The Pleasure of Paperless Reading

Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of baby boomers reading their e-books on trains and airplanes. Once again, contrary to popular belief, boomers do embrace technology. I recently purchased the Kindle 2 from Amazon and am loving every minute of it. No more papers piled at home or at your doorstep, but I can still skim through headlines in major newspapers before I go to work. The Kindle also offers free newspaper subscriptions for two weeks, and this successfully hooks me up to paying a monthly subscription of The New York Times. I’ve also cancelled my home subscription of The Globe and Mail because I now have the daily version wirelessly delivered to me on my device at half the price of the print version.

For people who love the smell and touch of printed volumes of books, an e-book might not be to their liking. But I think this is one of the most innovative devices for consumers – no more book shelves and no more yearning for library space at home. I can now create my own electronic library capable of storing up to 1,500 books – the Complete Works of Shakespeare, the Bronte collection, the Holy Bible, The Complete Charles Dickens Collection, the Works of Oscar Wilde and other literary greats – and carry it around with me to anywhere in the world when I travel because of the Kindle’s 3G wireless capability. I can wirelessly shop for new books, download them in less than 60 seconds, and read them in more than 100 countries.

Boomers are likely to be attracted to the six types of text sizes to choose from – no more squinting your eyes to read small type fonts in most printed books. The six-inch electronic ink display reads like printed words on paper because the screen works using real ink and doesn’t use backlight, eliminating the eyestrain and glare associated with other electronic displays. And at times if you’re tired of making your eyes work, you can always get Kindle to read to you out loud with its Text-to-Speech feature.

When Apple’s iPad becomes available in March, Kindle might face some stiff competition since the former can offer an all-in-one mobile device including an iBook Store in colour. But for people like me who only want an e-book, a slim and trim, 10-oz Kindle is good enough. If Amazon can continue to keep the e-book prices lower than the print versions; when more quality magazines such as The Economist become available on Kindle; when new books can be accessible to us e-readers even faster, I’m sure more and more boomers will replace printed volumes with the sleek reading device.