Webby
Wed 13 Feb 2008
It is a familiar scene across the globe. A backpacker or traveler arrives in a new city clutching the latest Lonely Planet or Frommers guide book.
I have used Lonely planets and rough guides extensively on my journey as a working nomad and despite what the purists might say I have always found them useful.
However, as someone who likes to travel light, I have always found guidebooks to be too heavy for what they are!
So I was browsing the Lonely Planet Shop the other day and found out a feature where you can purchase certain chapters under their pix and mix!
You basically download the chapters you want (I never use the whole books anyway) and store them as PDF format on your laptop (or online storage / email) and print them off when you need to. This could be cheaper too!
Having the ability to print out maps and locations is important so you can find places when you arrive. You don’t want to be getting your laptop out on a street corner in some big city in Latin America or India!
As PDAs, mobiles and smaller laptops become cheaper I think this will accelerate the death of the guide book as we know it and will mean the savvy nomad can carry more interesting books to read.
February 14th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Or you could just use an (unlocked) iPhone with a wikipedia dump and you have (almost) all the knowledge of the world in your pocket… And it can open PDF files as well!
February 14th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
I didn’t know about this. It is good to know. I am still a fan of LP’s guidebooks, but I think they are overpriced. They have a great business model as they always need to be updated. Perhaps when they bring out an Ipod version the paper variety will start to disappear.
February 15th, 2008 at 1:46 am
That is a very cool development! Many’s the time that I’ve not needed the whole book!
February 15th, 2008 at 1:49 am
Yeah, that’s a great idea. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve bought a travel book and ripped out the 3 chapters I needed to save space in my pack.
The only bad thing is, if you’re going long term and download these at a net cafe, some places charge a dollar per page to print it. Costs more than to download the chapter.
February 21st, 2008 at 11:19 am
Longer term I think this is (very) slowly the way things will go. Not over the next few years - but way longer than that.
Long term travel is a bit different but you can already get great info from the web as you all know, and many of the budget airlines have links to downloadable PDF guides more intended for the city breaks - e.g. ryanair etc. Inyourpocket has allowed you to download PDFs for many years for eastern europe, and of course travelfish for Asia.
I saw one of those Sony digital book readers when in the States recently and it’s got to be the best digital reader I’ve seen so far…mind you it’s maybe the only one I’ve seen…but the display was very readable and very different from your average laptop screen. Not quite pocketable though - around A5 size give or take a bit.