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!

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/

I went to a store and bought the previous older edition of the textbook which was still the same material but without the fad of making everything visually distracting. It is very refreshing to just be able to read a normal flat white page with normal black, blue and red ink.

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.

[1] "Effects of Physical Activity on Motor Skills and Cognitive Development in Early Childhood: A Systematic Review" (2017) https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1155/2017/2760716

On one hand, I remember how costly textbooks were and I'm glad he doesn't have that. But I still have some of my student textbooks and its interesting to flip through them and see old margin notes, and consider what has and hasn't changed over thirty years.

But yes, trying to help someone with anything computer related when they're on a crappy laptop display is... trying.

I agree 100%. The simple act of turning back the page/pages is so fast and efficient. My brain seems to even remember where on the page the info I want is. So much more is visible in a single 'eye-shot'. I don't get that same mental experience with e-docs - not sure why. I did grow up with paper so there is a bias.

I've tried figuring out how to get the best of both worlds, but maybe you really just need to decide which trade-off to go with.

The screen would also benefit from something I have never seen used: Have a second window that shows whatever images, graphs etc (pretty much anything that's not just words in a row) are relevant to whatever is currently displayed in the main window.

And clay tablets.

I must not understand what you're saying here. I'm envisioning someone reading an article, seeing a reference to something unfamiliar, then stopping to read another article in a nearby source about that thing or any other random topic, recursing for hours. This is easily done, and often was by children a few decades ago, with any encyclopedia set.

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.

My colleague swears by her iPad, but I always go the paper route.

This machine has one 27" monitor that I frequently use for games, video etc, but that's pretty much all I use it for, rarely do I do text based things on it.

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

The answer, as is with everything, was N=42

:-)