Ryan Dotson, an Ohio University senior studying linguistics, originally bought a Kindle because he was taking a class that required him to read The New York Times every day.
With the Kindle, sold by Amazon.com, a monthly subscription to The New York Times costs $13.99, much cheaper than the daily newsstand price of $1.50.
Electronic readers, like the Kindle and the Sony Reader Digital Book, have recently become very popular. In November 2007, when the Kindle was released, it sold out in under six hours, according to a report by The Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
These electronic readers could prove useful to students for textbooks and research.
Both the Kindle and the Sony Reader support PDF and Microsoft Word documents. This feature allows students to have everything in one place.
The Kindle holds about 1,500 books that can be purchased from Amazon.com with prices ranging from 99 cents to $12.99.
The Sony Reader has a memory that can hold 350 books, which can be purchased from Sony's e-book store. However, unlike the Kindle, public domain books can be downloaded from Google.
Princeton University, for example, offers many of their required textbooks in e-book format, which can then be downloaded to either the Kindle or the Sony Reader.
Although OU does not offer any electronic textbooks that can be read on a Kindle, students can buy digital versions of some textbooks through OhioLINK on a service called CourseSmart.
Dinty W. Moore, professor of English at OU, said that a rise in electronic textbooks could potentially help students.
Textbook companies are out of control right now
he said, adding that because textbooks are so expensive, it would be more cost-effective to buy them in an electronic format.
Moore compared the current rise in electronic readers to the rise in digital music downloads. Record companies fought to keep the CD as the most prominent method of music delivery, and they were not successful, he said.
Technological change seems to be inevitable he said.
Despite the growing new technology in electronic readers, some feel that something is lost from the experience when not reading an actual book.
I like being a traditional person reading from the original book
and I like the smell
said Emily Stephenson, a freshman studying education.
The preference of reading actual books appears to be common.
I miss the feeling of paper in some ways
Dotson said.
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Culture
Jessica Lohner
