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Britannica - would you buy it on (say) Kindle or Nook?

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IainB:
Came across this yesterday on Britannica's blog: Britannica Goes All-Out Digital
Looks like the hardcopy has gone into the history books, and digital is king.

I bought a hardcopy of Britannica years ago, mostly for my kids, but I have always liked it since I was a child. At one time I would have read the thing all day long if I had been allowed to.
I got a discounted CD copy of Britannica for PC some years back, and it was very good - much better than Encarta - but restrictive (due to DRM, I think), and I ended up not using it overly much.
But I think that if Britannica came onto (say) Kindle or Nook, then I would buy it - and that would determine which technology I plumped for (Kindle or Nook), whereas I am pretty ambivalent about them at present.

This would be despite my using Wikipedia quite a lot. I use that because it is ubiquitous and convenient, but having been involved in creating a few Wikipedia articles, and contributing to lots more, I became disenchanted with it due to the frequent moronic vandalism and stupid editing bias by some Wikipedia editors. So I stopped contributing time or money to Wikipedia.
I regard Britannica as a more reliable and authoritative source, though I have always felt that it went downhill a bit after it left British ownership.

40hz:
I wouldn't buy it in e-book format.

But that's because I don't go to Britannica to research or look things up. I go to it for intellectual entertainment. I browse and read it for fun and personal edification. I like to turn pages, flip around, pull volumes down at random, and be surprised. I'll often start reading something, follow up on something mentioned, and end up happily sitting with five or six open volumes heaped around me with dozens of paper notes and post-it's sprinkled over everything. Some people play computer games. I'll go book or encyclopedia crawling when I'm looking for something to do. And sometimes the connections and correlations you discover, or the insights you gain, are extremely valuable.

I can't do that with an e-book. A <go to random article> button isn't the same thing for me.

If I actually wanted to use Britannica as a reference tool, I'd be more inclined to just open an online account rather than get the electronic version.

But that's me.  :)

TaoPhoenix:
There's an idea that kicks around in Business circles called Good Enough. It's a tricky thing because on some things you should want to pay a little (sometimes a lot) more for real quality. Then just when that sounds obvious, on other things you need to save cash This Week, so then something cheaper in price with some of the original function gets you by or is even just fine!

So of course Britannica is more authoritative - but how much does it cost? And THAT's your comparison vs Wikipedia.

Edit: Meanwhile, I wouldn't want it on the e-readers at all - I'd want it on my high end desktop that can crunch the info and do stuff to it.

Innuendo:
Edit: Meanwhile, I wouldn't want it on the e-readers at all - I'd want it on my high end desktop that can crunch the info and do stuff to it. -TaoPhoenix (March 15, 2012, 09:47 AM)
--- End quote ---

Yes...give me a Britannica wherein I can get 3D-accelerated models of whatever the article is explaining (the solar system, the human anatomy, storm/wind patterns/currents, ....dinosaurs!) that harness my gee-whiz CPU & video card!

And in the spirit of 40hz's post, give me the ability to lay the volumes out on a virtual table-top so I can look at articles side by side, have numerous volumes open at once, and give me the ability to use virtual post-it notes.

That'd be an awesome program....till they clogged it up with DRM. :(

mwb1100:
I'd buy if the price were right and the DRM not too intrusive. And, of course, the more intrusive the DRM, the righter the price would have to be.

Without details on those things, it's hard to say - I'm not even sure what the right price would be...  Internet searches and resources may have their problems, but they're far better than the research tools I had back when I was in school.

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