eBook

I'm happy to see Rob Pegoraro of the Washington Post reporting on books being sold by Amazon through its Kindle Store that are otherwise free and in the public domain:

So I'm famous, I guess. I made it into the student newspaper, the DePaulia, on the subject of e-books:

I missed this article on ways to save money on college textbooks when it first came out. Most of it your average college student would know by heart after the first quarter or semester -- they'd know it that is, if they wanted to avoid bankruptcy. But what really caught my eye was this final warning from 'textbooks advocate' Nicole Allen about e-books:

The one option Allen warned students against buying was e-book versions of texts. A number of publishers offer online books for purchase, she noted, but they are one-year rentals.

By and large, the e-books are available only through an Internet connection, and many restrict the number of pages you can print at one time.

In this case, the calculus e-book cost $100, about $40 more than Chegg's rental and only about $20 less than buying a used hard copy. And you have nothing to resell. [Kristof, Kathy M., "Turning the page on pricey textbooks", Chicago Tribune (9/4/2009):1,29.]

Basically they're saying, why should you rent it for a limited time when for just $20 more it can be yours forever? I think this kind of calculation is absolutely de rigueur not only for students but for institutions thinking of investing in these potentially ephemeral yet costly products.

So remind me again, who's going to pick the utterly drab and uni-functional Amazon Kindle for $359 when they can get this baby for the same price?

Courtesy of MiniNote User.

UPDATE (1/5/09): Not to make this sound like the GadgetBlog but HP just came out with an update to its top of the line model, the HP Mini 2140. Faster chip, bigger lcd panel -- Hoo Baby!