Think the printing press is the best thing to happen to the written word?

09.05.2008

The Bite:
You might be write, but electronic book devices (aka e-book readers) aren't far behind. Digital readers make it easier, lighter, and more eco to carry everything Danielle Steele ever wrote anywhere you go. Now that's what we call movable type.
The Benefits: 
  • Turning the page on waste. E-books don't use paper or require fuel to ship, and it takes the same amount of energy to produce just four sheets of paper as it does to power a laptop for an hour (say, while you're downloading entire e-books).
  • No more dog-eared pages. With e-books, you can easily track down your fave passages.
  • 15th century book prices. (Well, cheaper after the initial investment, anyway.) With the Amazon Kindle reader, new NY Times best sellers cost about $10 (rather than the usual $20 and up), and classics are about $2.
  • Picture book-easy reading. E-book readers allow you to change text size and adjust brightness, and unlike computer screens, you can use 'em even in direct sunlight sans glare.
  • They're light as a bookworm. Weighing around 1/2 pound, you can take hundreds of books with you without straining those biceps.
Personally Speaking: 
To tell the truth, a lot of us love the smell of books and reading in the bath, but digi-readers are great for long vacations when we don't wanna lug five books (or one copy of War and Peace) with us on the plane.
Wanna Try: 
  • Amazon Kindle - wirelessly download more than 140,000 titles, plus access blogs and newspapers; you can use it 30 hours before it needs charging ($359).
  • Sony Reader - plug into your PC to download text formats like DOCs and PDFs; play music and read for about 20 hours before you need to charge it ($300).
Staley Krause

Cocktail Fact

The oldest known printed book is actually the Diamond Sutra, printed in China about 587 years before the Gutenberg Bible.

Bang For The Bite

You can't curl up with 'em in the bath, but if 10,000 Biters download a copy of David Sedaris' latest onto their e-readers rather than buying the hardback, we'll save about 85 trees.

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E-book readers allow you to change text size and adjust brightness, and unlike computer screens, you can use 'em even in direct sunlight sans glare. games adventure games

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