Auxiliary Memory

To Ebook or Not To Ebook

This week Barnes & Noble lowered their price for the Nook to $199, and came out with a Wi-Fi only model for $149, and on the same day Amazon lowered the price of the Kindle to $189. Unfortunately, the iPad remains $499. Once again I’m thinking about buying an ebook reader, but there are so many things to consider that I’m left undecided.

For instanced, I’ve been to three local bookstores trying to find a copy of Texasville by Larry McMurtry without coming home with a book to read. If I had an ebook reader, either Nook or Kindle, I could have started reading it immediately after realizing I wanted it.

Score 1 for ebooks. If the book is available ebook readers win on instant gratification.

Score 1 for paper. On the other hand, both Amazon and Barnes & Noble sell the ebook edition of Texasville for about the same price as the trade paperback edition, so I wouldn’t have saved any money towards paying back the investment of $149, $189 or $499. Why buy an ebook when the real book is the same price? I could read the real book and give it away or sell it, which I can’t with an ebook.

Score 1 for paper. I just ordered Texasville as a used hardback for 1 cent and $3.99 postage. You can get used books but not used ebooks.

Score 1 for ebooks. If I had bought the ebook edition of Texasville, Larry McMurtry would have been paid. Buying used cuts out the author. If all books sold were ebooks then writers will always get their cut.

Score 1 for paper. If everyone buys ebooks bookstores will go out of business, now that would suck, wouldn’t it?

Score 1 for ebooks. The price of The End of Biblical Studies is significantly cheaper for the ebook edition. It’s $21.77 for paper and $9.99 for the Kindle, but it’s not available for the Nook. Bummer, because I was thinking about getting the $149 Nook. But that’s $11.78 I could apply towards the iPad, since it does have Kindle and Nook reader software.

Score 1 for paper. I’m going down my Amazon Wish List to test things, and it’s score another point for paper, because The Year’s Best Science Fiction 2010 is not available for ebook readers. Actually, paper will score many points here because many books on my Wish List aren’t available in an ebook edition. That will change.

Score 1 for iPads. There are books that are available for the Kindle but not the Nook, and other books like Darwin’s Armada that’s available on the Nook, but not the Kindle. The iPad has software readers for most dedicated ebook readers. But $149 + $189 is still cheaper than $499.

Score 1 for ebooks because they offer large print and that makes reading easier for me.

Score 1 for ebooks because they are environmental friendly.

Score 1 for paper because I can share books, give them away or sell them.

Score 1 for ebooks because they are easier to hold.

Score 1 for paper to save money. By buying used, going to the library, getting books off the free table at work or borrowing books from friends I could significantly reduce my annual reading budget. It’s even possible to spend no money on reading if I stuck with paper.

Score 1 for ebooks because they stimulate the economy. Not only do you need to buy an ebook reader, but you have to pay for all your new books. This is bad for libraries and bookstores, but great for publishers, writers and the economy. The move to a Green Economy means creating as many environmental friendly jobs as possible.

Score 1 for iPads because they are good for magazine reading.

That’s 6 for paper and 9 for ebooks, with a leaning towards the iPad. I’m leery of spending $499 for the iPad. I spent $199 for the iPod touch and $399 for a Toshiba netbook and really don’t use either. I’d hate to spend another $499 for another gadget I’d end up not using too. But I’m wanting to read more but I can’t because small print strains my eyes. An ebook reader promises help for this handicap.

Finally, my stand on giving up paper means I don’t read magazines like I used to, and I miss that. I can read magazine articles online from my computer desk, but that’s not the most comfortable way to read for fun. The iPad “appears” to offer a better solution, but I won’t know until I bet my $499.

I look at my wall of books next to my computer desk and I wonder what life would be like if all those books were inside an ebook reader. Many of them are reference books with photos, drawings and diagrams – so I can only imagine those working on an iPad.

I had to move my wall of books when we put down new flooring and all of those books were very heavy and hard to move. It would be strange to hold all of them in one small device.

If I was born in a future age of ebooks, would my ebook reader at age 58 hold every book I had ever read? That’s a weird thought. Writing this is making me lean towards buying the iPad, and maybe even spending $599 to get the 32gb model, although I’m also tempted to hang onto paper for just a while longer until the iPad 2 comes out next year.

