ebook: First Impressions

As I previous wrote in my ebook article a few weeks back I am working with two ebooks this semester. One from SafariX and the other from Mc Graw Hill in an Adobe format. Working with both books these past two weeks I've come across the pros and cons of both books. All though both books have pros and cons they are different for each book. I'll address some of the annoying issues that I have with ebooks in general and concentrate mostly on the SafariX online version this time. I'll post about my Adobe version in a later post as it certainly deserves its own but due to a busy schedule I figured I start with some general observations and inital experiences with the SafariX version.

First off like all my ebooks this one was a lot cheapter that the text version so ebook version got a big plus from the start. The second thing I ran into and this was true for both ebooks is that I had to change my note-taking and reading habits or at least alter them a bit. When I would read a text book I would have the textbook open to my left and then have my tablet in front of me so I could either type or handwrite my notes on it. Then when writing down important concepts or looking at figures I could easily change my line of sight. I also would highlight important things in the book as I went. When I opened up my ebook the ebook was now on my tablet and I also wanted to take notes of my tablet. At first there was no way to view both of them at the same time. So I tried minimizing and switching windows. I even tried out a demo version of Actual Tools which someone recomended to me that allows you to easily roll up and use transparency along with other tools to eaisly display and switch between other programs. However I really needed to display both the book and have my tablet open ready to take notes. Luckily for me I have a desktop computer that I use to handle all the heavy applications and major tasks so I simply hooked up the monitor from that computer to my tablet and could have both applications running. Disconnecting the monitor from the desktop computer was a real pain but I quickly realized one of the advantages of the SafariX online version.

Stupid me I forgot I could just open the ebook in a browser on the other computer. So that was a much simpler solution. However inserting images from the ebook into my notes became a little harder this way since there was no easy way to click on the picture on the desktop and insert it into my notes on my tablet. However I solved this problem easily with two options.
I could save all the images on my tablet first and then drag and drop into my notes as I read the book or I could set up a shared session in OneNote. I choose the OneNote shared session just because I thought that was cool and never tried it before. I also have two copies of OneNote, one for each computer so no problem there. Setting up a shared session was easily (I may post about it later) and I could now easily insert pictures from the desktop and write with the tablet.
I later went to the saved method though since I wanted to be able to insert figures into my notes during class and since the book was online and I had a poor signal in my Micro clas from the internet it was just easier to save all the pictures on the hard drive and insert them at will.
For any of the methods above to view both your ebook and take notes on your computer you are going to have to somehow get ahold of two monitors. This can be a pain especially since an old cheap monitor which would be used in my case to read the ebook are often sometimes harder to read from for long periods of time. A small LCD monitor with good resolution that you could set up next to your other computer would be ideal but probably not practical for most students that want to view both the ebook and take notes on a computer. Of course if you simply bought the ebook to save money and prefered to take hand written notes or could stand switching between applications then you would avoid this whole problem all together!

So after I got this problem worked out I ran into a similar situation in class. Often in class I would have my book set up on the desk next to me and have my tablet at the desk/seat I was at. I could then easily glance over to book as the profesor made refernces to it. Brings a second monitor would not be an option in this case, although have a small slate model tablet pc would be my dream situation. I could use the slate as my digital textbooks which I read from and use my current tablet pc as my digital notebook. Of course this senario is completely outrageous and thus not a possible solution. I was hoping the internet connection would be strong enough so I can have the book open in my browser in class and could scroll through it during class however I was having troubles connecting to the network in this particular class room. I did have most of the figures saved on the hard drive so when he refernced one of those it was not too bad but it would still be nice to have the book. SafariX does offer the option to print out the pages and I was seriously considering this as I would have a print copy that could last forever, (remember the subscription is only for 150 days) and I could easily bring only the chapter or two that was being discussed that day to class so it would still be lighter than carrying a heavy textbook. The more I thought about it though the more I realized that printing all those pages could get expensive as I would probably use up at least one ink cartirage to print out over 1000 pages. I thought about going to Kinkos to see how much it would cost to print out maybe black and white copies there figuring it would be cheaper than printing out all of them myself. But then it hit me! This is a Tablet PC and we always talk about going paperless. Most of the time we scan images and then print them to GoBinder, OneNote, or create a PDF in Acrobat. Again it seemed I was a little slow in the problem solving department but did eventually arrive at acceptable solution. I simple created printed the online version to pdf's and saved it on the hard drive. I could now access the book anywhere and would also have a personal saved digital edition of the book. I don't know if printing an entire book in exactly legal in this case but I figured as long as I don't go off distributing my digital copy I should be the allowed area to do as I like with the book for personal use.

Wow, this article got long quick and speaking of my microbiology digital book I have a lot of reading to do from it today so although I would love to talk about other things I have run into when using my ebooks they will have to wait till another day! Hope you can learn from my mistakes and experiences and stay in touch throughout the semester because by reading my experience you can hopefully decide if its worth jumping into the world of ebooks!

posted by Jason Dorko at 1:47 PM 0 comments links to this post