My thoughts on e-readers

I was in the shower this morning thinking about the commercial I saw yesterday. I'm sure a lot of you have seen the one with the two gals in the beach chairs, on the beach, reading on their kindles. The kindle e-reader has really come down in price. I think it was being advertised for $139, or some such price, and if I remember right when they first came out a year or so ago, they were $359. Now that's quite a difference, which led me to wonder if they were indeed selling very many of the devices. I also wondered how the people felt who paid top dollar for the new devices when they first came on the market. Of course the people who have to have the newest things probably bought the kindles knowing they would go down in price the longer they were available for sale. That seems to be the way it is with just about everything electronic.

I also wondered if anything could ever go wrong with them and cause you to lose all the books you have stored on them. I imagine it could fail, just like any computer, after awhile. Would the books be able to be recovered somehow, or perhaps backed up in the way we back up our computers to an external hard drive or Cd's?

My thought is that I will never own one of the devices and there are several reasons for that. The least of which would be product failure, although that would need to be considered by anyone giving this some thought. If the books were not able to be recovered, would you have to purchase them again, once you replaced your e-reader? A very good, legitimate question.

Now that being said, my main reason for not going out and splurging on one would be because I like the old fashioned book. I love the smell and feel of a book, and turning the pages the old fashioned way. The e-readers seem so clinical to me, although I know they are able to hold lots of books one tiny device. What will happen to the libraries, and things of that nature, if everything starts being produced in e-book format only? I keep an extensive library in my house and it's such a cozy room to be in. I love sitting in my chair in there and reading, surrounded by books and a couple of my cats. I would really hate for all of that to go away.

I think I'm probably living in the right time now because I'm sure a couple generations from now perhaps the old fashioned book will have totally disappeared, or be such a rarity it will be hard to get your hands on one. That would be one big shame!