My kids are in middle and high school, and they all have school-issued 13 in chromebooks. None of them have print text books, they are all online. I HATE studying with them, because of this. It is a nightmare to try to read a physics or math textbook; there is so much space taken by chrome, the book UI, etc, and the book usually displays full screen. Or, you zoom in, you can see 1 paragraph and half a figure, and can't turn the page. Then, you switch tabs back to your homework, also digital, and can't view the book. God forbid I show them how to tile the windows side by side, but even if you did, the book would be even smaller, and the hw questions run off the side and don't wrap. It is unbearable. I resort to digging out my 20+ year old college engineering and math textbooks for physical references. The kids don't seem to mind it too much, but it is all they have ever known.
You describe cheaping out for vastly inferior solution compared to what we had for centuries. Part of studying was going quickly back, switching between X pages before and here, highlighting quickly, making quick notes on the side and so on.
Every one of us has slightly different memorization / comprehension techniques to grok foreign text and concepts within, and this crappy cheap new tech diminishes most of them. For quick overview why not, but for deeper studies this is bad, very bad.
Just like I hated when Tesla started putting some crappy tablet instead of physical knobs, for vastly inferior driver experience. But masses clearly think differently and even here on HN many celebrated is as some sort of progress, so manufacturers aligned and are happy to save on better quality controls to keep their margins fat and juicy. Who cares about some focus or safety or long term reliability studies, look at that shiny glaring screen!
> Just like I hated when Tesla started putting some crappy tablet instead of physical knobs, for vastly inferior driver experience. But masses clearly think differently
Do they? Why are physical controls back?
It seems like car manufacturers just mindlessly jumped on what they thought was a fad, without ever bothering to test out their own cars.
I recently took a CS101 class that used ZyBooks for the textbook and absolutely hated it for this very reason [1].
The "reading" was basically a bunch of mandatory checkbox exercises that turn into a slog through a bunch of slow-loading prompts that were just "Click Next" to receive confirmation that I had read the info in the prompts.
Glad to know I am not the only parent who feels this way.
On a personal note, I am one of those people who highlights sections of text books using different coloured markers and scribbled notes on the margins. During my final exam time, my revision of materials was very efficient. I am not sure how to teach my kids these skills.
You can try to teach them to use a good pdf reader. At work there are a lot of Google doc to review. I always convert them to PDF so that I can have private annotations, named bookmarks and highlights of different colors (I can even diff between two versions). This way I am building a collection of PDF I can locally search.
On this topic, computers are great to make flashcards. Instead of the paragrahed notes, when learning material, I am taking note in the form of short Q&A using markdown flashcards. Works great for me. Easy to review efficiently, easy to extend.
This said, I am not sure this is adapted to kids. Hope you share your skills to your kids.
I have this problem right since i got my first tab during ny bachelors. Given how expensive books are, I have had temptation to just buy 3-4 10inch kindles and wing it. Also, it's very important that kids use their hands to write even if they don't actually turn in handwritten work. The act of even just doodling while thinking has been shown to be extremely beneficial
Just out of curiosity, have you heard of the Remarkable Paper Pro? I just got one and it's decent at the writing experience. Probably even good. But currently it's basically only for writing, you can export PDF or png to an email or their cloud. You can write on imported pdfs as well.
I find reading texts on a 13 inch (3200x1800, 276 ppi) laptop easier to remember than on a 42 inch (3840x2160, 104 ppi) monitor. Reading takes more effort as text isn't as clear on the big screen.
Been waiting for 42 inch 8k monitors since 2017. There's a 55 inch IPS on the horizon (ASRock PG558KF).
Does anyone have experience reading text on 8K VA panels like Samsung QN700B?
Search the study for "ink," this is discussed briefly. They produce less visual fatigue than regular screens because they reflect ambient light rather than relying entirely on being backlit.
In terms of comprehension the hierarchy probably goes paper > e-ink > all other screens. Hard to quantify the gap between each.
I think this is a big point to consider: we've known for a long time that taking notes increases recall to a degree that likely dwarfs this screen vs paper thing. There are studies where it's like a 7-8x improvement in recall which is tied to comprehension.
So if you want to actually remember and learn from stuff, definitely take notes. Preferably handwritten ones. Preferably do it all on paper. But the key is really to just be taking notes.
Lastly there is also the argument that doing anything is better than nothing. Some people aren't going to get through any books at all if they're not audiobooks, so, they should keep on listening to audiobooks, even if comprehension or recall might not be as good that way. Personally I've been on a hardcover books kick recently, I've found I just get a lot of satisfaction out of reading a proper, high quality hardcover book from start to finish, alone or with a loved one, preferably with a cup of tea, so that's what I'm now doing.
My own personal experience is I hate reading any long form material on a computer or tablet screen. Something about the experience was both painful and didn’t seem to work with how I read. I bought a used e-reader on a lark at a flea market to try it out and picked up reading as a hobby again. Even with the newer backlit e-readers the experience is much different.
