Mistress.Erin writes "I cannot decide between Amazon's Kindle and Sony's Reader. I've read somereviews, but their motives can be somewhat suspect. So, I come to the most tech savvy group around to ask: which eBook reader is the best? If not Kindle or Reader, then what?" We've discussed this question before, but things have changed a bit since 2005.
It seems to me that "not Amazon" is about an equal push so we are back to which one.
Unless of course someone can nominate a third option with features comparable to the ones on offer from the other two corporate behemoths. My dream eBook reader would have support for txt, pdf, html, rtf, doc, and maybe a couple of the actual eBook formats, have an e-ink display with a optional light (for reading in the dark), have some form of wireless (either wifi or cell), and be small enough to fit in your pocket without needing a crowbar. They're getting pretty close at this point, but I don't think any of the ones on offer quite hit all the bullet points.
Agreed. The reviews I've read for the Kindle are spot on, saying "wait for the 2nd generation". If Amazon will redesign the thing, so it doesn't look like it was made in the 80's, drop the need to email non proprietary file formats to Amazon so they can be converted, and add in support for hyperlinked files, I will be first in line. I have a pretty good size collection of books sitting on my computer that are in HTML help files, which allow for hyperlinking directly to footnotes, appendices, references in other parts of the book, etc. Build a device that can take these things natively (support for the occasional picture would be nice, too), and I will be on board.
Oh, and for some reason, the idea of being able to just plug in a thumb drive to the side of these things has escaped both of these companies. I can understand Sony's argument, since they make a whole line of flash media, but SD cards and the like are for cameras, not for storing books.
I know Amazon has been really bad in communicating this, but you can copy non-proprietary formats to the Kindle for free. TXT files are supported natively, and most other files can be converted to Mobipocket files (.mobi) by the Mobipocket conversion tools [mobipocket.com]. Once you have either a TXT or.MOBI file, you can copy it to the Kindle over the supplied USB cable. The $.10 transfer fee is only to use Amazon's converter and to copy the file across the Sprint wireless network. Yes, your HTML files aren't natively supported, but you can pretty easily convert those to MOBI (you may lose the hyperlinks, but the images should come through) and use them on a Kindle.
It supports the same DRM mobibook format that the Kindle does, also has unencumbered support for HTML, PDF and more, doesn't have the ugly casing or awkward controls that the Kindle has. And yes - it runs Linux.
Well, the OLPC XO-1 handles most of those formats and has a daylight low power reading mode and a screen that flips around for tablet reading. Mine arrived yesterday. It is one of the coolest things I have ever play with. Completely silent too, won't bother folks around you in a quiet coffee shop. Has an SD card slot and wireless. Battery has good life and handles 2000 recharge cycles. Not quiet pocket sized though;).
If you buy something made from dead trees, you can keep it forever and still use it in 20 years, sell it on e-bay, loan it to friends/relatives. Also, dead trees do not need batteries (as long as you have enough light), never go obsolete, and you can still use it even if the publisher goes belly-up.
Of course they're somewhat less useful in the dark, or when you need to transport 100 of them in a 1'x6"x1" space.
Yeah, good thing electronic devices never wear out. I mean, drop a book off your desk, that's it, you're toast. But a laptop, you could throw it across the room, and it would still work just fine.
I own the original Sony Reader. If you mostly download your own books, then the new (PRS-505) Sony Reader is better than the Kindle. The Amazon ebook store is the biggest around, but it's still nothing compared to what is available in print. In fact, it's nothing compared to what's available on IRC.
The best ebook reader around, however, is the Ebookwise 1150. The LCD screen doesn't have great resolution, but it has instant page-flip. The price can't be beat. The back-lighting is wonderful for night reading.
If I were Amazon, I would have released a cheap reader to go along with my expensive reader. Something like the 1150, with just one or two modern improvements (USB file transfer).
Personally I find both Kindle and Sony's reader too large. I use a Toshiba E805 PocketPC with VGA (640x480) to read books with either EReader.com's free reader or Mobipocket. The price is equivalent, about $400, but you can do far more with the PDA, it will surf the web decently, show movies, play games, play music, etc. You can even get a phone PDA that will let you download books and all kinds of other stuff over the air. I have a T-Mobile Dash and although small the screen is definately good enough to read books on too.
