Jakob Nielsen. You're already familiar with him and his work because you've been paying attention to web design issues during the past ten years. He's carved our a well-deserved reputation for knowing more about web design than anyone else. Period.
So, I was Very Excited when I discovered Mr. Nielsen turned his high beams onto the subject of eBooks because, as you know, dear reader, eBooks make my short list of interests / obsessions.
Here's a link to Nielsen's report, and, below are some of the salient points:
(Love this...) On each device, we asked each user to read a short story by Ernest Hemingway. We picked Hemingway because his work is pleasant and engaging to read, and yet not so complicated that it would be above the heads of users. (Yes, that would be Hemingway, not too complicated.)
The iPad measured at 6.2% lower reading speed than the printed book, whereas the Kindle measured at 10.7% slower than print. However, the difference between the two devices was not statistically significant because of the data's fairly high variability. (Hooray for books!)
Most of the users' free-form comments were predictable. For example, they disliked that the iPad was so heavy and that the Kindle featured less-crisp gray-on-gray letters. People also disliked the lack of true pagination and preferred the way the iPad (actually, the iBook app) indicated the amount of text left in a chapter.
I didn't seen anything metric on trying to read in sunshine, which is where the Kindle is supposed to shine over the iPad, but it might appear in the full report on in the next report.
Godspeed, Mr. Nielsen. Godspeed.
