Nowadays it’s all about saving the environment, recycling paper and sending digital birthday cards. ‘Save the trees!’ they say, and Clear Books absolutely agree, especially as we’re an online accounting software provider striving for a paperless office for everyone.
But eco environment aside, I can predict everyone has at one time printed out something as they prefer to read on paper rather than on screen, and sometimes for practical or even legal reasons.
Both digital and paper-based data have their advantages and disadvantages. Paper data backup is good because it’s a physical copy, you don’t need to turn it on if you’ve powered off and doesn’t require its battery charged. Negatives are you need to hack a tree down to make the paper and need physical space like a filing cabinet to store it. Did you know printer cartridges are often harmful to the environment due to toxic inks and plastic casing?
Digital is great because information can be accessible any time and anywhere. Have you woken up at 5am in the morning, still in bed and and realised you need to tweak that document for tomorrow? No problem. But if there was a power cut and your laptop is out of battery? That’s really hard luck.
But what about how we are wired to read? Ink Screen and Paper White versions of Amazon Kindles utilise ‘electronic ink’ technology to mimic how ink is printed on paper, designed to optimise the user’s reading experience for those who find glaring screens and pixel generated type difficult. At the same time, they’ve also released full colour tablets like the Apple iPad and Samsung tablets.
Personally I find reading large quantities such as books and educational texts on paper to be easier on the eyes, but tables and short extracts are not a problem which brings up an interesting bit of news. Recently launched application concept Spritz allows users to read up to 600 words per minute, compared to traditional methods of reading at 300 words per minute. This is a big technological push, allowing us to take in information at a higher speed and in bigger quantities. See below for an example of Spritz:
Which brings us to the end of this blog post. Are you one of those guilty of sneakily printing off an email? Do you always print an invoice on an A4 piece of paper when most of it is just empty space? Confess to your crimes and let us know your thoughts about Spritz in the comments below!
