Kindle found to be worse than paper textbooks

Very short summary:<p>- with the iPad you can do interactive books which are basically the new "interactive CDROM" you had some years ago. - with the Kindle you cannot easily flip through the pages and write notes on them, this is why it does not improve the traditional textbook.<p>Nothing new, you know that after 15 minutes using the devices. But I must say, to read novels, news and stuff like that, you cannot really be better than the Kindle at the moment.<p>Disclaimer: I am an avid user of my Kindle combined with Instapaper.

It's interesting they chose to interview a professor from Reed given that the CEO of Apple dropped out of Reed and Reed has always been rather Apple centric when it comes to computing platforms for students ( <a href="http://www.reed.edu/cis/about/computing_faq.html#typesused" rel="nofollow">http://www.reed.edu/cis/about/computing_faq.html#typesused</a>). It would have been interesting to see if the opinions given here were shared with other institutions that are participating in the iPad/Kindle trials.<p>I can't say for sure, but this article seems awfully close to this:<p><a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html</a>

The original title is "The E-Textbook Experiment Turns A Page". The editorialized title made little sense at first.<p>A professor that had students with Kindles says it wasn't very useful because it was slow at highlighting, note-taking and turning pages.<p>The CEO of inkling.com, who make e-textbooks for the iPad, thinks the iPad is better than the Kindle for interacting with textbooks. The professor is also hoping that the iPad will prove better than the Kindle. A couple students that already had iPads said it was pleasant to use in class but considering the cost, a laptop would also suffice.

Maybe I'm being a prude, or maybe it's just inertia, but does everyone have an easy time replacing a textbook with an electronic device? An argument can probably be made about how ever-advancing technology might make note-taking (and the like) easier, but I often have a hard time detaching myself from the (very) personal experience a book ends up being. I don't just mean the contents of it, but also the feel of having a book in your hand and it being a companion. So much so, that there are times when reflecting back to certain textbooks, I'm reminded of the how the book 'looked' and 'felt'. Almost like how face-to-face conversation differs from over-the-wire.<p>Do most people feel otherwise?

Is there any evidence cited here beyond opinion? Or, strangely, does Steve Jobs' alma mater prefer a more expensive and colorful device?<p>I think this is a difference horses for different courses. If you study English or Political Science (like I did), you'll probably find a Kindle easier to deal with. If you study biology, chemistry, or topics like that, the animations and rendering of diagrams on an iPad will be superior.

"To make matters worse, he says the Kindle proved unable to keep up with the class discussion — it would take half a minute to load a page and by then, the discussion would have lost its momentum."<p>1/2 a minute? That isn't how long it takes me.

The eInk ereaders are woefully inadequate, however, in 1-2 years I could see them being considerably cheaper and offering color as well. I doubt the iPad will drop in price. Until then I've been using Nook Study for 2 of my course. <a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/nookstudy/features/index.asp?cds2Pid=34666" rel="nofollow">http://www.barnesandnoble.com/nookstudy/features/index.asp?c...</a><p>The ability to have 2 simultaneous books open and displaying on a laptop is nice. It also allows split screen views of the same book so that you can view non-contiguous pages. This comes in extremely handy when doing problem sets that have the answers in the back of the book. Wish my math book was offered this way. Would save a lot of page flipping between problems and examples. It's also much easier to compose annotations than with an iPad. In hindsight, this will probably always be a shortfall of the tablets/ereaders. You could put a wireless keyboard on them, but at that point you might as well just have a laptop.<p>One thing I don't like at this point is the limitation of only being able to open the book on 2 devices that have my account registered (sort of like registering your iPhone with iTunes on up to 5 devices). From what I understand this is a restriction imposed by the publishers, not the distributors.

Media, be they iPads or Kindles or paper, are not nearly so important as content. For the average student, I doubt that either the Kindle or the iPad can add any content that will offset the cost of the device.<p>The cash-strapped college student would be best served by a cheap netbook, or if the student insists on a variety of media appliances, perhaps a laptop with a large screen. That should be adequate for any sort of interactive content, and a plethora of free content.<p>And of course, the student will require a healthy amount of discipline. Both the iPad and the Kindle make great publicity stunts, but neither is going to make a significant difference in a student's ability to learn.<p>There are a variety of interactive demoes that do help, but personally I think people should be making those demoes available in cross-platform form, or on some Linux/BSD variant so any cheap computer can be repurposed to run the software. If you convince yourself that the iPad or the Kindle or the Courier is the best device for education, I doubt you really have any insight to offer on education.<p>Every device has strengths and weaknesses. I'd say the best devices to allow skilled educators to create novel educational software are those that place the least restrictions on the educator. That's neither the iPad or the Kindle.

I use a nook for reading novels, but can't imagine using it for a textbook. Apart from the fact the page is too small, it just takes too long to flip back and forth looking for something, and that's the primary mode in which people use textbooks.<p>Besides, I still have my undergraduate textbooks from ten years ago on my shelf and occasionally look something up. If they'd been in an electronic format I'm sure it would be far too much trouble to find a reader for them.

The academic publishers are in for a swift attitude adjustment when the average student realizes that scanned copies of almost any undergrad textbook can be found online. It seems strange to me that so many 18-22 y/o's won't pay $0.99 for a song, yet they're still paying $200 for a textbook.

The reviews were not based on the latest kindle which is faster and more responsive than previous versions. However, granted that for interactive learning the iPad will excel, but as a pure reading platform the kindle can not be bettered.

What's with HN and completely inappropriate titles lately?

"For a few years now, people have been expecting electronic textbooks to take off in a big way: They're cheaper than traditional textbooks"<p>Somebody never tried to get a site license for something that is worth its money. Electronic media are much too expensive for the education market (at least for universities etc.). A "traditional textbook" you can sell once you don't have a need for it any longer. The effective cost is less than the list price. I've also made the experience that electronic media usually lacks the depth of "traditional textbooks" unless it's the textbook put on the web.

Maybe if the publishers will stop being greedy and start selling these things for a reasonable price, they'd catch on like wildfire. The digital versions are currently nearly as expensive as the printed version -- basically it seems like they're charging the full price of the book minus the printing cost. The problem is, the dead tree versions can be re-sold when you're done, but the digital versions cannot, which makes them MUCH more expensive.

tl;dr: an ipad is better at being an ipad than a kindle is.