCs will become only used for complex tasks while tablet will be used for everything else.  I found a NYTimes article online that mentions this: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/21/technology/21tablet.html

Posted in: Week 06: eBooks