I have been reading e-books for a long time.
I remember in 1999 I had a Texas Instruments personal organizing
device that had calendar and calculator and notepad and other things
on it. It was one of those calculator sized devices that had a flip
cover on it and was basically a personal organizer. And I would put
e-books on it and read it as I rode the bus and train in the
Washington DC area.
I graduated from that to my Handspring visor devices. They ran the
PalmPilot operating system and allowed me to carry e-books on them.
I used the graffiti text capture software so much that I can still to
this day right on a notepad in graffiti style writing and read it even
though it looks weird.
But I read e-books on my Handspring Visor devices. I bought them
instead of the PalmPilot because Palm Pilots were way too expensive
and Handspring Visor was bucking the system and offering devices that
were more expandable at less cost. I remember getting a handful of
plug-in devices for my Handspring visor. One of my favorites was the
GPS plug-in. I would watch as we drove down the road and my GPS would
calculate where we were even though I didn't have a map or anything. I
would plug in coordinates and capture coordinates as we traveled.
Which I still do today.
But I digress. E-books. Now I use Amazon Kindle e-books almost exclusively. I still purchase some PDF e-books and then read them on
multiple devices. I take my e-books from Amazon and convert them to
text so that I can do what I want with the text. I usually if I
really want to read the book completely will run the text through text
to speech software and listen to them. Or have started using a couple
of e-book readers to read my text files and converted Amazon Kindle
e-books. It all gets very complicated. And I love it!
But e-books have become my main way of consuming books. I have two
Kindle paper white waterproof E-ink readers that I use. Why two?
Because if one craps out I want to be able to keep reading on the
other one. Even though I can read all my e-books on my phone using
the Kindle app and on my iPad using the Kindle app there also. Or I
can read them in text files on any device that I want to read on.
But I like the Kindle Paperwhite readers because they use e-ink,
they're completely visible and easy to read in bright sunlight or in
the dark with their backlight, and they're waterproof so I can take
him in a pool or tub and not worry about them getting fried. Although
I haven't tested that rigorously!
But I love e-books and I love the ability to be able to read
electronically and carry a library with me wherever I go. It's bad
enough that I can search the Internet and get any piece of information
that I want almost instantly, but I prefer to carry lots of books with
me so that if I want to read something or review something that I read
a few years ago I can just pull it up anywhere.
I love modern technology!
