Sceptics are making a lot of hay over this article in the New York Times arguing that college students prefer to read the newspaper in pront rather than online. Forget for a moment the Times's obvious interest in this item, and forget for the moment global trends showing a significant decline in newspaper readership overall. What does this show? Simple: paper is easier to use than laptops. Newspapers cost a dollar or so, weight a fraction of a laptop, are easier to use, have much larger display surfaces, and can be thrown out when done. That's why I read printed newspapers. It seems to me, though, that what we have here are not reasons for giving up on online newspapers. What we have are design parameters for the next generation of news-reader devices.
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