18 Jan
2003
18 Jan
'03
6:20 p.m.
At 00:47 18/01/2003 -0800, Scarletdown wrote:
Perhaps I'm in a tiny minority here, but if such a
work did get
posted for free download, I would eventually buy the hard copy
anyway. Afterall, I frequently like to take a book or magazine
outside with me to read when I step out to smoke (and an American
Spirit or Dunhill can take 10 minutes or so to go through.) It would
be very impractical and silly to try to haul my PC out to the yard in
order to read an e-document during these downtimes. Likewise,
reading in bed or in the bathtub, or on the bus, or on the ferry, or
at the laundromat requires hardcopy as well. :)
I've been mentally compiling some other thoughts on this topic over
the past few days, and may post them later. :p
-- Scarletdown
No, you're not in the minority. I would estimate that since I had the
ability to download mp3s and such like, I have bought *more* music CDs,
and I have *definitely* bought more DVDs since having had DSL and the
opportunity to download and watch the films first.
First Harry Potter, for instance. Downloaded it, went to the cinema to
watch it properly, (full family trip, ?15 or so [$23]) and ended up
buying the official DVD. Twice; one for the mother-in-law. This is
not an isolated incident..
Conversely, have also downloaded and watched/listened/read stuff that
we decided was total crap, and been glad we'd not spent the money on it.
As far as books go, there is no substitute for a proper paper manual. It
really annoys me all the stuff we buy at work that comes with a CD full
of PDFs instead. Even with the laptop, it's a major pain in the
proverbial if you want to look something up when, say, out on site and
you want to tweak the settings no a router.