tandempower

The more I bike-camp, the more I research ultralight tarps, tents, hammock systems, etc. The very light stuff can get pricey very quickly so I am hoping discount retailers like Walmart will pick up on the need for light gear. They already carry lightweight sleeping bags and other pretty good camping gear for the price.

I know people hate Walmart because they think it's better for people to shell out $1000s of dollars for bikes, camping gear, etc. to create more jobs but I'm glad such discounters help people with lower incomes save money because I think we/they deserve more free time to go out and bike-camp, etc. without going (deeper) into debt for doing so.

Smallwheels

I don't like e-ink yet. Though the Paperwhite is an improvement in color and contrast it still doesn't look good to me. It still doesn't have color for images. For a while there was talk of Amazon developing better color LCD displays. Some companies use such technology in store displays but the colors look very plain. Since LED technology is getting much cheaper I don't believe e-ink will every take off as originally hoped. The only benefit of e-ink is extremely long battery life.

I could live with e-ink e-books. I just think there are better alternatives right now. Another thing about the Amazon dedicated e-readers is they don't allow other formats on their devices and they reserve the right to alter and delete the files you have on your device without notification. The terms of service state that users don't own the books they buy from Amazon and put onto their Kindles. If not then exactly why do they take money from people for those books? They don't say that the books are rented anywhere in the agreement. Read it sometime and then decide if you want to utilize Amazon for e-book purchases.

When e-books start to sell for about 25% of the price of a printed book delivered to my door then I'll be interested in owning one and building a library. For now I read books available for free in PDF format.

I-Like-To-Bike

Quite a significant benefit.

If this is a concern, load all e-books to the Kindle Reader only by USB cable and never turn on the wifi feature, i.e. always stay in airplane mode. Even borrowed books will remain readable on the Kindle indefinitely after the library loan period has expired.

Where do you get free PDF books that are reasonably current, i.e. copyright still is active?

tandempower

From pirates? lol. I don't mean to moralize here, actually. If you can buy a copyrighted book second hand, why not an ebook? There should be some way for buyers of ebooks to resell them secondhand through some online distributor that can ensure they are deleted off one hard-drive when transferred to another. Or maybe the data-content of the books should be sold at a price that reflects the ease of digital distributing. Or maybe publishers should make a tiered pricing system where the price drops every so many downloads so that eventually a target revenue is reached and the book can be distributed for some nominal cost like free or $1. Or if the tiered pricing discourages people from being the first to buy a book, they could tier it in the other direction and sell it cheap and first and raise the price every so many downloads.

Roody

Amazon is such a huge player in the e-book market that it is becoming a monopoly. Even big aggressive corporations like Walmart, Barnes&Noble, and Apple are faring poorly as they try to crack Amazon's near monopoly. So I'm not looking for e-book prices to go down in the future. If anything, consumer prices will go up when Amazon is no longer bothering to undercut the competition.

t x

With Apple being forced to drop $400 million because of ebook price fixing (Apple agrees to conditional $450 million e-books antitrust accord | Reuters) I think Amazon will probably try to behave nicely for the short to medium term. In the long term the 1st generation Kindle is a such an inexpensive and well built device, I don't think there will be any shortage of people hacking to ensure you can still load content on it (free, pirated or purchased) even if Amazon is no longer a viable option.

Smallwheels

Great information from both of you.

I don't read ebooks often. I have a few that are very old or were offered free by their writers. I would read more on my computer if e-book prices were reasonable. The last time I complained about e-book prices I gave an example of what is very wrong with them. At the time I could buy ten paperback novels from Amazon and have them shipped to my house for the total of about $25,00. Buying those same ten books sent to me via the internet as downloads would cost $99.90. That is just insane.
Even if the price for those ten books were the same at $25.00 it would be too much.

Now Amazon's minimum free shipping order is $35.00.

Machka 

The dishwasher has been a helpful bit of technology for us. Up till about 18 months ago, I'd never used a dishwasher ... didn't think I could justify one. Then we moved into a place with a dishwasher, and I was sold! We use it a couple times a week and it makes kitchen cleaning quick and easy. More time for cycling, photography, spending time at the beach, etc.

Smallwheels

I miss using a dishwasher. Now that I share a house I keep very few pots and pans. Thus I wash my items by hand after each use.

Smallwheels

Kindle Unlimited! Have you heard about this? It is a new thing from Amazon. It is a monthly subscription that allows people to read unlimited e-books and listen to audio books for $9.99 per month. The limitation is that they don't include everything in their unlimited section. The e-books can be read on any device that has the Kindle Application. This is almost enough to make me want to get a tablet as my next electronic device instead of another desktop.

