Going Digital... Your thoughts?

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Started 1 year ago by themusiclivez
Latest reply from terriok
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themusiclivez
Member

I used to be really against the whole "digital movement" with music and books. Then I got my iPod and I fell in love. I still like to purchase CDs of my absolute favorite musicians but have found that if I only like a few songs on an album I prefer to just get buy the track on iTunes. Needless to say, I have gotten rid of a ton of CDs.

Then came the eReader. If you check other threads that I have posted in I stated very clearly that I was anti-eReader (for me, personally). My uncle gave me one that he received as a gift and I thought, "Ok, I will download the classics that are free and it will save me some money." I then found out that the library system works with eReaders. Too cool!

So my question is this: Have any of you gone completely, or extremely digital? I still want to keep my favorite CDs and books but I don't have a problem at all with the new found space that these gadgets have given me! It's just a little scary to me for some reason.

Posted 1 year ago #
charmed2482
Member

I don't think I'd ever purchase an e-reader but if i was given one for free then I'd totally be open to using it and downloading free books for it. I also don't like having a ton of CD's b/c I almost never listen to the actual CD anymore, but I like keeping my favorite in case anything ever happens to my hard drive and I lose everything else. I don't know that I'd ever go completely digital b/c its a lot of hassle to keep everything backed up and even if you do, you still might lose it all.

Posted 1 year ago #
themusiclivez
Member

The free-ness of the eReader definitely warmed me up to it. I just don't want it to replace my love for physical books!

Posted 1 year ago #
Netleigh
Member

I recently got a kindle, it's great and will save me space and luggage weight on 'general' reading. There are still a lot of books I want to keep in paper because of their beauty, the typesetting, illustrations and bindings all give me pleasure.

Posted 1 year ago #
FatStupidAmerican
Member

I find that the whole going digital thing pretty much boils down to getting people to buy their media for a second time, and prevents sharing of media. I don't mean sharing in the sense of download this album, I mean, here bring my book back when you are done. It also prevents the consumer from getting money back for their purchases. When I am finished with a particular piece of media I could always sell it to someone on the used market, which I can't do (not that I know of at least) with digital downloads.

All of my music has been ripped into digital/hard drive storage, but it was digital to begin with(CDs). I can't say I am anti or oppose ebooks and readers. I just prefer the physical book, in ebook form I'd have to go through a process to hack it.

I am not against it, I am just not going to buy into it.

I also have this thing about trying to use less stuff that requires a charge.

Posted 1 year ago #
lgmost
Member

Going Digital is great. But disk corruption or virus infection is a disaster to digital data loss. I have experienced both. Luckily, I have different types of media to backup my data, I can recover all the data finally. Since then, I don't trust the computer too much.

Besides that, if I have to put lots of effort(mainly in terms of time) to change the physical stuff into digital, unless it is very important or it occupies a lot of space that I can't afford, otherwise I'll leave it.

As the stuff becomes "virtual", it will accumulate unconsciously and become "mental stuff", I have read some articles about information hoarding and they really scare me. I force myself not to have many harddisks to avoid being information hoarding.

In fact, some of the data stored in the hard disk is not worth that much (as the price of the hard disk). I have deleted a lot of unused digital stuff. I guess for most important digital data, may be 50GB is quite enough for me.

Also, if there are too much digital data, backup is quite time consuming. And I just don't want to rely too much on computer, I don't want to enjoy all things on the computer.

Posted 1 year ago #
ninakk
Member

I'm doing both.

- Books and e-books; I'm still buying the occasional book, especially those with large, gorgeous pictures of food or design for instance. The library has become a friend again though, as I'm trying to borrow a book I'm looking into before deciding. Like we've discussed, some cookbooks might contain only a few interesting recipes or they don't bring much new ideas to the kitchen. Now that I'm into mindfulness, I'm finding many interesting books on the subject but I'd fill a whole shelf if I'd buy them in paper format and so my e-reader comes in handy. It's also great for travelling purposes, but why deprive myself of the feeling of a new book in my hands if I love it? I think that having an e-reader has closed some doors but opened others and as long as I'm happy, who cares :)

- Music and digital music; I never was completely attached to the cd itself, not like to a book anyway, but what I did was to get rid of the ones that I definitely wouldn't listen to again and then removed the rest from their cases. All of them not live in two ringbinders, which is a nice compromise.