It probably should be the iPod Touch, but the bloody thing doesn't allow viewing/opening/saving locally stored pdf's, unless you jailbreak it and install apache, php and god knows what else. Such a WASTE!
I would recommend the Kindle for only one big reason:
- Text search capability
It's hard to believe that in 2007, the latest Sony reader has no ability to search through the text of a book. This is important for technical reference manuals and textbooks, and was a dealbreaker for me. I don't use the Kindle store (other than to purchase one book when I first got it), so I leave the wireless off to save batteries.
I find the Kindle is dead simple to use. Plug it into your computer with USB, drag some Mobipocket, RTF, or TXT files onto it (convert your.PDFs with free Mobipocket creator), and there you go. No DRM necessary, unless you buy books from the Kindle store.
Also, some people will complain about no native PDF support on the Kindle. This is not a bad thing. Sony reader displays PDFs, but shrinks an entire 8.5x11 page down to the size of the tiny screen, so it's almost unreadable! This is why you must convert your PDFs into Mobipocket format first, so that the Kindle can resize the fonts, etc., and it becomes an actually readable e-book, and not a glorified thumbnail viewer.
I'm not sure what kinds of eBooks the OP plans on reading, but using the Linux-based Nokia N800 [wikipedia.org] or N810 internet tablets as eBook readers using FBReader [fbreader.org] is pretty popular. You can use the tablet for lots of other cool stuff too. You won't be able to read DRM'd stuff though.
I have the Sony PRS-505 and I love it. It feels wonderful. The screen is amazing (I believe it is the same screen as is used in the Kindle). I use linux, so I don't use the Sony Connect software. I use libprs500, which is a nice little program available for windows, linux and mac. I get my books from places like ebooks.com in Microsoft Reader (win2k in a virtual machine) format because the DRM can be broken and the files are easy to convert to a properly formatted PDF with OpenOffice. I only use the reader for reading books, so I can't speak to the quality of the music player. I can easily read 3000 pages on a charge. It is rated at 7500 page turns, but it still uses a tiny bit of power when it is just sitting there (unless you do an actual shutdown which is not obvious how to do and the startup time from completley off is significant). It took me about 25 pages of reading on the reader before I managed to stop admiring the device and get drawn into my book. Now, I can start reading a book and I almost forget I am using the reader.
I have the Sony PRS-505 and I love it. It feels wonderful. The screen is amazing (I believe it is the same screen as is used in the Kindle). I use linux, so I don't use the Sony Connect software. I use libprs500, which is a nice little program available for windows, linux and mac. I get my books from places like ebooks.com in Microsoft Reader (win2k in a virtual machine) format because the DRM can be broken and the files are easy to convert to a properly formatted PDF with OpenOffice.
I do my reading on a Pocket PC, with uBook, which is great software. I haven't used FBReader but it looks good from afar. Can anyone compare them?
When I saw the tiny Asus machine, "ebook" was the first thing I thought of. Battery life is not great, but I'd be willing to plug it in on the couch/in bed, reserving battery power for being away. My Pocket PC only runs for a few hours too, and it's almost always enough to get me back to a charger-YMMV.
Why not consider the Iliad? It's an open (linux) platform, has wifi, a better screen than either of the others, and you can annotate books & make notes w/ the stylus. A bit pricier, tho:
The XO Laptop display is visible in full daylight. Its software is completely open. It can read and display open formats like plain text and PDF. It can download the files from the Internet using WiFi. It has extremely low power consumption and if you find yourself too far away from an outlet, you can charge it yourself. For the cost of a Kindle from Amazon you can buy an XO and donate one to a child.
From the specs page of the XO PC at One Laptop Per Child:
* Liquid-crystal display: 7.5" Dual-mode TFT display;
* Viewing area: 152.4mm × 114.3mm;
* Resolution: 1200 (H) × 900 (V) resolution (200 DPI);
* Monochrome display: High-resolution, reflective sunlight-readable monochrome mode; Color display: Standard-resolution, Quincunx-sampled, transmissive color mode;
* LCD power consumption: 0.1 Watt with backlight off; 0.2-1.0 Watt with backlight on;
* The display-controller chip (DCON) with memory that enables the display to remain live with the processor suspended; the display and this chip are the basis of our extremely low power architecture; the display controller chip also enables deswizzling and anti-aliasing in color mode.
I bought one, and I am very impressed with the screen (not so much with the keyboard). It costs the same as the Kindle (for us), and does so much more, and has more pixels.
