
Kindle experiment falls flat at Princeton - shrikant
http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2010/02/22/25262/
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jrockway
"Falls flat" or "some people said they didn't like it a lot"?

I would have loved the Kindle when I was in school. I remember carrying around
5 different textbooks all day, and that was not particularly fun -- especially
since we didn't really ever use the whole textbook. (The $100 spent for each
just added insult to injury...)

One thing I liked about textbooks was the ability to doodle in them while in
class. It was a good way to pass the time in boring lectures, and is not
easily replicated on the Kindle.

~~~
mseebach
> especially since we didn't really ever use the whole textbook.

I saw some people at my university chopping the big textbooks up in sections
and putting each in a binder. Worked wonders for the weight, but I'm not sure
what it did to resale value.

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sh1mmer
This seems like a better model for the iPad. The kind of heavy note taking
interaction means they were looking more for a PDA-ish replacement.

The Kindle is very much optimized for reading, taking some notes is definitely
possible, but the quality of the interaction has been traded off with issues
like battery life and cost.

The iPad however has traded a lot of battery life for a much richer
interaction model which might make a lot more sense in this context.

~~~
ThomPete
To be honest I am not that impressed with the kindle battery life. I wonder if
the wireless connection uses battery even when it's not in use.

~~~
sh1mmer
My DX seems to. I only ever switch the wireless on when I'm getting my weekly
Economist or buying a book in the store.

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kalid
I think this was a biased study -- they were used in upper-level politics
classes in the Woody Woo school, which require lots of discussion about the
reading itself (1300+ printed pages). Using kindles for paper-saving purposes
misses the point of the device [they can save paper by having people print
double-sided (or 4 pages per side) and handing out magnifying glasses ;)].

If the kindles were used for PDFs for math/engineering/cs classes, I think
there'd be much better reception. You'd save the trouble of lugging around
giant books, where the focus is less on the book as a source, and more on
examples/understanding the material. You can't exactly plow through math
papers so it's ok to have one page flip every 5 minutes. Also, PDFs are
rendered page by page so you can easily jump to a certain one if needed.

I have a kindle and ebook readers are definitely not for detailed, interactive
experiences. The main convenience is having dozens of books on hand that you
can read or reference (but not mark up) easily.

~~~
ghshephard
Re: "If the kindles were used for PDFs for math/engineering/cs classes, I
think there'd be much better reception."

Absolutely not. I have a K1, K2, iPhone Kindle, and read about 200-300
pages/week on them. They are great for fiction, long reading, essay reading
but are absolute fails when it comes to Mathematics, technical texts,
diagrams, or anything with colored illustrations.

And, don't underestimate the amount of rapid random flipping you do in a
mathematics text book - bouncing around pulling up forms for integration by
parts, trying to track down lemma's for proofs, etc... The kindle is _useless_
for rapid random page flipping - sequential or footnote read-n-back only (The
footnote navigation is actually pretty good).

Finally - PDFs on a kindle are converted into free form text (poorly,
particularly with diagrams - a page which can normally handle about 5 diagrams
on paper, can only handle 2 on a kindle) - you lose the page by page
rendering, except in those rare cases where you pull them over as page-images,
and trust me - fast way to bring your Kindle (K1/K2) to a screeching halt -
also unreadable.

I have high hopes for the iPad in this space, but time will tell. I'll be
waiting in line though when it comes out.

~~~
newhouseb
I used to have a K2, but upgraded to a DX (or rather was gifted one). It's
just barely big enough to read Academic two-column papers without making your
eyes bleed, and the native PDF support works great, which is fantastic.

But regardless, the thing is still useless in a live classroom discussion
environment where you need to page faster than 0.2 pages per second.

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postfuturist
The issue is mainly with the software. An open source platform would allow the
university to tailor the software of the device to the needs of the classroom
for which is was not originally designed. Also, the keyboard was prohibitively
small, which would suggest that maybe the solution is laptops which are
probably already owned by most students and are open platforms for software
development.

