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The evolution of books

How do you take your book, electronically or hardcopy?

A lot of people wouldn't dare putting down a book for an Amazon Kindle or a smartphone, but some of us have.  I've read probably about 5 ebooks over the past 5 years.  My first was on a Palm Treo 650 and the others on my IPhone.

I keep the full sized Webster's Dictonary that used to take up valuable real estate on my desk on my phone now.

Colleges are even starting to explore ebooks for text books. A move that could save shoulders of students everywhere.

My biggest complaint of ebooks are the cost.  In many cases the price of a hard copy and an ebook are the same.  But the cost of producing the two has to be vastly cheaper for the electronic version.  There are several out of copyright books you can find for free if you dig around.  EReader, the program I use comes with a few titles like "Last of the Mohican's" and "Tarzan."  The latter I recently read and really enjoyed.

So what up? How do you take your literature?

DVD vs. Blu Ray

It doesn't seem like it was that long ago when VHS tapes outnumbered DVDs at your local video rental store.  

Now you can't even find VHS tapes in many outlets.  Over the past 6 months I've watched the Blu-ray section expand at my local Blockbuster.  So, should we all run out and get a Blu-ray player because the DVD is going the way of the video tape?  I say not so fast.

I have a Blu-ray player via Sony's Playstation 3.  It's not like I went out and bought a player.  I will talk about the Playstation 3 in greater depth in another post some other time.  

The cost of Blu-ray discs and players has leveled off recently and you can get relatively inexpensive players.  The picture is very nice, your TV has to be newer and accept HDMI or composite connections to play Blu-ray in it's HD glory.  

Not all discs are the same.  Depending on the movie and the transfer some films look much better than others.  If you rent or buy an older selection (pre 2006) it may look about the same as your standard DVD.  But some movies really pop on Blu-ray.

Blu-ray also offers a ton of extras that DVDs can't because a Blu-ray disc can hold much more information.  

That said, I still don't think it's worth the purchase.  Why?  Because I don't think the format war is over and when I asked who wins between DVD and Blu-ray, I really think it may be neither.  I believe the format of the future is digital downloads.  

More and more of us are using our Tivo's, Cable boxes, Playstation 3s, Apple TVs or other devices to download and watch what we used to rent or buy.  In fact you can rent or buy this way, of course it requires high speed internet.  The content is available in HD, and you don't have to worry about returning it to the store.  

So my advice is hold off, don't feel pressured to buy Blu-ray, thinking it's going to take over DVD just yet.  Of course if you have to have one, shop around and find a good deal, consider a Playstation 3, something that will do more than just playback. 

Got GPS?

Over the summer we took a trip to Gainesville, GA for my brother in law's wedding.  I knew the drive would involve much more than just the highway route, it would include some rural roads as well.  So I decided to head to Best Buy and pick up a Global Positioning System, or GPS.  

I read up on them in Consumer Reports and on user forums at various websites and decided to go with the Garmin Nuvi 260W.   I like the model because of it's wide-screen and that it will call out actual street names when giving directions (it says, 'Turn left in 100 feet on War Memorial Drive,' as opposed to 'turn left in 100 Feet.')

I loved it on the vacation, but afterwords, would I need it for just around town driving?  After all i can get to work and to the kid's school and everywhere else a typical day takes me without navigation assistance.  I put the device away and only used it a few times after our trip until around November.  That's when I decided to just go ahead and leave it attached full time.

It comes in handy now and again, say I need to cut through a neighborhood to avoid traffic.  Plus I've learned the names of streets that I've been seeing for a couple of years.

Now cell phones are coming integrated with GPS technology, many cars offer them as an option.  I think more and more of us will be exposed to them over the next few years.  Are they necessary?  I don't know, but they sure are convenient.

The IBook lives!

My first Apple laptop was a white dual USB IBook I purchased in late 2001.  I used it daily until May, 2006 when I became the proud owner of a Macbook.

The IBook was pretty much toast by then, a problem with the logic board rendered it useless.  I was at the Apple Store in St. Louis and took it in to see if it could be salvaged and for around $200 it was resurrected.   It became a backup for when my wife or I needed to get on the Internet but the other one was using the Macbook.  Then came our IMac in the summer of 2008 and the IBook went untouched for months.  

Then one day my wife said she wanted to buy a portable DVD player so our 3 year old could watch movies while she watches TV at night.  

It hit me, the IBook.  I plugged it in, popped Finding Nemo into the DVD drive, and viola, my wife was free from forced kiddie moving watching at night, and my son had his first Mac.  

He can even work the space-bar to pause and play at will now, and he's pleased as a pig in mud to have a computer just like his dad.

Vive le IBook!

Macworld Keynote

I certainly hope this year's keynote, Apple's last, will be available for download shortly.  I'd like to play it before I sleep as I think it would be a great cure for insomnia.

ILife '09 is nice and all.  New IPhoto with some features that will surely frustrate me, a revised IMovie that sounds like a big improvement over the last version.

The best part of the suite sounds like Garageband which will now offer music lessons, even some for purchase by musicians like Sting and John Fogarty.

New Macbook Pro 17" with the unibody design.

Updated ITunes, the good news from it is that many more offerings will be stripped of the sound impairing DRM.

Where was the Mac Mini update, something new for the IPhone, a new device of some kind, something innovative?  In a way I'm kind of glad, I can't afford any new toys right now.

The keynote ended with Tony Bennett singing "The Best is Yet to Come."  I certainly hope so.

Switchers

I made the leap from the PC's about 8 years ago.  After years of frustration over registry problems and other assorted Windows conundrums I took the advice of a close friend and switched.  I haven't looked back since.  However I've felt like an outsider among many of my friends and coworkers since my conversion.  

That's starting to change as the more and more folks are starting to migrate from the oft frustrating and plain world of XP and Vista to OSX.  From late June to late September 2008 Apple shipped over 2.5 million Macintosh computers.  I think the masses are beginning to see the light.  

Over the past month, 4 of my friends made the jump and purchased Macbooks.  And I think by and large they are very happy with their choice.  

So have you ever thought of switching?  Why, why not?