Comments on: Electronic books- the future of reading?

By: Walt

Walt — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 15:59:37 +0000

The new Sony e-reader is alright but I think the Kindle 2 is much better. It has a larger memory capacity which to me makes it much more appealing!

I recently blogged on the same subject:
http://blog.letsbuyit.com/en/2009/08/06/e-readers/

By: digerati

digerati — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 17:28:02 +0000

As a correction to your review, the Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle do NOT have any backlighting whatsoever. It is an opaque e-Ink technology requiring you to use a book light or other light to read with. And yes, that’s the beauty of it. Backlighting causes eyestrain. e-Ink does NOT have backlighting.

By: raz godelnik

raz godelnik — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 05:02:11 +0000

Thanks for the update on the Sony Reader.

Regarding the question if e-books are more eco-friendly than paper-made books – we don’t know yet for sure. Of course e-books don’t use paper and therefore no trees are cut down. They also don’t need transportation or physical storage and therefore no extra costs and extra footprint are required to transfer the book from the publisher to the reader. Yet, there are other factors to be considered, especially with regards to e-book readers like the Sony Reader or Amazon’s Kindle, such as their production, materials used, energy required for the reader’s use, and how recyclable they are.

We’re still lacking a full life-cycle assessment of reading e-books using kindle or Sony Reader. Until we have that, we can’t really say if and to what extent e-books are more environmentally-friendly in comparison to paper made books.

Raz Godelnik
Eco-Libris