Comparing iPad and Kindle reading speeds

Jakob Nielsen, who normally writes and teaches about web page design, did a small group study of iPad and Kindle reading speeds. It might be an important indicator for anyone interested in the purchase of an e-reader or educators working in classrooms or libraries who have a professional interest in the reading performance. The article can be found online at:
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/ipad-kindle-reading.html

While reading text on iPad and Kindle tablets is faster than in the past, they're still slower than reading printed text. PC screens were much slower for reading long-form text. Like a good friend and former director of media services for a Florida school district usually says, I suspect we'd both like to see a larger, more comprehensive study, but at least it may have be a hint that we should be careful when we use desktop computers or laptops to measure reading speed during computerized instruction and testing.

As one who used to read Washington Post articles and other news on my old Palm Pilot, I still think I'll wait for a tablet-sized device with a useable plug-in keyboard (like my old Palm) and the Android operating system. The next two or three years may really be interesting as computer form factors continue to evolve.

In the meantime, Nielsen's article on iPad and Kindle useability may help if you're thinking about moving to an e-book reader.


UPDATE 1: Our own local feedback on tablet computing has been all over the map for the past several days. One of our friends who works with technology and computer networking received an iPad for her birthday last week and thinks it's a wonderful tool. Another friend who deals with research, is very analytical and like my own look at e-readers, is still evaluating their potential use. A third friend and former reporter/editor is seriously looking at the lower priced Kindle ($189) with the software upgrades and improved type, but not with the improved screen of the more expensive DX model (yet). Her goal for a Kindle is mostly for convenience and saving trips to the library or used book store. All are what I'd call "serious readers."

Whatever the future holds for tablets, I don't want to be limited by Amazon's e-book inventory, Apple's online store or any set of vendors. I want to replenish the contents of a tablet from an infinite variety of sources, any video, audio and text in any format that will download and play on a conventional computer. I do most of my current daily reading online and more listening to books on tape and podcasts when Katy and I are on trips, unless she has one of the several books from her "book bag" already in her lap while I'm driving and I'm listening to NPR via Sirius Radio or an MP3 podcast through a single ear-bud.

Maybe I just forgot if I ever heard it before, but I do not remember seeing earlier attempts to quantify the difference in reading speed between printed pages, e-readers/tablets and at the slow end, desktop computers. It's more likely academic research was being done but without any notice by the popular media. The reading speed issue caught my attention because I've always believed that someday, it would be more economical for schools to move beyond textbooks and laptops by purchasing e-readers or enhanced tablets.

The enhanced tablets that students could carry between home and school would contain individualized student lessons as well as expanded resources including text, audio and video materials. These tablets would allow student progress to be monitored, software and student work backed up - even new lessons automatically reloaded by school wireless networks drawing from additional online servers (easily and inexpensively updated from regional or state-level networks). Think of a Florida Online School expanded statewide or even regionally or nationally with broad university participation and public funding for course development. Students could advance at their own pace and on their own vocational path as they grew older. Teachers could actually serve as mentors and advisers more than lecturers.

I may never live to see universal access to educational technology for every student, IF that's what it would eventually be, but I can also safely predict that the future of education will probably NOT take the actual form that technologists or anyone else predicted even 15 years ago. Never the less, age has not dimmed the goal that one day educators can have the tools at their fingertips to evaluate a child's education by what he or she has actually learned - their "entire body of work" - and not by the length of time they remain in school or their performance on a few superficial tests.

Thanks to all who commented via email or in conversations for stimulating a few more ideas into the discussion topic this week. I really appreciate the exchange.

UPDATE 2: PCWorld.com has picked up the story and added some of the questions that might be answered by a more extensive comparison of e-readers, tablets, laptops and desktop PCs. The story has also been picked up by Lifehacker.com and the British e-zine, The Register.

UPDATE 3  The ars technica website reports as of July 19, 2010, "Kindle books are now outselling Amazon's hardcover books in the US." Lowering the price of the smaller Kindle to only $189 has tripled the Kindle's sales in the past month.