Bill Hill - Do you think anyone is going to read a book on the screen? | scobleizer

HE3
oh.

I didnt know people minded reading on screens, I read entire books on my PPC (PocketPC) all the time. I cant imagine taking a desktop to bed with me though.

ghos

I've tried reading on a PPC and it was just too tiresome, too small for reading long periods. Yes you can enlarge the type but then you are changing pages every paragraph or something.
I think perhaps the future might be in electronic paper. Where a whole book is stored or can be uploaded to it and you can comfortably read that wherever you choose. Prior to that method, Tablet PC's of some kind could do it I suppose.
Naturally many of us do quite a bit of reading on monitors due to blogging, message boards, e-mail, etc. I think ClearType has definitely made a difference. When I first turned it on I really noticed how much sharper things appeared. Even so I can't see reading a book at the monitor. It is not a natural state to be looking up to read. Nor is my chair meant for reading, its meant for computing.
Of course if Longhorn can provide improvements in the clarity of text for reading in long stretches in combination with hardware that can evolve for just that purpose (perhaps swiveling down for reading) then I think bookreading on computers stands a much better chance of becoming mainstream.
Although there is something about having a book in hand and reading that computers I don't think will ever mimic well.

jkirwan
carpe fermentum

I have to agree with ghos. I have read entire books on the PPC, but there's nothing like the feel (and smell) of a real book. To me, reading is just one of those truly oganic experiences that technology cannot reproduce.

JDanielSmith

For me, I think it is the "form factor".

It's so very convenient to take a book/magazine/newspaper to the "library" or to bed.

And it's just so easy to use one of these "devices" compared to a laptop (although I haven't tried a TabletPC). And such "devices" stand up to a lot of abuse, and even if they do get damaged, it's cheap to replace them.

Jeremy W
that blogging guy

I finally had a chance to turn ClearType on (the tuner doesn't work through our firewall guys, maybe a local tuner?).

Huge difference. The text is so clear it makes me want to increase the monitor size (my video card at home doesn't go any bigger...).

I'll definitely be playing around more with this. Fantastic, my eyes feel a lot more relaxed, though some text does look weird...

Stack Of Toast
There were build errors??

For me it would definately be a better form factor such as a Tablet PC (or smaller) and a clearer font. So far nothing beats the old fashioned book for durability, speed (no booting requiried) and portability.

eagle

Clear type will save thousands of trees! Thanks Bill.

Tejaaa
Tejas Patel- The Great

eagle wrote:
Clear type will save thousands of trees! Thanks Bill.

The answer to Robert's question is, 'Yes' & 'No'. I have read many books or their part substancial part on the screen, just becuase I read way to many books on different topics and I cannot afford to buy them all nor can I afford to cut down the forests by printing them all just for reading it once. But sometimes it really gets tiring and yes the 'Form factor' is not there too. I really want few hours away from the computer screen, so I can take away the book or my paper printouts and sit on a chair or in my front yard and breate the fresh air and enjoy the reading. I don't think that I will really enjoy reading 600 page novel on my computer screen nor will I enjoy reading other lengthy books as well.

But I still read books on programming on the screen as it is easy to follow up and cut and copy the code from there. Well with this Clear Type 'On' on my computer now, I will try to read some books and will let you know my reviews.

http://geekswithblogs.net/tpatel/archive/2004/04/21/4139.aspx

Tejas Patel

UdoSchroeter

As far as I am concerned, a 200 dpi display is not needed, ClearType does its job wonderfully. And, yes, it's cool to take the tablet PC everywhere as a portable book, it makes me feel a bit like a StarTrek character though.

One problem I have with the ClearType tuning tool is that - while it works great for most displays - it doesn't provide enough options for some (maybe weird) displays. I realize the whole thing was done with LCD screens in mind, but it looks great on CRT too.

But on some displays I had the problem that I wanted to increase the anti-aliasing and the general font intensity without bumping up the subpixel rendering at the same time. The result was to either choose a "weak" looking setting OR a "strong" looking setting with color artifacts from subpixel anti-aliasing. Did anyone else have that problem, too?
(On the other hand, maybe I'm nuts and everything is in my head only.)

This is a thing that works great on MacOS and X11 from a readability standpoint, though I believe they don't have that cool RGB-subpixel anti-aliasing at all. And the Windows standard font-anti-aliasing (non-ClearType) just plain sucks (not smooth enough) in case you wondered why I don't use that instead...