909 — Buying Electronic Books

Learn about the latest technology for reading without paper in this episode.
Slow dialog: 1:06
Explanations: 3:12
Fast dialog: 16:08
Kindo: What’s that?
Nookie: It’s my new e-book reader. I’m just downloading some new books onto it.
Kindo: I haven’t bought one yet. I’m old school. I still prefer a printed book.
Nookie: But if you haven’t tried it yet, how do you know you wouldn’t like it better? This e-book reader can store over 10,000 digital books and it’s easily portable. Imagine trying to carry an entire library from place to place.
Kindo: I don’t usually read 10,000 books all at once and I hear that there are a lot of incompatible formats out there. Each company is trying to edge out the others by establishing their format as the format. I think I’ll just wait until the dust settles.
Nookie: The different formats aren’t that big a deal. You can easily convert a book in one format to another.
Kindo: I like the look of text on a printed page.
Nookie: You mean that faded text on that yellowed page? On an e-book reader, you can adjust the text size, font, and even line spacing.
Kindo: Can I get all of the out-of-print books on my shelves in digital format?
Nookie: Well, I’m not sure.
Kindo: Until I can, I’ll stick to my low-tech books.

Script by Dr. Lucy Tse