I think for the first couple of months I would enjoy reading books from which movies have been made in the last decade. Once those are out of the way it would be interesting to see if there were enough titles that interested me. Amazon says 600,000 will be available.

This new service is more in line with their terms of use. It makes the books available to read but I doubt users can keep the books on their machines forever. Thus the concept of owning the book really doesn't need to be addressed. This is where the technology of erasing and modifying things on your device by Amazon without your consent comes into play.

pumabicycle

Here's my ideas for living light;

Donate all of your books and movies to the library. They'll always be there if you want to review something and other people can use them too.

Install a solar panel on your backpack to charge your cellphone, see this link: Drake Martinet ? Solar Powered Backpack? The Solar Timbuk2 Mk.2

Have a really amazing backpack that is waterproof. I use a a Timbuk2 Especial Messenger but I haven't had it long enough to say whether it's that great or will stand the test of time.

Look into the Aerogarden, a self contained hydroponic unit to grow veggies, lettuce, et cetera. It's your own tiny garden right in your kitchen. Also provide lots of healthy oxygen. This thing really works incredibly well.

Check out the Magnic light is you want to eliminate battery purchases from your bike. I don't own them but the idea is a technological marvel.

Be aware that your digital prints will not last, not for long anyway. Digital prints are made with ink, not silver halide and will absolutely, positively fade in a few short years. Film technology never even got the lock on color film and this was big business for nearly 100 years. And so far the only company to guarantee a format is Leica. If you really want to make sure your pictures last is to; make black and white silver halide prints (expected to last about 1,000 years or save them to an external hard drive service like Google Drive but even with Google there's a chance they'll go out of business or formats will change rendering your pictures useless.
You can save all of your important documents like resumes on Drive too.

I use a smartphone for everything. Full size computers are completely unnecessary now unless you do some kind of specialized work. In fact, an iPhone probably does more than a regular computer due to the amount of app development.

I-Like-To-Bike

What "format" would that be?

I suppose that might be so if you consider spreadsheets and documents with more complex formatting and features than an email as specialized work.

wolfchild

Yes, but surfing bikeforums is specialized work... I like to have a larger screen in front of me, so I use my Laptop instead of my smartphone..

Artkansas 

Not necessarily, the library may sell them or recycle them or throw them away, or move them to a branch far away from you.

I-Like-To-Bike

"So far, it seems that most of the big-name publishers haven't agreed to let their titles onto the subscription platform. Books published by HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster aren't offered and those from Penguin Random House are notably absent." https://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/...eff_bezos.html

You should take a look at your library for books, audio books, or download possibilities for audio/electronic books. Free. No need for storage. Aren't you the fellow who signs off every post with Take my stuff, please. I have way too much. My current goal is to have all of my possessions fit onto a large bicycle trailer. Really.

Most movies lately seem to have been adapted from comic books and amusement park rides. Audiobooks that came from the library and have associated movies or TV series made relatively recently that I have listened to for free:
Author Title
Brown Angels and Demons
Brown Da Vinchi Code
Burrough Public Enemies
Chandler Farewell My Lovely
Connelly Blood Work
Connelly Lincoln Lawyer
Criles Charlie Wilsons War
Edsel Monuments Men
Finney Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Fitzgerald Great Gatsby
Hansen Assassination of Jesse James
Jacobson American Gangster
King Shawshank Redemption
Larsson Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest
Larsson Girl Who Played With Fire
Larsson Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Le Carre Smileys People
Le Carre Spy Who Came in from Cold
LeCarre Little Drummer Girl
Lehane Shutter Island
Leonard Be Cool
Leonard Fire in the Hole - Novella
Leonard Killshot
Lindsay Darkly Dreaming Dexter -01
MacDonald Drowning Pool
Owen No Easy Day
Parker, R Appaloosa
Portis True Grit
Schlink Reader The
Thompson Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Updike Witches of Eastwick
Vonnegut Slaughterhouse-Five
WrightE Generation Kill

Smallwheels

There are many books that I would consider getting related to politics. It is just that when reading them they would be a bit depressing due to the truth they would show. Who wants to read a lot of that? Small doses go a long way. I just like to have them for the facts they provide.

