http://100classicbooks.com/download-books-online.html

Anyone actually get this, know someone who has, or at least have tried it out?

Does the Nintendo DSi battery last long enough for you to do as much reading as you want at a time (how long does the NDSi battery last on a single, full charge)?

Do you think the NDSi ultimately has the potential to become a viable, if not serious, contender for the eReader market?

What's your opinion about eReaders in general?

Does the concept of having to expend electricity to read something - when you can just as easily read a paper copy - seem like the most ridiculous thing to you?

Me, there's a lot of classic books I've never read (a lot of the books on that list I've never read, and the few that I have, I don't remember much about) - so being able to get these books relatively cheaply, inexpensively, or just outright for FREE, is an ideal proposition.

Are you joking? The size and resolution of the screens is horrible for a reader.

You cannot just as easily read any book from your library if you are not at home within reach of that library. The ability to purchase, store and access a library worth of texts on one tablet provides value above and beyond that of such a library in the form of utility and versatility, in the same way that a mass storage audio player is much more useful than a CD collection. The ability is within your grasp to carry every piece of music you'd ever want to hear in one pocket and every book you'd ever want to read in the other. This is a good thing.

Although e-readers have their uses, they are still not the same as books and have what I would consider serious problems.

1)Many e-readers are not in color. Therefore color pictures lose all meaning.
2)They are not as "easy" on the eyes as a normal book. In fact, I find many of them quite unpleasant for long-term reading (I've only actually used a few, but those few that I used were great instead of newspapers and magazines, but I did not like them compared books). Furthermore, I don't find them nearly as quick and easy to access as a normal book. Some people disagree with me, but there are also lots of people that do agree with my previous statements.
3)You have to purchase the machine, and then you have to purchase the book. The cost of many e-books is fairly expensive, and often more expensive than an actual physical copy of the book. You can certainly get a number of e-books for free, namely those that have expired copyrights (ie what people often call classics), however these same free e-books are also available online for free from many places such as Project Gutenberg.
4)There is absolutely no resale value for your book. In fact, you can't even loan your book.
5)There are LOTS of books that are NOT available for e-readers. If you were in college and had to write a thesis on nearly any subject, most of your sources would NOT be available on e-readers.

Personally, I far prefer a physical copy than an e-book. That's a personal preference, but then again I'm also the guy who prefers physical CDs than digital releases as well.

cheers,

-avatar!

In addition to what avatar! said, there's also the fact that you are only being licensed access to the book you downloaded, which can be revoked without warning for any number of reasons (this is an apprehension I have with downloadable games as well, actually). Which is something he already addressed in another thread, come to think of it.

As for the Classic Books thing, I'll admit I'm curious; I did enjoy the reading tests in Brain Age enough to think it could work as a reader of sorts. There's an awful lot of Shakespeare, which is nice, but entirely too much of Dickens. Good grief, that man could bore the ears off a brass monkey.

*cringe* First time I've even heard about that; that kind of makes me afraid for the Amazon MP3s I bought, as well as all the Virtual Console titles I've DL.'d.

And here, I thought digitally-distributed content had no problems...still, I pray there'll eventually be an age in which we're going to get over our possessiveness, and we'll look back on this current period of time, and laugh about how ridiculous it was to restrict and regulate digital content.

After all, there's plenty of people here on STC who're still willing to BUY albums, rather than try and get them for free...whether they're physical copies, or digital copies.

People are always concerned about expending money, but I always thought the whole purpose of the digital format was to decrease cost, for the manufacturers and distributors, and thus hopefully for consumers, and also increase its distribution, as well.

There's a separate Nintendo-brand eReader?!

Sometimes, you really act like a troll.

i read a book once...

The Pop-Up Kama Sutra does not qualify as "reading".

Aww shucks.

I WILL EAT YOU. [/joking]

Not trying to pick a fight, amigo...

No, seriously though, that's a new concern that's really nagging at me now: The concept of digital content suddenly "expiring." Granted, I've more immediate concerns in life, but this little aforementioned concern's actually an excuse NOT to BUY MP3s, and just download them illegally, just like most people *secretly* do...

I'm kind of hoping that there's some assurance that my concerns are actually rather ill-founded - that I don't really need to worry as much as I think I do.

THEY ARE MP3S. HEY HAVE NO DRM. THIS IS COMMON KNOWLEDGE.

Unless there's a way for Amazon to hack into your computer and actually delete them off your drive, they are no more able to prevent you from playing them than they are able to prevent you from posting on this board.

I hope you're just being sarcastic with that last part; a lot of people I know are pretty forthcoming with that information. Guy at work tells me about the movies he pirates all the time. That being said, I can't really look at people with any kind of distain for that, I mean I use to do that a ton when I was in high school/college before I had any kind of disposable income. This isn't saying it's right but I'm not going to go around judging people like I'm completely innocent.

This reminds me of the Boondock's episode where they are at the theater and see a commercial that compares bootlegging to murder and the small girl is in tears because they snuck in.

Yeah, but what about the downloadable games we were talking about?

Take it easy, man. You get upset too easily.

Yup, hence the stars! **

You do have a lot of good points on the physical copy versus an ebook.
We'll never be rid of paper-based books.  They'll always be around.
Ebooks are not the wave of the future. They'll just be convenient compared to paper.

Yes, there's a resale value for the physical book, but the value is so little than what you originally paid for.
Most university bookstores offer to buyback textbooks after a semester/quarter ends.
But that $100 textbook that you bought at beginning of the semester is now worth less than half at the buyback period. They'd probably only give you $15-20 for the book.
Same with Gamestop when they buyback games, and same with used bookstores.  You might get very little cash or credit back.

So if it's an ebook/pdf, it might be cheaper to begin with.

More important to me is the space problem.
With an ebook, I could keep it on my harddrive or just hit delete.  At least it wouldn't take up space on my bookshelf.

I've heard B&N will start their own E-Textbook service soon.
That could be good.

Anyways, I just had a bad experience with a used bookstore.