The thing about the Kindle is that it has a lot of eBooks available that are
not mostly old things that are public domain
not too expensive
The Kindle appears to be the first eBook reader for which someone who is a reasonably avid current reader has a chance of satisfying most of the reading needs with, without spending a lot more money (other than the initial cost of the device itself). As far as the device cost, note that this is offset somewhat by the reduced storage costs. For someone who buys and keeps a lot of books, the savings in not needing to buy as many bookshelves could actually be more than the cost of the unit!
For those looking for an eBook reader that also lets you read your own files, and things like that, the Kindle isn't there. But for those looking for something that is an alternate way to deal with books, it looks like the best so far.
I don't own one so I could be misreading, but if I understand correctly, Kindle has free wireless internet access via the Sprint network, which is itself pretty valuable. I hear its browser sucks, but it's still better than nothing. It also apparently has some alternate (non-sucky-browser) interface to Wikipedia, and just being able to look up Wikipedia articles for free over a wireless cell network seems like a fairly useful feature, at least for those of us who aren't willing to shell out monthly or per-KB fees for wireless internet on our cell phones.
You won't find it at BestBuy, but take a look at the HanLin eReader [jinke.com.cn].
The current model is about the same as the Kindle, minus the wireless, nice button interface, and DRM, and plus some real format support (PDF, various images, even doc files to some extent).
The new model due out in the early part of the new year will make ebooks are really worth looking at. 825x1200 resolution on a ten inch screen with PDF support makes me very interested.
Of all the readers out there, the only one that has me really interested is the Iliad (discussed briefly in a comment above), but the high price tag is making me a bit reluctant to jump. The price of the current Hanlin is much more reasonable, and I've been dying for an eReader with a big screen for me to read technical PDFs and RTFs on.
Two reasons that there is value to an ebook reader over PDA or laptop:
1. The eInk screen is substantially easier to read. The Sony 2G is actually uncanny... looks like stickers stuck on the screen. The Kindle is much less contrasty and harder to read.
2. Battery life. eInk does not use significant power unless you are turning the page, so the battery life of these things is on the order of 1week plus with heavy usage. When I have used laptops or PDAs for reading, the batteries die quickly (before I want to stop reading).
Comparing the two.
Sony:
Much more contrast on screen. Very easy to read.
Smaller
Lighter
Much more intuitive user interface. It has multiple choice buttons for navigations.
Better physical design with buttons in convenient positions
Feels more solid and less cheap than Kindle
Software allows you to retag and organize files.
DRM and limited store is a big minus.
Better multiple format support
Kindle:
Staggeringly bad industrial design. Only really one good way to hold the thing without hitting one of the buttons which inexplicably are found on every side. Want to turn up the contrast on the screen. Bizaarr user interface that requires scrolling and multiple clicks with a secondary lcd screen to perform simple functions. Keyboard take a lot of space. No software to tag and oragnize files. So the list of files on the device is unweidly, long, and filled with incomprehensible tags from Gutenberg, Manybooks, or Fictionwise. Very restrictive DRM which cancels out its advantage of having a much larger and easier to use store for books. Wireless is good for subscribing to periodicals, not much else. Amazon has a staggeringly inefficient mail-in system for conversion. No conversion has worked well so far, strange spacing and formatting even in simple documents. They need simple PC software to manage the thing. The self-contained bit is inefficient and a waste of wireless and organization.
I figure there are three kinds of reader:
1. Like me - buy and keep books forever. Neither reader much good because DRM keep you from owning the books forever, just until the store dies or you want to change to a better competing reader. 2. Buy books read and resell - no right-of-resale with either device. 3. Buy "beach books" and throw them away. Both readers were made for you with the Kindle having a better store.
bbaston on Groklaw received his XO laptop (see this story [groklaw.net]) seems to think that it will work really well for that purpose. I'm going to find out in a few weeks. Give one, get one!
Having just gone through this process, allow me to pass on what I learned about the process.
1) Know what you are getting into. Ebooks have some great advantages. However: * DRM is common * books are pricey * selection is very limited
If you're still interested, continue.
2) LCD vs Eink I read a lot on my Palm. Now that I have an eink reader, I'm not going back, I never thought LCD was "hard" to read on until I read on something else. However, eink means $$$ and few choices, while there's a number of established as well as new LCD devices for much, much less. LCDs can also scroll, while the eink has a.5-2 second refresh time. LCDs can have color while eink hasn't gotten that far.
