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Comment by hsmyers | Hacker News Reader

It is getting to the point where the only advantages to 'real' books left are: 1. they can be autographed (thank you Mr. Knuth and Mr. Brodie) and 2. they make really good insulation during winters...

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E-books are still an inferior technology to physical books in some ways. I can't, for example, draw a diagram in the margins of an E-book. I can write notes and highlight, but it basically stops there.

With Amazon (not sure about other providers), there's a risk of remote wipe. E-books are often not really yours, and DRM makes that doubly true. The risk of loss with e-books is significantly higher than with physical books.

I agree that the DRM issue definitely needs to be addressed, but I wouldn't say it's a flaw with electronic books so much as a flaw with the marketplace they are in.

Especially in this case, that limitation doesn't apply.

I definitely wish I could draw in my ebooks though, since some things can't be put into words.

Also:

  - it's nice to stare at something other than a screen
  - like the touch, feel and smell (?) of physical books
  - books carry some history, they age and change.. 
    (that coffee stain reminds me of my time as a student)

I'm not sure you can quantify the risk of loss with e-books being significantly higher than with physical books.

There are a lot of house fires, any one of them could destroy your book collection (even the smoke damage alone can make then unusable) - same with floods, vandalism, etc.

How many people have lost their e-book collection due to remote wipe? And if you're going to talk about the person who was wiped by Amazon, it's worth checking the conclusion of that story...

I was thinking more along the lines of accidental data loss than everyone having to worry about remote wipes all the time. I should've made that more clear.

> With Amazon (not sure about other providers), there's a risk of remote wipe. E-books are often not really yours, and DRM makes that doubly true. The risk of loss with e-books is significantly higher than with physical books.

You can mostly fix this with Calibre though (with DRM at the moment at least, it could always change). As I said in another thread, when I connect my Kindle it downloads all my new books and strips the DRM. And my Calibre library gets backed up.

Well, OTOH ever tried to type a word and click "find" in a physical book?

Technical references are (imo) best served as HTML, second best as E-books and the dead-tree variant is by far the worst.

Novels and other collector's items are different.

My back will tell you that is WAY better to carry the iPad mini than, say, the Picaxe book. My essential book collection not even fit in my backpack. Speaking about DRM I prefer noDRM publishers like O'Reilly, Pragmatic despite being a little more expensive. I avoid Amazon e-books. Also ePub is superior than the azw mobi format.

I'm not opposed to e-books at all. I just submit that they are not the death of physical books, and it would be a shame if they were.

Physical books are much easier to quickly skim through, to jump to a random page (based on position rather than page number), I also find the search of most ebook readers (looking at the Kindle) to be rather bad.

However these are more due to the current tech around ebooks more than a fundamental property of them.

Richard Stallman, The Danger of Ebooks (pdf): http://stallman.org/articles/ebooks.pdf

This is much better than my half-baked response.

3. You don't need electricity to read them

My kindle goes two weeks of heavy use between charges. At some point, these things are just going to have solar cells on them.

Even though I rarely even used a classic paper book to read in the last years I still consider books to be more comfortable and less distracting. Furthermore as long as we don't resolve the issue of long term data storage books are going to continue to play an important role.

E-ink sort of addresses the 'distracting' part for me. I find it much more pleasant to read than from LCD. No direct light shining into the eyes, and the low frame rate is also an advantage here as it means no annoying animations and 'real time' distractions.

Problem with e-books is DRM. I have to put up with Amazon or Google Play books app which might not suit my needs. I can't export it. I can't share it with friends like a physical book.

Many ebooks (prag prog for example) are available without drm.

3. They have a more pleasant reading experience (arguably the most important part of a book) for many people. I just roll my eyes when I see these kinds of dismissive statements. Just being honest.

I make my own indexes. Example:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/41758452@N00/sets/7215763232553...

I object - they also make good monitor stands!

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