- I like my iPod touch for organizing purposes and it actually scared me a lot to get rid of the paper calendar that I always used to carry around, but I try to sync it with the iMac as often as possible and also have a couple of externals in use.

Just listen to yourself and don't get pushed by the solutions of others or you might have regrets later.

Posted 1 year ago #
ninakk
Member

Oh and one of the greatest sites that I've found in a while is manybooks.net recommended by Zora. Project Gutenberg is fine, but the layouting is a lot better on the former.

Posted 1 year ago #
themusiclivez
Member

A lot of great points have been mentioned.

@FatStupidAmerican - I completely agree about reselling items. That is a major con to me about digital media. I, too, like to sell unwanted CDs, DVDs, and books after I am finished with them and find that I am less likely to purchase an mp3 than I used to because of this realization.

Which brings me to lgmost's point: I also don't want to become a digital hoarder and have had a serious "re-think" of the items I have on my iPod. I have been going through the files and deleting songs that I no longer want but felt guilty getting rid of because I couldn't resell them like I could a CD. I definitely have to be careful of this.

@Netleigh - Carrying less when I want to travel is definitely a perk for both the iPod and the Kindle - I totally agree and look forward to using both!

@ninakk - Thank you so much for the link! I will have to check it out :o)

A positive spin on the eReader for me is this: I don't have to handle library books all of the time. A lot of books that I am interested in reading are classics that I can get for free with the eReader but that I would not have otherwise purchased; I would have had to take them out of the library. And I hate library books. I always manage to get the ones that smell funny or have mysterious brown smears on the pages. The eReader will prevent me from dealing with that!

Posted 1 year ago #
lucy1965
Member

Unless the book is one in which the illustrations (equations, drawings, photographs) are the primary draw, I have replaced it with a digital copy whenever possible. My reasons are not everyone else's: I have visual limitations which have become progressively worse over time, and most of my books sat on the shelf gathering dust. Because of my Nook, reading is again one of my primary sources of enjoyment (and I have a lot less dusting to do). That being said, you'll get my copy of the Definitive Edition of The Annotated Alice from me when I'm dead.

I tend to use music as background sound rather than listening to specific pieces (it's only been in the last few years that I've been able to afford to purchase music at all), so I subscribe to digital music services. I'm happy to pay $35 per year to stream music with no commercials, and when the BBC international iPlayer app is available later this year, I'll subscribe to that, too.

Posted 1 year ago #
Kamakazi
Member

I am about 90% digital in my media consumption, Zune Pass for music, Kindle for books, Netflix for movies (just streaming service now), and Hulu for TV. As for data corruption or losing stuff, the only service that I actually download stuff from is Kindle, and Amazon has a backup for me, although I have a ton of free songs on Zune I haven't taken the time to download yet. This means my chances of losing anything is quite small, although for Netflix and Zune to be able to consume new stuff I have to pay the subscription fee, but that is really just the cost of one cheap DVD or a CD, respectively.

The only thing I still get in physical media is comic books (yes I am an adult who still reads comics), and that is only because the digital market for comics is a steaming mess. Once the publishers get it sorted out in some way (and I get a color e-reader) I will switch to that as well.

Doing this has allowed me to get rid of about 300 DVDs, hundreds of books, and about 50 CDs (I never had many), while at the same time increasing the amount of things available to me at any one time.

For anybody concerned about becoming a digital hoarder I suggest looking into streaming services, obviously Netflix is the big one, but also things like a Zune Pass, where you get unlimited streaming and downloads while still a subscriber, I know there are several services out there that offer similar services. I know the biggie is iTunes, and I don't foresee a subscription option coming from them anytime soon.

