eReading

Yes I have a couple of free minutes today. Just clearing some stuff out of my Inbox that has accumulated over the last 5 weeks of pounding out a cool POC.

A bunch of people here at work have bought a Kindle. A good friend uses his for both technical and personal reading. He was about to buy a v1 Kindle and opted to wait for v2. So far he is still on board. It gets me wondering if I would really use one or whether I just like the cool factor.

Honestly, I am not feeling like I would use it very much and it would be relegated to the long list of toys I end up giving away. Why? Because there are very few technical books I actually read cover to cover. I do much more browsing, skipping and flipping all of which just don't work in the e-mediums. I still like the feel of books. I like to highlight and write in the margins. I like to flip through a book I have not picked up in a while and find something new or something I marked up previously.

Take Safari. Every programmer here at work has a Safari membership. Nice. But I just don't use it that much for actually reading books. In fact when I talked to the Safari folks originally; their main use case is not for eReading but rather for finding answers to questions or topics.

My other use case for Safari is what I used to used Borders and Barnes & Noble for - to check a book out before I buy it. This is sweet. First to Safari, then to a discount book seller or Amazon to buy it used (love this).