Your question implies you've picked, so we'll continue on, but others are recommended to visit a Borders and take a peek at a demo Sony Reader - the viziplex screen is pretty much the same for all the major eink readers.
3) Pros and Cons There are basically 4 readers to choose from here (ignoring the fringe players): Bookeen Sony Kindle Iliad
Iliad has some real perks, but I wanted a reader not a computer, and certainly not $700 worth.
Bookeen has some nice features, but after my painful Zaurus experience, I wanted to stick to something intended for my language and a little more commercial support. When I bought my reader, the Cybook was still finishing off the rough spots. It may now be worthy of consideration, as it has a much wider selection of formats than the Sony Reader.
Kindle - though it wasn't out when I got my reader, it came out shortly afterward. Major Pros are wireless access to snag books, improved book selection (still limited), and much better prices on books. Major Con is the highly restrictive DRM. That latter is what kept me content with my Sony.
Sony - My eventual choice. It takes props as one of the only technology choices I didn't quickly regret. It has its limitations, most notably the crappy book selection, even crappier prices, and the eink refresh time. But it does what it tries to do reliably well.
Here are the things about the Sony reader that the review may not cover (505 only, not always true for 500)
It's a USB Mass storage device - so you can install books from any computer. What's more, it takes SD cards (and memory sticks, but I haven't mucked with that), and when the card is in the reader and the reader is connected to the computer, the card also appears as a drive on the USB device. I've been able to use my Reader on multiple computers, Windows and Linux, with no issue. There is no need to use the Sony software except to download from their crappy bookstore.
You may see talk of a credit at the bookstore - that's for "Sony Classics" only, i.e. books you can grab off of Gutenburg for free. I recommend you turn to mobileread.com for your ebook needs and wait for Amazon et al to get a clue like they have (started) with Mp3s. Either way, don't factor the $100 credit into your comparison.
The Sony Reader can handle LRF (it's propriety but not necessarily DRM'ed format) well, offering hyperlinking and 3 levels of magnification along with landscape/portrait modes. It can also handle TXT (I believe the zoom offerings are the same). PDF is also handled, but (1) Not "Digital Editions" (Adobe's DRMed books) and (2) It only offers 2 "sizes". Most PDF books come across as very small even when I have it zoomed and landscape. RTF doesn't resize in my experience, but it works well enough. Notably HTML, Mobi, Palmdoc, Word doc, and Openoffice formats aren't supported.
Installing a book can be done with their crappy wanna-be Itunes like software...or you can drag and drop via USB and ignore that. I recommend the latter.
The charge for me, reading a couple of hours each day, is a little less than a week. It charges off of USB no problem, standard mini connector. Your current position in books is lost if it goes dry, but nothing else, including hard boo
Most people who try an eReader really like it. Having pages in a book flip around and trying to hold the book open is a slight inconvenience. And the instant gratification of downloading the next book of your favorite series on demand is a big win. (especially with devices like Kindle)
Hyperlinks, bookmarks and notes are another powerful feature of an eReader. I only wish that you could share this meta data with other users more easily.
The best e-book for me is not an eBook, but the good ol' old fashioned ones with covers!
I'm with you. And, I went to my local library and got a card. And now, I have access to thousands of titles for the cost of my tax dollars.
I think a big part of the popularity of the e-readers is because it's just another gadget. Folks will come up with plenty of rationalizations as to why they need it or how it's so superior to a book. But that's the consumer mentality, I guess. It goes the same for fast cars (need them to merge with traffic!), SUVs (safety after all and I have kids!), computers, cameras, etc...
And how many of those book will allow you to change the font size? Zoom? let you highlight a word to get a definition? And exactly how please are the librarians when you write notes in those books?
I can't wait to be able to load up a book series and be able to cross reference names and events from within the series.
What is it about the eBook articles on slashdot (a tech geek site FFS) that seems to bring all the Ludites out of the woodwork? I can understand people complaining about DRM, but at least half the negative posts are people saying eBooks are stupid and you should just buy the paperback. What's wrong with these people? Are they also going around campaigning for the return of the slide rule? I can appreciate if they give reasons why they think eBooks aren't ready yet, or what changes they'd like to see in eBooks, but just flat out condemning the technology for no reason other than they don't like it is silly.
