For people who still read...
 

...and I think there are a few of them here...

The cover story from Fortune, earlier this year:

The Future of Reading
By Josh Quittner

http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/09/tech...tune/index.htm

Thanks for that link! :D

Every day on my Kindle DX I read two newspapers, several magazines, many books, and even cartoons (in The New Yorker). This is the second version of Kindle I have owned. And I still read my local print newspaper, several print magazines, and have a couple of stacks of unread books waiting for my attention. How can people waste their time watching 8 hours of television each day?

Bill

Groucho Marx said

I don't own a TV so will not comment :)

And another voice heard from. "I LOVE TV". After all, TV can be very educational. Like one of the best educational programs, "I Love Lucy". ;)

Sherry

And Groucho also said:

I am currently taking an on-line course at the University of Maryland University College. The course title is " Information Literacy and Research Methods."

One week the teacher posted a question for us to discuss -- "With so much information being available on the internet, do you think there will ever be a day when physical libraries will no longer exist. Very intersting discussion!! Many of us felt they would be. Some of our reasons:
* There are lots of reference materials which cannot be converted to digital form very easily.
* Libraries are evolving -- many have PCs for the public to use. So... from this standpoint, libraries will still be a place where the public can utilize materials without having to purchase them -- it's just what they supply to the public will be different from the past.

The fact that you can read them without electricity (or any other additional hardware and software) is just an added advantage I suppose. Your batteries will never die if you are reading a real book :)

24 hrs a day??

I didn't say that janusz :cool: - you are dead in the water 24/7 without electricity - so, now I am eagerly awaiting posts from the proponents of solar power...

Electronic books are "greener" than printed books
 

Did you know that e-books are "greener" than printed books?

My Kindle doesn't need to be plugged into the electric grid continuously. It's run by energy stored (in a battery), just as the solar energy which created the tree growth which was transformed using a large amount of energy (paper mills, printing presses, bookbinding plants, delivery trucks) into the printed book is stored. As well as the solar energy stored so I can read either my Kindle or my printed books indoors and at night.

Bill

Love my kindle, only wish it was the international version... Love getting books shipped Instantaneously when overseas - not to mention saving a MINT on shipping!!!

I just have to manually download the books to my kindle...

I read a lot of older books many of these now being out of print. A portion of these older books are available on the net. Quite often these are available in html format only (I have not as yet tried to download and convert these myself)

Would a Kindle be of use to me for reading this kind of material, without a deal of hassle?

There is virtually no WIFI where I live (in the immediate vicinity of my home) and this is neither set up at my place of residence; I do have a conventional DSL high speed internet connection care of my local telephone company.

If you can get to these sites, you can download books in a kindle compatible format - all these should be free sites for books out of copyright... I downloaded 100 such books and am reading classics from Sherlock Holmes, to Moby Dick, to other books by Dale Carnegie, etc...:
http://www.gutenberg.net/
http://ireaderreview.com/2009/09/08/...books-top-100/
http://feedbooks.com/publicdomain
http://www.ipl.org/reading/books/
http://www.1001books.com/
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/search.html
http://www.ccel.org/
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Childr...28Bookshelf%29
http://manybooks.net/

Enjoy!

I still go to the local library and take out books to read, a dying activity it would seem, but I always emphasize the importance of actual hold-in-your hands books to my children. Our house is like a mini-library actually.