The book is dead. Long live the natural user interface

that picture! What a great larf to get my Friday started!

And yet these devices still cost at least an order of magnitude more than the paper versions.

I was, however, surprised to find that the electronic version of some expensive textbooks sell for about 1/3rd the price of the paper edition using Amazon's Kindle.

I've yet to see a screen on a handheld device that had the resolution of a book page, nor the battery life. Some books have been operational for almost 2000 years.

Yeah, and 640 kilobytes will always be enough.

This is absurd! While I welcome the innovation ebooks bring to the table, physical books will always have a place; Nomen's comment was dead on.

Ebooks are nice because of the convenience digital innately has. For instance, copy and paste, search (rather than an index), etc. However, I will always prefer the reading experience of a book in my hand vs. an eye-fatiguing, battery-operated screen.

Perhaps Bill is looking forward wistfully to the day when all information and knowledge is online, in reviseable electronic format, so that he and other Bolshevo-Stalinists can gleefully dedicate their lives to the most beloved pastime of persons of self-anointed notoriety: revising history and erasing the facts.

I expect she's home-schooled.

In case you're in the market: a paperback edition of Planet of the Voles is listed on biblio.com books. US $6.00 a real bargain for folks from Blighty.

That's a terrific graphic you have there. It could even have desktop background potential..hmm..

books will never warn you that you have 30 days left till activation or else you will not be able to read them...

Did some prat really just compare Bill Gates to Stalin? No, can't be. Must be the low resolution on this non-paper device what I'm reading this on.

But via the tablet PC she is restricted to only Digitally Mastered Information presumably supplied by Daddy. Which is surely only a Subjective Remote Control.

If Bill Gates has two pet nerd projects, it's tablet computing and interactive TV. He's been trying to get this stuff to work for the better part of 3 decades now. What he doesn't seem to realize is that the rest of the world, on average, doesn't have OCD, autism, or attention deficit disorder. When I go to a play, a concert, a movie, read a book, or watch TV, I want to experience the material and be brought along by the story and the artistry, not "interact" with it. I suppose Bill is the kind of douc***ag who would bring his laptop to a play but thankfully most other people aren't.

"However, I will always prefer the reading experience of a book in my hand vs. an eye-fatiguing, battery-operated screen."

But the real question is; will your children? Future generations are being raised in front of a computer screen, and may find it entirely more natural to read off that same computer screen than a sheet of paper. This may be why Gates refers to his children in the article, not himself.

I love that picture. Somebody should forward it to bill himself. I think he would have a good laugh :D

All esthetic arguments aside what about the trees? Seriously read the following and tell me you would still rather read a real book? 

http://www.wildrockies.org/cmcr/Pulp/forests.html

Don't get me wrong i love the feel of a real book but i am glade that paper use per person is dropping (but population is still rising) and that ebooks and email in general are becoming mainstream, so dont fight it. 

Buy a real book when you know your going to reread it many times throughout your life time or as a gift, but stuff your going to read once and leave on a shelf, doesn't deserve paper.

And pls don't start talking about how trees and recycling regrow and reuse what has been used before, unlike plastic, paper can only be recycled a couple of times then you wipe your ass with it and then mother nature gets to recycle it...

If paper were made from annuals, it would be one thing, but its not the case, its made from trees that have lived longer than most people alive on the planet. and were starting to have just too many educated people to have a 2000+ real book collection each. But we can all have an unlimited digital library!!! Is it the paper the words are printed on thats important or the words themselves after all?

Be modern, Be green, Be efficient read ebooks!!

A couple more generations of screen technology to get to 600 dpi and a contrast ratio of 50,000:1 with no need for backlight and foldable, combined with 1 TB cheap flash memory might just start to challenge the book.

My new stinkpad with 1920x1200 on a 15.4" screen just abotu has the resolution, but contrast and glare are a long way from a sheet of plain paper.

I think it will be e-paper, not the tablet PC that finally challenges the book (and Sunday newspaper).