Digital versus hard copy

[Moses Yoder]

I kind of prefer the digital world. Okay, for some books that would be sacrilege, like Krenov or Nakashima, but most everything I do nowadays is on my lap top. I have a good but relatively cheap HP laptop with 4 gig memory 750 gig HDD with a 2.4 Ghz Core I3 processor, Windows 8.1. All of my music is digital, my car stereo accepts a flash drive. I also have a Kindle but lately have just put the Kindle app on my laptop and read books with it. A good example is the new Willie Nelson CD that was released last fall. My wife preordered it for my birthday and the day the CD was shipped from Amazon they automatically loaded the album onto our Cloud storage, I downloaded it and started playing it that evening. When the disc was delivered to our house I put it in my desk without opening it, still in the original plastic wrap. So what do you think of the digital world? My wife hates it for some reason, can't figure that out. She doesn't want to stream Netflix, needs hard copies for everything.

[Larry Edgerton]

I'm in your wife's camp. I like having a hard copy although I use digital most often. I like the sound of albums though so what do I know.

Larry

[Curt Harms]

.........................
My wife hates it for some reason, can't figure that out. She doesn't want to stream Netflix, needs hard copies for everything.

Dunno, it might be a female thing - my wife is the same way. Might it be "I can hold this in my hand so I know it's real and durable (sort of), I can't see or hold an MP3 or MPEG2 file"?

[Matt Meiser]

Going more and more digital here. Some of the stuff we still get on paper and can't switch drives me nuts. One issue e-bills raised for us is that only one of us was seeing them. We fixed that by creating a new email account which forwards to both of us.

[Joe Tilson]

I am more of a hard copy person, because I can sit back in the chair and study what is in my hands (I have a bad back). I do use the computer to find whatever I'm looking for, then copy it for reading. Having to lean forward to see what's on the comp screen with progressive lenses really puts a kink in one's neck. Yes, I'm old and old fashioned (by today's standards). In the sixties we were right in there, yeah mannnn, we were cool and buzzed.

[Matt Meiser]

But you can do that with a tablet.

[Dan Hintz]

Searching is easier on digital versions, but a hardcopy is easier for locating the same thing over and over, as well as being easier to read (for me).

That said, I will not accept anything digital that requires DRM of any form... I've seen too many cases where something was purchased, only to be "lost" when the DRM scheme decided it was no longer yours (such as when the DRM server company decides they no longer want to be in business).

[Mike Chance in Iowa]

I didn't think I would ever like to convert to electronic format for reading books. My MIL was given a kindle and she was very frustrated with it. I tried helping her out and set it up and I did not like it either. (It's many years old now.) It was very cumbersome to use. We bought her an ipad to replace and she LOVES it. She was so pleased with the ipad that I set her up with iBooks and transferred her ebooks from the kindle account to her ipad.

While trying to set her up on the ipad, I downloaded iBooks to my iphone so that I could see how it works and step her through any problems she had. Little did I know how much I would like reading books on my iphone! I always have a book with me now for when I have a few spare minutes to read. I can read in bed in the dark while the LOML is sleeping. I also love the ability to highlight text for future reference, as well as quickly look up a word in the dictionary. Another example is I was reading an ebook on car "barn finds" and it was listing all sorts of cars I had never heard of. I could highlight the name of the car and do an internet search from my iphone and find other photos of that car. The funny thing is, it turned out my MIL hates reading books on her ipad, yet still loves everything else on her ipad.

[David G Baker]

I have a Kindle paper white and love it. It fits in my coat pocket much better than a book, it is light and I can read it in bright Sun light. If I want something to keep I prefer hard copy or on my external hard drive. I have had drives crash on me so I am not 100% comfortable with digital in some cases. I also burn important photos and files onto a CD or DVD. I still have files on 3 1/2 disks and 5 1/4 floppies but I also have old computers with the old drives in them so I can access the files if I need to.

[David Weaver]

I like hard copies, and won't buy anything that isn't productivity related where someone else controls the license after I bought it. My wife uses itunes, but I don't (I don't use any apple products, actually, it seems like you have to pay for something every time you move).

[Rich Enders]

Just today I read about a classroom study of students who read the subject material on a tablet versus those who read it on a hard copy. For some reason the hard copy readers retained more of the information.

[Mike Cozad]

I have a Kindle paper white and love it. It fits in my coat pocket much better than a book, it is light and I can read it in bright Sun light. If I want something to keep I prefer hard copy or on my external hard drive. I have had drives crash on me so I am not 100% comfortable with digital in some cases. I also burn important photos and files onto a CD or DVD. I still have files on 3 1/2 disks and 5 1/4 floppies but I also have old computers with the old drives in them so I can access the files if I need to.

I also like to store important info electronically as well. I've done some research on using cdr or dvdr for it and I have quit doing it. My research finds that if you don't store them perfectly the substrate starts to deteriorate, sometimes as fast a just a couple of years. And the cheaper the manufacturere, the worse it gets. I am using space on the Google cloud until I find a better solution.

Anyone have better advice?

[Matt Meiser]

Just today I read about a classroom study of students who read the subject material on a tablet versus those who read it on a hard copy. For some reason the hard copy readers retained more of the information.

Paid for by whom?

[William Adams]

Reading / listening digitally is convenient, but has some drawbacks:

- DRM --- there're a couple of songs and books I've bought on accounts I can no longer access which I will lose when the devices they're on cease functioning
- image quality --- as good as a Retina display is, it doesn't have the same # of pixels as a printed b/w page, and there's no way for it to match the subtleties of a ``double-dot black'' print (granted, I only have one book so printed, but it's gorgeous) --- certain fonts just don't display well either --- it's not quite the same reading Optima on a screen as it is reading a letterpress-printed book set in Optima
- access speed / convenience --- I need to find a better PDF reader for my iPad, which can deal w/ having _hundreds_ of issues of a particular magazine loaded --- it kills me that iBooks doesn't automatically put them in a folder. Similarly, while I have an iPod-enabled stereo in my truck, it's really tedious repeatedly pressing the ``Next Album'' button to get out of the ``A''s (I never thought I'd get tired of listening to _Abbey Road_, but I am)
- display size --- I really wish that there were more affordable machines w/ larger high-density displays --- it kills me that I can't find a ThinkPad w/ a 1400x1050 display for a reasonable price

[Moses Yoder]

Just today I read about a classroom study of students who read the subject material on a tablet versus those who read it on a hard copy. For some reason the hard copy readers retained more of the information.

This leads me to assume that ink has some magical quality that actually imbeds the information on the paper into the brain. Who'd 'a thunk it?