The era of E-books

Jun 27, 2010 - Naresh Sadhwani & Deepak Jhangiani

Magazines, paperbacks and hard copies are now being challenged by the video world in the guise of E-books. These are the electronic counterparts of their paperback version. They can be read on the PC, laptop or on specially-designed hardware popularly termed as E-readers. Some of the new generation cell phones also double up as E-readers. Thanks to fibreoptic networks, broadband, Wi-Fi, 3G, 4G Wi-max and other high-speed technology downloads are competing with the speed of light. This has added fuel to kindle the fire of E-books. The two most popluar e-readers are Kindle from Amazon, and Barnes and Noble Nook now heavily challenged by i-Pad which is a multifunctional electronic pad from Apple. The growing demand for e-books and the success of Kindle and now the i-Pad has prompted new entrants in the e-reader field resulting in the price fall of the hardware. Now with most smart mobile phone and other multi-functional gadgets coming in with the e-reader feature, the market for e-books will flourish further.
Plus points of E-books
l Ease of access to millions of free books available on the Net
l The electronic reading material is much cheaper than its print version. E-reader prices are gradually stabilising.
l Budding writers can create awareness of their talent through e-books at practically no cost.
Minus points
Changing software formats: There are different formats for diferent readers and this presently is a major hindrance to sales of e-readers. The format war has always been a major issue in most of the fast-moving AV products.

Unplugged tips
Come monsoon and magically your precious AV equipment moves into erratic behavior mode. The TV emits a hissing sound, the LCD picture freezes, the decoder channels refuse to budge, the picture goes mosaic, and the DVD player refuses to load. Blame it on the Mumbai moisture.

Monsoon tips
During monsoons, your precious equipment tends to collect moisture therefore don’t leave any of your AV equipment unused.
Reason: The moisture collected will create problems when you switch on the gadget post-monsoon Regular use during the monsoon drives away the moisture from your gadget due to the heat generated during the use and protects
equipment.

Readers are invited to email their queries/suggestions/ comments to sadhwanis@vsnl.com

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