I keep thinking of more things to consider. Will I take my expensive iPad into the bathroom to read? If there are four best of the year SF anthologies to consider and only two of them are sold in ebook editions, will that force my buying decision? Will I choose Dozois and Hartwell over Horton and Strahan because they don’t have ebook editions?

Once I buy an iPad will that make me prejudice against books that don’t have ebook editions? It’s like my friend who took a rotary phone to show his fifth grade class and one girl asked “How do you send text messages?” If I get used to an ebook reader and then pick up a book, will I think, “Where’s the button to change the font size?”

JWH – 6/27/10

Best Buy Lying

I was helping a lady friend of mine, J, buy a computer yesterday from Best Buy. She took a long time to test a lot of laptops and finally settled on a Samsung NP-R580-JSB1US. She told the salesman which one she wanted.

“That one there is the last one we have,” he told us.

“Do you really want to get the floor model,” I asked J. She looked at me puzzled, and I said, “I wouldn’t.”

“I just got this one out of the box. It’s brand new,” assured the salesman.

“What do you think?” I asked. J isn’t very good at buying computers and was scared of the whole process.

“I just put it out,” he promised us again.

I turned to J and asked her quietly if she had seen him put it out. She whispered back that she saw him put another computer out, but not this one. She wasn’t sure, but he could have.

“Well, do you want to take a chance?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Since it’s a floor model I can ask if they will give you more off,” said the salesman.

“How much?” she replied, J was anxious to save money.

The salesman went off and brought back a saleswoman and she said they could let that machine go for $699, down for $746, which was a clearance price, even though it was a new Intel i5 machine.

J agreed to this and they started taking the display table apart to get to the power cords and the cable lock. It was a fair bit of work. I asked, “And you have the box and all the contents that go with this laptop?”

“Oh yes.”

When they got the computer out they took us to a sales station next to where people were bringing in machines to be fixed. The salesman told a young guy at the counter that the saleswoman said the machine would be $699. The young guy said that was more than what they normally took off for floor models and they’d need to get another person to approve it. We waited. When the other people did show up I asked about the box and was told they didn’t keep the boxes on the floor model.

“The salesman told us he just took it out of the box, so look around, it should be nearby,” I said.

Buy then we had three people helping us, discussing the discount for floor model and I could tell they didn’t have the box, and that machine wasn’t just put out. One of the new comers said something about the machine being out since the store was open three weeks ago not knowing we were told something different. Then another girl came up said the same thing.

“We were told this laptop was brand new.” I said. J was dazed by the whole process. The last three people finally admitted they had no box and they were sure the machine had been out on the floor since the store opened.

“Do you have a new one in the box at another store?”

“I’ll check.”

I turned to J, “Do you want to drive to another store to get a new one?” She said she would if it was the same price on the sale sign by the computer which advertised a clearance price. I was starting to wonder if they had a batch of refurbished machines they were passing off at new. However, the sales lady assured us the other store had 5 new ones in the box. J agreed.

They rang up the computer and added $2.99 for something and $17.00 for anti-spyware, and I told the salesclerk we didn’t want those things. She assured us they were free. The ticket had a lower price for the computer, so when it was totaled it came to $746. It made me wonder if this was another lie.

J paid and headed off to the other store.

I told her I would meet her at her house and help her set up the new laptop later that night. When I got there the first thing I noticed was the Samsung seal was broken and a clear tape covered the Samsung seal with a noticed that it had been inspected by the Geek Squad.

“This machine has been opened.” I couldn’t believe she’d drive all the way to another story and not inspected the box.

“What!” she explained both puzzled and surprised.

“Yes. Now that doesn’t mean anything is wrong with it, and it might not even be a floor model, but companies like Apple and Dell will inspect and put returned machines back in new packaging so it looks completely new and call them refurbished, or something like that. They are completely upfront about selling you a returned machine. Best Buy isn’t doing that. This machine is probably one that’s been returned, and maybe not a floor model.”

“What should I do?”

“It’s up to you, but they lied to you again. I’d take it back, complain that you were lied to and either get your money back or a new machine in the box.” She said she would the next day.

J called me back tonight and told me she had called Best Buy and they had given her some line about Geek Squad opening the machines, removing the crapware, optimizing them, and then resealing the box. “Is that possible?”

“That might be a service they offer, but I would think they would only do it on a machine someone had just bought. I doubt they would open all their new machines. That would make all their computers look like used machines. I think they are lying to you yet again. I think someone brought this machine back. That doesn’t mean it’s bad, but they were lying to you.”

