Big Kindle on Campus

At 9 x 6 inches the kindle DX is texbook sized, perfect. While I love the idea of eTextbooks, I can't help feeling we are a long way off. Sure a heavy textbook can be replaced by a lightweight Kindle. But that is far from the whole "book" picture. Look at how many books lie open in front of someone doing research or simply checking sources. The desk is littered with open books that look like so many open screens to me.

Our regular students often have many documents (or work areas) open at the same time

1. The Textbook.
2. The Exercise book.
3. The Answer book.
4. The Keyboard cheat sheet.
5. The Note pad.
6. The computer screen (where the work gets done).
7. The Keyboard.
8. The Mouse.

That would amount to as many as eight Kindles open on the desk at once, at $500 dollars a Kindle DX, this is not likely to take over soon. But long term, ePaper will be common as books today in say ... 10 years ... 20 years... I can see control-less epaper that responds to touch, etc... Or an epaper slot on my phone/nano etc. where I can display the contents on huge sheets of epaper, but only carry the tiny control/memory unit in my hand. Steve.

Switched On: Big Kindle on Campus -- Engadget: "Textbooks, on the other hand, have no major electronic competition, and print still retains advantages such as better readability and color. But digital textbooks must compete with used textbooks, a major market on college campuses, and likely will not be able to be resold if other digital content is a predecessor."

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