TreeHugger Picks: Electronic Reading with E-Books and Readers
by Collin Dunn, Corvallis, OR, USA 
on 02.26.08
As Mike mentioned earlier today, in the green smackdown between reading online vs. reading dead tree publications, the answer is: it depends, on a lot of things. Fair enough, but when it comes to bringing books and the like into the electronic world, what are some of our options?
 | 1) Amazon's Kindle is trying to do for e-books what the iPod/iTunes combo did for digital music; some publishing executives think Amazon’s entrance into the e-book world as a major test for the long-held notion that books and newspapers may one day be consumed on a digital device. You don't have to wait to read TreeHugger on Kindle, though. |
 | 2) Before their was Kindle, there was the Sony Reader, an interesting device in its own right. It uses no power to hold its image so only changing pages consumes any juice; it is apparently very clear and easy to read, and you can adjust the font size to suit your aging eyes.about which David Pogue, of the New York Times, says,"The Sony Reader is an impressive achievement, and an important step toward a convenient alternative to bound books. |
 | 3) TreeHugger Lloyd is a big fan of the New York Times slick online reader; he says it "is so good that I might just dispense with the Dead Tree Version. It looks good, is completely intuitive, updates itself and completely changes the experience of reading news on a computer. It may also be the first thing that Microsoft has done in years that is cooler than Apple." The remaining two picks are after the jump... |
 | 4) Palm's Foleo was pretty universally panned by our gadget-loving brethren at Gizmodo and Engadget, but we liked it as an online reader; anyone who is interested in green computing is trying to get as much as they can out of as little as possible, the least power consumed, the least hardware on their desk, the most flexibility from their components, and Foleo delivers. |
 | 5) The paperless movement is helping user in an age of e-readers, as families are going paperless far faster than businesses; they have to pay the price of ink jet cartridges. “Paper is no longer the master copy; the digital version is,” says Brewster Kahle, the founder and director of the Internet Archive, a nonprofit digital library. “Paper has been dealt a complete deathblow. When was the last time you saw a telephone book?” |
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I think a note book computer with a flash memoir and no moving parts would be better.
I am so over having one device do everything. I wouldn't mind replacing all my books or magazines with one device. It doesn't have to be a phone or an mp3 player. It feels so much more like actually reading when you have a specific device that doesn't do anything but display text.
99.9% of what I do on the internet is read or look. I rarely type, except for searches. An ereader with a browser and the ability to input text is all I could ever ask for. And there is one, but it is hella expensive
The Irex Iliad. I am holding out on ereaders until they are more like this, only with faster refresh rates and color. I am tempted to cast my vote of approval and buy a cheaper model.
http://www.irextechnologies.com/products/iliad
Sadly the Kindle is worthless. Buy 4 $100 laptops for children. you can pick up a Dell Laptop for the $400 it costs, and it can't read PDF's and you have to pay to convert .doc files to something the device can read.
Amazon's cyber-flop
I will agree that these ereaders are a great leap forward, but what about the recycling of these? We are already dealing with a huge amount of ewaste as it is, and given most of us are on laptops as it is, I have a hard time seeing why I need another device when I already have so many.
r
china-crossroads.com
I really want the Sony Reader, but it's so ridiculously expensive than only insane people will buy it. It's a real shame because the little gizmo has a lot of potential.
I can't remember the last time I've read a paper book. I've even e-mailed publishers asking if I can buy the book in electronic form rather than paper. A few will actually sell it that way but usually only slightly below the cost MSRP of the paper book so its still less expensive to buy the book from amazon or someone.
I love the idea of these things, but there's a lot of bad potential out there. If all books become digital, we'll see the same thing happen as with music. It will all be pirated and downloadable. Writers and publishers will loose tons of money on books sales.
I surprised you didn't mention the OLPC - it has great promise as a green e-book reader. Although the READ activity it ships with doesn't work all that well - there's other linux pdf readers out there (evince) that can be loaded.
Are you people nuts? You'd rather read books off of a piece of plastic than on paper, a product that is reusable, recyclable and made from renewable sources? Way to get off track for the sake of convenience.