The march of technology
Tuesday, November 30th, 2010 03:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
caddymanFinally after all this time I have decided to read some Sherlock Holmes stories. I’m not sure why it’s taken me so long to get around to it – possibly because the only copies of the stories I ever owned were printed in an unwieldy huge volume complete with pictures from the original Strand Magazine. Furtle has a collection that is even bigger, over three impossibly big volumes. They are splendid to have on the shelf, but impractical for general reading.
I downloaded the iBooks app for iPhone and, courtesy Project Gutenberg, downloaded The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. I am part way through the former.
I have to say that they are quite readable and they come at my favourite price: free.
They have also forced me to re-evaluate my opinion of electronic books. When Amazon released the Kindle, I wasn’t sure that I saw the attraction. At least Apple’s iPad does other things too, but the Kindle at least as far as I understand it, is simply an eBook reader. Anyway, having managed quite happily to read on such a small platform as my iPhone, I am warming to the idea of having a mobile library in the same way I have all my music available to me on my iPod. I don’t think that I would wish to replace all my books with eBooks: I love the damned things too much, but for straight forward portability, a single device with a dozen or so paperbacks beats a dozen or so paperbacks hands down.
I guess the next step, is to wait until products like the Kindle or iPad have enough memory to hold a few movies or seasons of my favourite TV series, a few dozen books and about 20,000 songs and with a battery life of days rather than hours and are made available at a price rather less than my immortal soul and I’ll be well set for portable entertainment.
At least until the first time I drop it or spill a drink on it, of course; in that case, we’re back to the inevitable conclusion that sometimes low-tech values of the original Gutenberg/Caxton variety are best. You can read a squidgy paperback. A waterlogged Kindle is a paperweight.
I downloaded the iBooks app for iPhone and, courtesy Project Gutenberg, downloaded The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. I am part way through the former.
I have to say that they are quite readable and they come at my favourite price: free.
They have also forced me to re-evaluate my opinion of electronic books. When Amazon released the Kindle, I wasn’t sure that I saw the attraction. At least Apple’s iPad does other things too, but the Kindle at least as far as I understand it, is simply an eBook reader. Anyway, having managed quite happily to read on such a small platform as my iPhone, I am warming to the idea of having a mobile library in the same way I have all my music available to me on my iPod. I don’t think that I would wish to replace all my books with eBooks: I love the damned things too much, but for straight forward portability, a single device with a dozen or so paperbacks beats a dozen or so paperbacks hands down.
I guess the next step, is to wait until products like the Kindle or iPad have enough memory to hold a few movies or seasons of my favourite TV series, a few dozen books and about 20,000 songs and with a battery life of days rather than hours and are made available at a price rather less than my immortal soul and I’ll be well set for portable entertainment.
At least until the first time I drop it or spill a drink on it, of course; in that case, we’re back to the inevitable conclusion that sometimes low-tech values of the original Gutenberg/Caxton variety are best. You can read a squidgy paperback. A waterlogged Kindle is a paperweight.