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In Defense of E-books

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DQI Bureau
New Update

Books have always held a fascination for a lot of people, and a lot of them,

being traditionally minded, feel that e-books will never take off. Can you, they

ask, curl up in bed with a good e-book on a cold winter night? They are right,

too. And for another thing, paper books are cheap, durable and easily available.

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But in spite of the above, it is important to realize that e-books have a lot

of advantages over paper. For one thing, while paper books are available in

plenty, one finds several old classics perennially out of print. With a good

e-book, you can pick up an old classic from Gutenberg and read it. It is

possible even today with a PC, but a PC is not tailor-made for comfort reading.

Paper, while versatile, is cumbersome. You have to kill a lot of really nice

trees to produce it, and this makes it e-unfriendly ("e" as in

environment, not electronic). Also, it weighs a ton–I have two trunks of

books, and put together, I know that they weigh more than me.

Elders and others who might suffer from eye problems may appreciate an e-book

because it can be configured to display large print. I’m sure my grandpa will

really like this feature. And for others like us who have been blessed with good

eyesight, there are still a lot of good features–like the ability to search

(as Unix gurus like to point out, you can’t grep dead trees) and the capacity

for higher personalization–you can choose your favorite font and point size,

and read more comfortably.

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While I definitely feel that e-books have a great future, I must admit that

the handling of this issue has fallen far short of the impressive. Instead of

ensuring that the right technology is in place, most vendors are adopting a

"let’s try it and see" attitude, which is what has given e-books a

bad name in the first place.

While the concept of e-books is great, people don’t buy great concepts.

They buy great products, which are cheaper or better–or better still, both

cheaper and better–than what they replace. Discerning customers are of course

willing to shell a few bucks extra for useful features, but even they tend to

hesitate if the product falls short of their expectations.

For e-books to take off, we need a device of the right form factor, shaped

like a medium sized novel. It should go easy on the power consumption, and have

a good display capability which makes it as easy to read as paper (I can dream,

can’t I?) It should be functional, possessing minimal features so that it

doesn’t confuse the non-techies among us, and have a simple design.

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And most importantly, it should be cheaper in the long run–that is to say,

if I have a hundred books each priced at $10, the e-book device should cost no

more than say $100, and each electronic copy should not cost more than $3, which

brings my total cost to $400, as opposed to $1,000 with the "hard"

books.

Parthian shot

Quite often, one comes across solutions in search of a problem. In the case

of e-books, this is fortunately not the case. Care however has to be taken to

avoid feature creepism. Vendors should fight the temptation to add a chicklet-sized

keyboard to an e-book to allow users to check mail while they read the latest

John Grisham. This will never do–devices other than PCs should do one or two

things, and do that well. It is possible that e-books can be used to read your

daily newspaper, but let’s stop it at that. At times, perfection is achieved

better by the elimination of features as opposed to their inclusion.

And finally, when printing first became possible, many would have complained

that the printed words lacked the charm and feel of a carefully hand-written

parchment. But just as they switched to paper, we too will embrace e-books one

day. As Sherlock Holmes says in A Study in Scarlet, "There is nothing new

under the sun."

Balaji N



The views expressed here are those of the author

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