Kindle fails college test as textbook replacement

Surprise factor: zero. The students can't highlight, can't easily flip between pages, complain that the bookmarking function is buggy, color charts are less valuable (Kindle is monochrome), and that the cost of ebooks is not significantly cheaper than dead tree editions. In fact, the article quotes that one ebook costs as much as a used copy of the text.

I think the best comment is from months ago when they first started the pilot program, that when working on papers, it's good to have multiple different books open to multiple passages as you're composing your thoughts. You just can't do that with a Kindle.

They're saying that the iPad will be used in similar trials in the near future, and I'll bet it will have similar problems. One complaint that I have about my iPod Touch is that it's not easy to select a single row of text, or multiple words, for copy/cut/paste functions. Maybe it's easier on a full-sized iPad, but it's not easy at iPod sizes.

Amazon's executive is, of course, saying that the 'pilot program is providing a lot of valuable feedback.'

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2011938870_kindle24.html

http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/10/05/25/1713242/Amazon-Kindle-Fails-First-College-Test?art_pos=18

Do you use Google's Chrome browser? Did it silently update to the new version on your computer?

It did on mine. I installed it two months ago to check it out. I went back to using Firefox because there were a couple of behaviors in Chrome that I didn't care for, so today I decided to update it and see if those behaviors had changed.

I opened Chrome and it was already at the latest version. With no interaction from me.

I do not allow ANYTHING to update software on my computer without my explicit approval. I'm not happy at all that Google would silently update their browser without my permission.

If I don't get a satisfactory answer from them soon on how I can turn this off, I'm ripping it out by the root and possibly canceling my Gmail accounts.