“Who can I trust?”

“I always ask for new in the box when I buy anything, and I’ve had other stores pass returned merchandise as new. It pisses me off. But I also know people feel they can take anything back. And I’ve often seen people write on the net about intentionally buying three different models of something and taking two back.

“This is your Karma,” I told her. “You’re always taking stuff back.”

“What should I do?”

“Me, I take it back and get my money back. But if you really like this machine, then take it back and get one new in the box. They shouldn’t lie. Best Buy should tell people up front they are selling them a returned machine and reduce the price.”

She went on for a bit about how frustrating all this was.

“You could keep this machine and it might work for years and you’ll never know anything different from one that was completely new. But you don’t know what people might have installed on it before they took it back.”

She finally decided to return it. I don’t know how long this story will take to finish, but I’ll submit a sequel if anything exciting happens. And I haven’t even gone into the lies they told J trying to sell her an extended warranty. They essentially said the manufacturer warranty did very little and offered no support.

I still buy lots of stuff from Best Buy, even after all their shenanigans, but I’m a wary consumer.

I remember once me and a friend each taking a laptop up to the checkout to buy and the Best Buy people given us such a hard sell on the extended warranty that I turned to Mike and said, “You ready to go?” and he said “Yes” and we walked out leaving the computers on the counter. We went immediately to Circuit City and bought two laptops. They asked once if we wanted the extended warranty and when we said no, they never said another word.

When I bought my netbook at Office Depot and they got it from the back I asked the guy if it was new in the box and he assured me with an honest face that it was. I got home and it wasn’t. Everything was open and all the parts were just thrown back in the box not even pretending to wrap things up neatly. I went back and told the manager that his salesman had lied to me. I don’t think he cared, but he politely got me another machine new in the box and apologized.

I actually feel sorry for these retail places because people are too quick to return stuff. They think nothing about the merchandise having to be sold again. I only take things back when merchandise is broken or when I’ve been lied to and sold something as new in the box. Makes me want to mail order everything from NewEgg or Amazon.
JWH 6/21/10

Gave Away My Telescope

I haven’t used my telescope for about 3 years, so when a lady at work started talking about saving up for a telescope I gave her mine. Now, it’s not that I’m losing my interest in astronomy, but it’s a recognition I’m not much of an observational kind of amateur astronomer. The night before I bought Archives of the Universe: A Treasure of Astronomy’s Historic Works of Discovery by Marcia Bartusiak. What does it say about me that I find it far more exciting to read about the history of astronomy than look through a telescope?

I’m learning a lot about myself in my fifties. Or maybe I’m learning the same things a second time. My fifties, and I’m 58 now, have turned out to be a decade of returning to the interests and desires I loved in my teens. I had a telescope in my teens and I gave it away too. I even took astronomy and physics courses in my first two years of college, and dreamed of being a real astronomer, but I didn’t stick with it.

I’m a bookworm at heart and not a doer. I’ve always dreamed of being a doer, but I just don’t have the personality for action. I had a hard time adapting to the world of 9 to 5 work in my twenties, and for decades now my job has used up all my active energy. I think about retirement all the time now. Like in my teen years when I fantasized about what I would do when I grew up, I now fantasize about all the things I’d like to do when I retire, but I’m starting to think I won’t do that much.

It’s sad to say, but I’d rather spend time looking at a big picture book about astronomy than looking through a telescope. Or I’d rather read biographies about astronomers than trying to recreate what they did. My telescope was better anything Galileo, Copernicus or even Kepler had, and I did so little with it.

There are several pitfalls to owning a telescope. The primary problem of small scopes is they never give views like the photographs you see in Sky and Telescope. However, photographs are never as exciting as seeing Jupiter, Saturn or the Moon in real time with your own telescope. After those three objects, how well a person will enjoy using a small telescope is determined by their temperament. Most new scope owners will go hunting for the faint fuzzies, the term amateur astronomers use for all those gorgeous galaxies and nebula you see in Sky and Telescope, but when you find them they are more like tiny gray smudges than swirls of stars. And they are damn hard to find.

