Australian Lab Notes - January 2011 - Steve Turvey

As I await the paperless office, a prediction that was made decades ago, my desk remains stacked high with paper documents. Another similar prediction also rings in my mind - print is dead. It’s not, but the evolution of consumer computing from devices such as the iPad and Kindle has made inarguable steps towards this end.

Now I love reading, and I do have a respectable library at home. But it is finite, it is full to overflowing and certainly has no Tardis-esque capability. I won’t be able to fit any more books on its shelves, so I’ve joined the movement and purchased the latest Kindle.

I love reading a physical book. If its good I will re-read it several times over the years, but the Kindle is smaller, lighter and can hold up to 3500 books. That’s quite an impressive library right there in the palm of your hand.

I’ve also been playing around with an iPad (more on that later) but it is the size, weight and display that favours the Kindle. The display is really the clincher; the electronic ink display is wonderful and, quite frankly, it does look like a printed page. My only criticism, and it’s a small one, is that the background is not as white as paper, so contrast is not as good. Then again, many of my older novels are yellowing so much that they are far worse than the Kindle’s display – perhaps it’s just a preference.

In bright light the Kindle’s display is perfectly readable, providing you don’t hold the screen so as to actually reflect the light. iPads are great indoors but in strong light or outdoors, its readability is quite poor. Of course, the iPad is much more than a simple book reader.

While the Kindle might save trees, the iPad has the potential to save forests given its enormous potential.

Both the Kindle and iPad can be used pretty much anywhere, the Kindle in particular, has great battery life (you could take it on a camping holiday for a couple of weeks and not need to charge it). If it’s a book, PDF or other document, the Kindle has you covered and, I would argue, it is just as easy to use as a sheet of paper. The iPad, while not as simple and convenient as the Kindle, covers more bases. The iPad gives you the majority of PC and Internet resources in an eminently usable form factor.

Why do we really print documents when we are simply going to read them? Probably because paper is always available, always reliable, light, and can be taken anywhere. Certainly there are still many reasons to print, but the Kindle and iPad are chipping away at them.

I have found, of late, that I’m constantly using the iPad - what’s on TV next? Look it up on the iPad. Need to read a proposal document? Straight to the iPad (no need to print). Wondering where Olympic Dam is? Forget the atlas, the iPad is faster and not only tells you where in SA you would find Olympic Dam, but all the background detail and how to get there.

With the increasing usefulness of portable devices such the iPad and Kindle, maybe some of our forests will get a stay of execution, but I have no doubt that as sales of these devices grow, another part of our environment will be impacted.