There is one authors books I would like to read (can't recall his name right now) who is a former cop. He investigates extremely strange disappearances of people in national parks. There are many cases that have such odd circumstances that it makes the investigations very interesting. For instance; a toddler goes missing just a few feet away from his parents camp. Searchers scower the area for days and cant find him. Then a week or more later his body is found 1000 feet up a cliff more than three miles away. No tracks can be found. No bite marks or signs that an animal preditor took him. Just like most of the victims of these strange cases his shoes are missing, nowhere to be found yet his feet aren't dirty. The tracking dogs couldn't locate his scent more than a few yards from the camp site. Essentially there is something that is grabbing people and making them disappear without a trace. Later whatever it is returns the bodies to places that had already been searched many times. Sometimes people are found alive and they can't remember a thing that happened after leaving camp. Such disappearances have been happening in national forests for at least 60 years. This is a book I would like to read. The author occasionally appears on the radio show Coast To Coast AM.

Robert C

Right, I have checked into it and discussed it with a few librarians. Libraries do not shelve donations. They sell them; eve if they do not have a shelf copy they will almost never shelve a donation. I have even taken books out of the 20cent per book box and seen letters form the publishers sending the book for free asking only that it be shelved. . . into the used book sale pile it goes.

As far as e-readers go, and like others here, I d/l my books from places I will not link to here, I tend to use my phone. Yes, it is a terrible book reader; however, I have had real trouble with e-reader durability. I will admit that I have primarily tried the nook products due to the ease of sideloading. I think the longest one has lasted has been just over a year.

If there are any good (and android does not count, my phone is android, it is not good), durable, e-readers I would love to hear about them.

I-Like-To-Bike

I received my Kindle Reader as a gift in the fall of 2011, still going strong.
Bought a Kindle PaperWhite in Oct 2012 for my wife who has used it for 4-8 hours/day since then without a hitch.

Smallwheels

Robert C please tell us why your e-readers don't last. Do they break from rough usage? Do they just stop holding a charge? Do the screens stop working properly? Are there software problems? Let us know. I don't know anybody with an e-reader.

I would be extremely angry if I paid $100 or more for an e-reader that died after reading only ten to twenty books in a year.

Robert C

Three basic problems: I have had two that the screens failed. I had one that the SD reader stopped working. It also needed to be reset on a regular basis. Then there was one that just kept resetting itself. I think that is is Of course, not recognizing the sd card is not a new thing, my phone won't recognize its SD card. It used to; but no more.

I am not impressed by the durability of these gadgets. I have tried both cheap and good ones, no difference.

Artkansas 

I have had the local library shelve a couple of books that I donated with special requests to use them. But both were very current technical books. However, none of the books that I just brought in a box were ever seen again.

metro2005

Technical obsolence isnt that big of a problem. Just use a common standard such as PDF or E-pub which have been around for quite some time and when these standards become obsolete you convert them all to a new standard.

I think e-book readers are a great example of using technology to live lite. It saves a lot of space when you have all your books on 1 device (with a backup on a harddisk or laptop off course) .
Another example is virtual machines or emulators. No need to have that old MS-DOS pc in your house for those old games, just run MS-DOS virtual on your pc or emulate those old game consoles on your pc.

I also found modern laptops to be fast enough, even for gaming, to replace desktop pc's. They use a lot less energy, are portable and take up less space. Only problem is limited expansion options.

Also your DVD collection can be replaced by converting them to files on your harddisk. Saves up a lot of space too, same for your CD collection.
Watching television and recording television can also be done on a pc.
Basicly you can have your entire DVD, CD and book collection, television set and audio needs on 1 device which is awesome for living small or simple.

Walter S

Yes, it is awesome. It's also easy to put all your eggs in one basket and behave as though that device will never malfunction or be lost. That's something to remind yourself of and not become too dependent. I depend heavily on electronics. When I bicycle tour I make a point to take my iPhone AND my iPad. If one gives out then I can use the other one.

enigmaT120

I've ripped my whole cd collection, but I have it backed up in 3 different locations. The first time I did it my hard drive died and I had to rip them all again.

When it's an option I buy my new music as .mp3s in the first place. And back them up in all three locations!

wahoonc

^^^ This!

I always back my stuff up to at least two locations. I have a spare hard drive that I put important stuff on and keep in a separate location. I also have a couple of large thumb drives that are encrypted that I keep important documents on. One stays with me, one with my bride and yet another stays in the safety deposit box at the local bank, along with one of my spare hard drives that things are backed up on.
I am not paranoid, just want to make sure that my information will be available if I need it. Especially after seeing the aftermath of Katrina first hand when people had to relocate and had little to no documentation with them.

Aaron