And it’s the skill in finding faint fuzzies that determines whether you’re going to really love owning a telescope. I was never patient enough to develop a knack for star hopping, a technique of finding a naked eye star and looking at fainter stars through a low power lens to hop from one pattern to another until you find your target. Through a telescope, you can aim it in the sky where you see one star, and through the eyepiece see twenty stars. Learning those patterns within patterns is essential, and I never developed that skill. Comet hunters learn the sky so well they can spot a new dot of light among old familiar patterns by memory.

Amateur astronomers are a noble group, and some of them actually perform useful scientific research. Another trait that separates me from real amateur astronomers is I don’t like being outside or staying up late. Oh, I love being out in the country, under dark skies looking up at the whole sky full of stars, but after about an hour, I’m satisfied. Real amateur astronomers can stay out all night. I’ve even discovered I prefer to stargaze without a scope under remote skies because I like the magnificent wide-field vistas to close-ups of tiny points of light . Through a telescope you see way more stars, but a eyepiece full of tiny lights gets boring to me quickly.

The one skill I hoped to develop with my telescope was getting some kind of 3D sense of awareness of where I am in the universe. Living on a big ball that’s spinning between day and night skies makes that difficult. If the Earth wasn’t spinning on its axis or orbiting the Sun, most objects in the sky would remain fixed, and it would be easy to learn and remember their positions.

I always wanted to master the constellations, so when a star or galaxy was mentioned, I could mentally picture in which direction of the sky to look. Except for a handful of constellations, I never did this. In urban skies, it’s very hard to make out constellations. Ancient people saw far more stars than we do, and they spent way more time under the night sky, so memorizing the constellations was second nature to them. Now, the night sky is a theoretical concept to most people. That’s a shame.

I hope the lady at work can do more with my telescope than I did. She has good vision and likes spending time outside, so I’m expecting to hear some great observing reports from her.

JWH – 6/20/10

Am I Becoming An Old Fogey?

I started taking programming classes in 1971, and in 1977 I got caught up in the microcomputer mania. By 1981 I got swept away with the PC revolution and during the 1980s I was quite passionate about BBSes and online computer services like CompuServe and GENIE. And I was wowed when my university got connected to the Internet years before the WWW. I’ve always been an early adopter of any computer gadget, but somehow I’m letting the smartphone mania pass me by. Is this a sign of aging?

At some computer news sites there are more stories about smartphones than computers, and some digital pundits even predict smartphones replacing computers. They sneer that the desktop is just a boring office device. I guess I’m getting old because desktop computers are still as exciting to me as muscle cars were to me in my teens.

I’d love to have a smartphone, but I just can’t justify spending a $1,000 a year to use one. The iPhone 4 is one seductive piece of hardware and if it was only $199 I’d get one in a snap. I can’t stop thinking about getting an iPhone 4 or one of the new Android smartphones – but I keep remembering that I barely use my cell phone, and that I have both an iPod touch and netbook that both go weeks without being used. And my GPS sits at the bottom of a desk drawer, and my three digital cameras seldom get snapped.

I add $50 to my T-Mobile pay-as-you-go phone and I can talk for 6-8 months. Now I might justify paying for a smartphone if I could ditch my house phone, but cell phone service from my home is terrible, for both AT&T and T-Mobile. My wife does have an iPhone. She works and lives out of town and greatly benefits from her smartphone but she practically lives on the damn thing. But Susan is a couple years younger than me and loves Farmville, Facebook and going to live rock concerts. Her favorite band is The Foo Fighters while I enjoy people like Laura Bell Bundy who sings a tamer country rock.

I spend all day at work at my desktop, and all evening at home at my desktop, and my commute is 8 minutes. So I don’t exactly need a powerful smartphone or laptop. But the smartphone mania keeps gnawing at me. They’re like a toy that every cool kid owns, and I don’t.

When I saw the video for the new iPhone 4 at the Apple site I thought the face time video calling was fantastic until I remembered Susan and I bought webcams two years ago for Valentine’s Day and only used them once.

Now I’m not trying to be the Grinch that steals Christmas but is all this smartphone mania some new kind of addiction? I know some people who don’t have home phones, and who don’t have a computer at home, or Internet access, and the smartphone is a great, affordable solution for them. These folks are the kind of people that a smartphone will be their computer, and the ones the pundits were talking about.

And if you’re an on-the-go person that’s already spending a pile of money for cell phone calling and texting, it’s not that much money to add a data plan. I suppose kids and young people who stay constantly in touch with their friends via cell phones can’t imagine living any other way. And that might be the reason why I question all of this. Am I too old to see the necessity of such a wired lifestyle?

