Monday, May 19, 2008

Net worth of NetLibrary

... is rather on the low end for me. I like to read and I love to discover new books, but NetLibrary isn't yet broad enough to appeal to my tastes. For one thing, it is still new enough to lack all my favorite titles. That is not its fault, and time should cure that ailment. Another problem is the complete lack of ebooks. I love the silence of reading, and the complete freedom of my imagination to create images and voices for the characters. Audiobooks, then, have never been my favorite because by their natures they dictate the speed at which I "read" and the character's voices. So it was a little disappointing to find that the entire available collection is in e-audiobooks. Again, however, time should remedy the situation.

On the plus side, checkout and downloading is extremely easy. Even a technological neanderthal such as I can manage it without too much pain. I also liked the site's organization, which was pretty intuitive, and the impressive array of language options available (although this one doesn't really benefit me, since I'm not actually fluent in any other language).

When the pros and cons have been weighed, I find NetLibrary to have lots of potential, but it's not particularly useful for me at this time. I'll check back in few years, though, and see what the collection looks like then.

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