Posted 1 year ago #
lottielot
Member

themusiclivez: I'm so with you on the weird-smelling library books! People should be banned from smoking whilst reading library books. There must be a lot of people with weird smelling houses out there, judging by some book smells :)
Annoyingly, I have a Kindle and it doesn't work with our library service :(

Posted 1 year ago #
ninakk
Member

@lottielot: Maybe you can try converting a library book from its format to another one? I don't know what formats they have and which Kindle version you have, but you could look into it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Kindle#File_formats
http://calibre-ebook.com/user_manual/cli/ebook-convert.html

Posted 1 year ago #
terriok
Member

I am with the American.

They are going to keep changing formats so they can keep soaking people.

Dem dar former readers might have had BO too.

Ever see one of those pbs specials about germs? It will give you nightmares.

Whatever you do don't pick up a used Mad Magazine!

Posted 1 year ago #
themusiclivez
Member

lottielot - The last book I borrowed from the library smelled like bad incense, cigarettes, and mildew. I was so grossed out that I had to bring it right back!

terriok - If I watched one of those PBS specials I would never take anything out of the library again. I am such a germophobe!

Posted 1 year ago #
bandicoot
Member

now that i have a kindle and an ipod, i read more and i listen to far more music.
i haven't re-purchased anything that i already own on cd or deadtree.....apart from a handful of really favourite books that i can re-read for the rest of my life.

i love digital: it is completely portable, easy to use, easy to organise, doesn't collect dust, is backed up all over the place so i need never fear a burning-library horror scene like the one in the name of the rose.
it takes up very little room....sometimes i sit and gaze at my ipod in wonder and think, this tiny thing contains all the music i've bought and loved in the last 30 years, how amazing is that?

Posted 1 year ago #
Emilie
Member

I listen to everything: MP3s, CDs, tapes, and records. (Okay, I don't listen to 8-tracks.) With CDs, I'm trying to do "one in, one out" so that I can have a collection of just the stuff I really love. I've probably bought fewer than 30 MP3s ever, though. Most of the ones I have are free downloads from music blogs, podcasts, or burns of my CDs.

With books, I do have an e-reader because I got one as a gift. But I'd rather get books for free at the library, as long as I'm just reading them at home. Next time I go on a plane or train, the e-reader will probably come with me, though. As for DVDs, I do Netflix. I only own about 10 DVDs of my all-time favorite movies.

Posted 1 year ago #
vjb
Member

I've gone all-digital with music and mostly digital with books. I used to think I could never dispense with physical books, but now I'm a convert. I read a lot more! I'm saving up for an iPad 2...

Posted 1 year ago #
Laetitia in Australia
Member

I own neither an MP3 player / iPod nor an e-reader. I think I'd like an MP3 player for when I want my music to be a bit more portable, since I need batteries / electricity anyway to listen to my CDs. I don't know that I'd get rid of my CDs but I do have several that I bought for one or two tracks and, while I like most of the tracks on those albums, now I'd be happy just to get the individual tracks.

As for books, I like that I don't have to look at some form of computer screen and need some kind of power other than natural light or ordinary house lights to read. I like curling up with a book on the couch or in bed so I don't know that I'd want to convert to an e-reader for novels. Textbooks, particularly heavy ones, may be a different story but it would depend on the cost.

In the meantime I've become a library junkie. I'm a member of a quilting group that meets in a room at a library so I'll often borrow one of the books they have on display near the service desk when I leave. It's one way of expanding the variety of books I read at no direct cost / book (in effect I pay for it through my rent that the landlord hen uses to pay rates) plus I'm not left accumulating books.

I've also won a few books in the last few years. I often pass these on to others if I don't care about keeping them long term.

Posted 1 year ago #
terriok
Member

Guess who finally threw out most (all?) 8 tracks! HA!

DVD's self-destruct (much like 8 tracks) and I cannot afford to buy a new computer so when in doubt I just get rid of the ones that appear fickle.

Posted 1 year ago #

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