As a first guess I would say:
* “Paper like” looks, including slightly blurred text (since e-ink pixels aren’t square)
* Mostly reflective lighting and softer lighting when backlit
* Dedicated and simple UI
* Perhaps most importantly singly consumable, individual and discrete chunks of readable text
Are all factors in making this a better experience. E-pubs that can reflow their text and so that each “page” is rendered legibly and in full are great experiences. Reading fixed format PDFs is better than on a tablet but not as good as an epub
I have, and still find normal computer screens to just not work for reading long form content for me, even reading an epub in an epub app on a normal computer screen/tablet still feels off
Maybe somewhat related but I also find that if I'm taking notes, I retain things much better if I handwrite them. Often I don't even need to refer to my handwritten notes because I can remember them, which is almost never the case with typed notes.
And interestingly, it's specifically handwritten notes in pen. When I use a pencil it's much more like just typing them out.
Yes, this is me as well. Reading on paper is so much easier and faster for me, and my reading comprehension is substantially higher as compared to reading on a screen. Even an e-paper screen.
I had long thought that this is because I'm old enough that for a huge portion of my life, most of my reading was on paper and people a generation or two younger than my wouldn't see the same disparity. This paper, however, seems to indicate that this may not be the whole story.
Every one of us has slightly different memorization / comprehension techniques to grok foreign text and concepts within, and this crappy cheap new tech diminishes most of them. For quick overview why not, but for deeper studies this is bad, very bad.
Just like I hated when Tesla started putting some crappy tablet instead of physical knobs, for vastly inferior driver experience. But masses clearly think differently and even here on HN many celebrated is as some sort of progress, so manufacturers aligned and are happy to save on better quality controls to keep their margins fat and juicy. Who cares about some focus or safety or long term reliability studies, look at that shiny glaring screen!
Whatever the other trade-offs, you can do all that even more easily with a good PDF application.
You also can open multiple instances of the same book, to have multiple pages open simultaneously.
Do they? Why are physical controls back?
It seems like car manufacturers just mindlessly jumped on what they thought was a fad, without ever bothering to test out their own cars.
The "reading" was basically a bunch of mandatory checkbox exercises that turn into a slog through a bunch of slow-loading prompts that were just "Click Next" to receive confirmation that I had read the info in the prompts.
Absolutely miserable experience all around.
[1] https://www.zybooks.com/
On a personal note, I am one of those people who highlights sections of text books using different coloured markers and scribbled notes on the margins. During my final exam time, my revision of materials was very efficient. I am not sure how to teach my kids these skills.
On this topic, computers are great to make flashcards. Instead of the paragrahed notes, when learning material, I am taking note in the form of short Q&A using markdown flashcards. Works great for me. Easy to review efficiently, easy to extend.
This said, I am not sure this is adapted to kids. Hope you share your skills to your kids.
Been waiting for 42 inch 8k monitors since 2017. There's a 55 inch IPS on the horizon (ASRock PG558KF).
Does anyone have experience reading text on 8K VA panels like Samsung QN700B?
In terms of comprehension the hierarchy probably goes paper > e-ink > all other screens. Hard to quantify the gap between each.
I think this is a big point to consider: we've known for a long time that taking notes increases recall to a degree that likely dwarfs this screen vs paper thing. There are studies where it's like a 7-8x improvement in recall which is tied to comprehension.
So if you want to actually remember and learn from stuff, definitely take notes. Preferably handwritten ones. Preferably do it all on paper. But the key is really to just be taking notes.
Lastly there is also the argument that doing anything is better than nothing. Some people aren't going to get through any books at all if they're not audiobooks, so, they should keep on listening to audiobooks, even if comprehension or recall might not be as good that way. Personally I've been on a hardcover books kick recently, I've found I just get a lot of satisfaction out of reading a proper, high quality hardcover book from start to finish, alone or with a loved one, preferably with a cup of tea, so that's what I'm now doing.
As a first guess I would say:
* “Paper like” looks, including slightly blurred text (since e-ink pixels aren’t square)
* Mostly reflective lighting and softer lighting when backlit
* Dedicated and simple UI
* Perhaps most importantly singly consumable, individual and discrete chunks of readable text
Are all factors in making this a better experience. E-pubs that can reflow their text and so that each “page” is rendered legibly and in full are great experiences. Reading fixed format PDFs is better than on a tablet but not as good as an epub
I know some people despise 60Hz screens because they're too slow and they notice the flickering.
And interestingly, it's specifically handwritten notes in pen. When I use a pencil it's much more like just typing them out.
I had long thought that this is because I'm old enough that for a huge portion of my life, most of my reading was on paper and people a generation or two younger than my wouldn't see the same disparity. This paper, however, seems to indicate that this may not be the whole story.
I wonder if any followup studies have been done on this.