~~~
jacobolus
There’s no way each university is going to write the whole software stack for
an ebook reader. Given current hardware and software, laptops are a poor
substitute for hard copies of all the reading (at least in my experience).
Making software that’s useful enough to replace printed pages is going to take
decent-sized teams years of development effort.

~~~
stcredzero
With the tools we have nowadays, it should take 2 or 3 about 4 months. Take a
look at One Note and Inkskein. I think the Inkskein team is one guy.

~~~
jacobolus
Inkseine is a research project that has been in progress for years, not a
shipping product. A few months? Are you joking?

This paper about it from 2007 has seven authors, guys who have spent their
careers on similar technology. I can’t tell if it’s down to just one guy by
now. <http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1240666>

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Luyt
> _The inability to quickly navigate between documents and view two or more
> documents at the same time also frustrated users._

On my eBook reader (not a Kindle, btw) the bookmarking is also woefully
inadequate. Only six bookmarks in total, and no way to see to which document
they link, or when that document was last accessed.

This is definately an area to improve eBook reading software.

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sekou
In order to thrive a device is going to need a stylus for highlighting and
ideally the ability to recognize handwriting, if not then at least it needs to
be able to save handwritten notes. Things will get far more interesting with
tech that enables student collaboration.

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jasonlotito
My current problems with e-readers:

1\. Power consumption. I already have numerous other gadgets needing power.
Having yet another device that needs power to work means setting up yet
another place for it to charge. Granted, books need more storage space, so
this is balanced.

2\. Very limiting. I have numerous technology books, and often I'm flipping
back and forth between two or three. I don't see being able to do this with a
single device.

3\. It's a single purpose device. I already have too many devices alread (iPod
and Phone), and I find that too much still. Couple that ear phones, keys, and
a wallet, it's far too much stuff I need to carry around. An e-book reader
would be just one more thing I'd need to carry around.

4\. Lending capabilities is non-existent. Unless the person also has an e-book
reader (and here I'm making the assumption that I can even lend the book from
device to device), they can't be lent the book. I've done this enough that
it's actually rather important.

5\. Going beyond the lending problem, I'm not alone, and my family might want
to read something as well. Current e-book readers mean needing one for every
person. Throw DRM concerns on top of that, and I don't know how it could be
handled. If I want to read one book, and my wife another book, and we have
only one e-book reader...

6\. Cost. While an individual device isn't that expensive, you still have to
buy a lot of books to make up for the difference in price. Even if you read a
lot like me, not all my reading is done with books. I'm a big Audible fan, so
this cuts into my time as well. But still, the device is expensive, usability
is still awkward.

Side note: I've tried out Sony's e-book readers, and maybe it's just the floor
models, but they seem awful, cumbersome, and something I would expect to see
as an early alpha. Buttons are slow to react, touch-screen is finicky, and
whats with the ugly flashing black screen every time it changes pages? God
help me if I want to scroll to a certain page. End note.

Obviously both MS and Apple, amongst other manufacturers, see the potential
with the tablet like devices. The magic device will solve the 'hard to read
for long periods' problem, as well as the cost problem. Oddly enough, I
constantly think of Star Trek and their pads they carry around. They have a
lot of them, and treat them rather roughly. That's the direction I think
people need to take, using those 'data pads' as a reference for how they could
be used.

For some reason, I think Microsoft will get there first.

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korch
I was surprised by their common complaint that the Kindle doesn't have page
numbers! What were they thinking to leave out that feature?! It cripples the
usefulness of the device for heavy reading over longer time spans.

~~~
newhouseb
They don't have page numbers per se, but they do have page ranges. Because you
can change the text size, actual page numbers themselves completely change.
The numbering system that the Kindle uses is based, from what I can tell, on
words/sentences/paragraphs. It took me ages to figure out that "1237-48" meant
"From 1237 to 1248" and not something like "1237.48". It's horribly
communicated, but it makes sense when you figure it out.

~~~
jrockway
Strange. This made sense to me immediately.