Will spending a $1,000 a year for smartphone use just become a necessity of life? And what is that cost for a family with three teenagers? On one hand, I know the smartphone mania is a great boost for the economy, so I shouldn’t complain, but on the other hand, it seems so wasteful. But I guess I’m just an old fogey.

And now the 3D TV mania is starting. HDTV was sexy to me, but 3D TV leaves me limp. I wonder if I need a Viagra for my techno lust? And did I give up cable TV and my two DVR boxes to save money, like I thought, or was it because I’m getting old and couldn’t stand all those channels, like I felt. Now that I think of it, I did sell my Kindle, and I’m actually reading books. Well, I’m not as bad as my friend Lee, he’s returned to listening to LPs. I wonder if that will happen to me too?

JWH – 6/13/10

The City & The City by China Miéville

The City & The City by China Miéville is the third novel I’ve read that’s up for this year’s Hugo Award and my least favorite. But don’t get me wrong, if I wasn’t comparing it against other stunning novels, The City & The City would stand out on its own as a major novel. So far, I’ve read three of the six nominees and they’ve all been impressive.

I really don’t want to say much about the story itself because the novel creates a rather unique fantasy world that readers should slowly assemble in their minds. Please don’t read reviews or plot summaries of this story beforehand.

The City & The City is a murder mystery, like the 2009 Hugo Winner, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, by Michael Chabon, which was about another fantasy city, but one from an alternative history. China Miéville’s cities might be considered from an alternative history, or just an extra invention for our own world we never learned to see. I don’t know, but it’s extremely clever.

Michael Moorcock at The Guardian sees the story as science fiction, trying to tie in string theory physics, but I don’t buy that. Don’t read Moorcock’s review until after you’ve read the book, he gives away practically everything, but do read his review, it has a lot of good stuff to say. A case could be made that The City & The City isn’t fantasy or science fiction.

The City & The City depends on believing something that’s pretty hard to believe, or imagine, although I think it would make a wonderful movie if it could be pulled off visually. Miéville ask his reader to believe the mind is far more powerful than most people suspect. I think the mind is capable of this kind of power. I don’t know how psychological Miéville intends to be with his story, but I can read a lot into it.

How far can culture condition us? We know suicide bombers commit horrendous acts because their beliefs have programmed their minds to see reality very different from the rest of us. But how much do we perceive and not perceive from our training in childhood?

I am reminded of an experiment I read about decades ago. Kittens were raised in two control environments. One environment only had vertical lines, and the other only had horizontal. After some months the cats were removed to live in a normal environment. The kittens who grew up with only horizontal lines would walk into chair legs and other objects that were made up of vertical structures. Kittens that were used to vertical lines wouldn’t jump up on shelves or chairs seats. Whenever I think about this experiment I wonder what I don’t see now because I never learn to see it in childhood.

We follow Inspector Tyador Borlú, of the Extreme Crime Squad, as he searches for a murderer in a city of Besźel. I had never heard of this city before. Because I was reading a novel up for a science fiction award, I first thought it might be new pronunciation of one of our existing city’s name in the far future, but I was wrong.

I’m not a mystery reader, but I have read several of the classics like The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett and Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler. Cities are very important to the mystery genre. In fact, I don’t care who commits the murder in mysteries, it’s the details of the setting and character that have to enchant me when I read one. And it’s character and details I like in The City & The City.

As an untrained mystery reader I can’t say how successful Miéville is at writing a murder mystery. The City & The City is very readable and entertaining, but it’s not science fiction, what I am trained to read. Nor do does it really feel like a fantasy novel. It’s hard to categorize this tale, but I think it’s main appeal will be with mystery readers. Oddly, it wasn’t nominated for the Edgar Award this year, so I don’t know if mystery readers are even giving it a chance.

This novel seems targeted to some unseen genre, like the cities in this story. I think it was best summed up by Denise Hamilton at the LA Times, “If Philip K. Dick and Raymond Chandler’s love child were raised by Franz Kafka, the writing that emerged might resemble China Mieville’s new novel, The City & the City."

The City & The City is such an odd novel, that I’m having fun reading reviews of it after I finished it, to see what other readers made of this very different story. That’s the strength of fantasy writing, writers can write about anything they can imagine, but all too often writers crank out the same old crap. I make and rest my case with the current vampire craze.

JWH – 6/12/10