Daily Dose of English 207
eReaders
Daily Dose of English 207
Intermediate
Hey everyone, my name is Ben and you're listening to a Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. I'm glad you could make it today. In this episode, we're going to be talking about e-readers. And I'm not going to lie. I think I've talked about this before, but I couldn't find it in my massive list of over 200 episodes now, which is kind of crazy to say. Um, I'm, I don't think of myself as like creating episodes, necessarily, but like that's what these are. And so like when I think about episodes of things that I enjoy, like 200 is a big number. And the fact that I've created over 200 of something is kind of cool. I don't know. But yeah, so let's talk about e-readers because I am so grateful that I bought an e-reader at this point like three years ago. It was during the pandemic and I got a used Kindle on eBay or something, I got myself a used Kindle that was like 60 bucks, I don't remember. It's not very big, it's not very powerful, but I use it every single day and it's one of my favorite possessions that I have probably. It is so useful for, and it basically taught me to read again. I've made a video about this on the Refold YouTube channel, basically about how I learned to read again. Because prior to what, 2021, I hadn't really read books since I was a kid, basically. um ever like the internet and phones and that kind of thing essentially took over my uh reading habit and i stopped reading pretty much at all during i think like the end of middle school up into high school and then later moving on all the way up until 2021 more or less i probably read a couple of like physical, of read books with my eyes. I listened to books still, which is very good, which is a lot better than most people nowadays, or most younger people nowadays. And I, but I just didn't read anything. And a big part of that was that it was really difficult to like, one, find the interest, two, find the time, three, be able to sit down and focus, et cetera, et cetera. But I never really stopped wanting to read. I wanted to get back to reading. I wanted to read more things and learn more in that sort of way. And at some point, I did some research into it and I was looking for tips on how to read again, basically. And I came across a couple of very helpful videos. And one of them was like, make it as easy as possible. And for me, that was an e-reader. Going to a bookstore wasn't really a possibility at that time. It wasn't really doable. And I didn't want to be reading on my tablet or on my phone just because it hurts my eyes. I didn't want to be on my phone more because I was already on my computer all day. I am on my computer all day. And so I really wanted like the e-ink experience so that it was a little bit, it was more closer to a book. E-readers absolutely are not a book, but their physical, the way that they work is a lot closer. And it's actually pretty interesting, the technology that they use is like a actual like they move it moves a little thing that like an ink blob basically that looks that like looks like ink which is why it looks like that which is why there's no really there's no real reflections and that kind of thing there is a lot of research and development in the e-ink area on trying to make it more responsive, because part of the issue with that technology is that it's slow to update. So when I click the turn page button on my Kindle, it takes like a second to load and then turn the page. Probably a little less than that, but if you're trying to do like 30 frames per second, you cannot do that when it takes half a second to update a single page. But that's totally fine for reading a book because you turn the page every minute, every minute and a half, right? So you don't need a high frame rate. It also doesn't have color, but both of those issues are being worked on. I've seen some interesting tech demos of color e-ink displays as well as like 60 FPS e-ink displays. I saw an interesting video by a guy that's like working and developing a very fast e-ink tablet. And the actual like e-ink part looks cool. The rest of it sounds just terrible. It's like trying to reinvent your brain and all these things. It's like, I don't care. I just want to be able to read and like look at things faster on that form factor. But then at the same time, I also realized that I don't need a better Kindle. I often have a desire to have a better e-ink machine, a better e-ink, an e-reader rather, something that's faster, bigger, more cool, whatever. But then I realized I don't need one. At this point, I bought Kindles for both of my parents and a couple of friends, and I now have the least interesting Kindle. I have the worst Kindle, you might say, but it's still totally fine. It functions. It does exactly what I want it to do. The only thing that I do wish is that I had an e-ink reader, like a Kindle that's the size of my phone, because I'd love to be able to take that out with me if I'm going to a restaurant or something, because grabbing my actual Kindle doesn't fit in my pocket. So I'd love to have a pocket-sized one. I do still take my regular Kindle with me places, but it would just be convenient to have like a travel Kindle that's specifically for traveling and moving around. And yeah, so that's something that I wish I had because it would be, I don't know, just handy. But the other thing is that I'm able just to get books so much quick more quickly and easily I Will admit that I do I don't pay for my books. I do download them from Z library because I've the process of buying books is not super easy and I want to buy them in Spanish or another language or whatever and And then I also want to be able to have them without DRM, which is the most important thing. Cause like, what if I want to read it with something else? And so I just hate, like I even, I've tried to buy books before, like I, but I try to avoid Amazon, but like once I was buying some Spanish books that I wanted to like read and learn with and I downloaded it and then I just couldn't read it on the thing that I wanted to read on. And I was like, this is not, this doesn't work. I, I'm just going to download it because I need, I want to be able to use this the way that I want to use it. It just doesn't make sense to me to buy a digital thing that I can't use the way I want to use. Um, and have to spend money on that. I would gladly spend money on real books, but, uh, Yeah, because I can own them, I can use them, but I just don't want to rent a digital ebook that I can't actually do anything with because that's just, I don't know, it just doesn't feel right. So I don't really buy digital books and end up reading like that. Because I also know that authors don't get a very good cut from a lot of those things. So if I was to buy an e-book anyways, I'd want to buy it from them, but that's a whole pain in the ass. I've talked about this with TV shows and movies as well. where it's like, it's just so much faster and easier because I can do what I want with it. I don't have to worry. And if I had to pay for that, if I was able to pay that way, I would, but it's just a massive pain to do that. So that's why I end up just downloading them and reading them on my Kindle. But my hope is that I'm able to buy them all in the future. All the books that I've read, I'd love to have on a shelf just to physically have, but they're also expensive. Another reason I like my e-reader is that books in here in Mexico are insanely expensive. I think I've also complained about this before, but it's so weird to me how expensive books are. They are like a small, relatively cheap book is usually like $15 minimum, which is so much higher than in the US. And this is for like a book that came out in 2014, like a decade ago. and it might even be used. I once walked into a used bookstore and there was a copy of a young adult fiction book from like 2008. It was a paperback copy, very small, like mass market paperback. It was in terrible condition and they wanted $12 for it. I was like, there's, this is not worth $12 in the U S this would be a dollar. Um, or like in, in some, like in Australia, books are basically free. They're so cheap. It's like, it's really strange to me how expensive books are here. The only cheap books that you can find are the books that nobody wants, right? It's all the ones that are from like a 1960 and bad condition or whatever. And it's like on a random topic. Like, yeah, it's kind of interesting and you could read the book, but it's not like the same as a book that somebody is actually looking to read or whatever. It's just interesting to me. Anyways, that's this episode. That's me rambling about books and eBooks and stuff. But yeah, I love my eReader. And if it does die or break, I'm going to get another one because it's helped me to actually read every day. And I really like it. Yeah. Anyways, that's everything from me. I hope that you enjoyed this episode. If you like your e-reader or you have one, let me know what you have down below. I'm curious to know, but I'll see you again tomorrow for another episode. Have a good one. I'll see you then. Bye.
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