Portability, I guess, but I don't really need to take 50 books with me.
Also that they (should be) searchable. Those are the killer factors. I don't yet have an eBook reader for all of the other reasons that you mention.
The eBook reader format that Oreilly adopts is likely to be my next favorite device, however. How would you like to search every instance of a function across their entire library, at once, on the plane?
I'm sorry, but I just have to respond to this point
I cannot borrow an eBook from a library. Thousands of books for free.
How the hell is this a factor? Its not like if you get an eBook you suddenly can't use a library. If you buy an eBook reader - guess what? - the thousands of books for free at the library are still there!
No karma blown, they've never tried one so therefore ebooks/readers must suck.
You're right; it's illogical. However, there is method behind the madness. I haven't, and wouldn't, come right out and say, "I've never seen an e-book, and I think they suck," but I'll venture an apology for those who do. I've been hearing people proclaim that displays are good enough to replace books, newspapers, etc. for twenty years. Not just futurists or marketers, but real people who actually used the technology. That's two-thirds of my life, so you can't blame me for being cynical by this point. E-book proponents suffer from being preceded by decades of enthusiasts who eagerly and prematurely embraced whatever technology was currently available as the successor to print.
In fact, as the technology has become better and better, the predictions of the death of print have been toned down considerably. People made ridiculous claims about the supremacy of 80-column text on monochrome CRTs that no one would dare make about the Kindle today. I repeat, these were not (all) futurists, marketers, attention whores like Dvorak, or semi-literate basement gnomes, but real, educated professionals who had to spend a considerable amount of time in front of those CRTs. So, people who have never seen an e-book and feel safe disregarding all positive reports are just adopting a strategy with a proven track record. It's cheaper to assume e-books are useless, because you'll probably be right for years and years and save yourself tons of time and expense checking out new products, and then one day you'll be wrong, and you won't lose much over it. Unless you're Amazon, which is why they're going to be on the cutting edge the whole way, just to make sure they don't miss the turning point.
By the way, I do have a Nokia n800, and I'm pretty sure it does suck:-) Aside from the size and weight, and the fact that it doesn't require any elbow room to operate, I find it far inferior to paper and even inferior to a regular old laptop. For the case of reading a newspaper, I find that I scan articles much quicker with a physical paper, and when I decide to actually read an article, I'm a better reader when using a physical paper because I often skip back and reread sections when reading a long article. The n800 is so small and slow that I do that much less. The longer the text, the worse it gets. I take my n800 with me when I'm not carrying my laptop, and when I get stranded in a coffee shop with nothing to read, I tend to buy a newspaper or grab a free paper rather than check out my news sites on the n800. Using FBReader, I was never able to get enough text on the screen using a readable font. (Well, of course not -- otherwise books that size would be very popular. Everybody loves the idea when they seen those itsy-bitsy books, then they buy a few and quickly sour on them. Even one page of the little yellow copy of Der Process I bought as a student, which is the smallest form factor I consider sane, has about three times as much text area as FBReader on my n800.) Honestly, if you used a similar device as a primary reading technology for a whole summer and didn't end up with a frothing hatred for it, then I think we'd probably feel very differently about the Kindle, too.
I think you have (inadvertently) hit the nail on the head. I wouldn't buy an e-book reader that was, well an e-book reader.
I prefer a device with a decent screen (a nice 4" Transflective VGA screen works well) that I can use for a multitude of things, listening to music (or in my case BBC Podcasts), browsing the web, reading my email, reading documents (normal office documents and PDF's), watching a film, displaying the photo's on my camera etc... On top of that I would like it to be a diary, calender, address book and note taker.
That basically describes a decent PDA. The killer is the display if you can get a PDA with a decent display you are on to a winner. For me it is about having something that is useful on a day to day basis (i.e. the scheduling and communications element) as well as having general entertainment value (listening to Music / podcasts etc.. say in the car or at lunch). As well as also being there if I am travelling, commuting or decide I want to read something whilst I am out.
I prefer my phone to be a separate entity, simply due to the fact that battery technology wont give me 10 hours of mp3s + reading a book whilst leaving me a decent standby and talk time at the end of it, but then that is a personal choice, plus there is nothing to stop you carrying a spare battery.
The ability to carry multiple Gb worth of data (my PDA has both CF and SD slots so I use my SD slot as removable media) that are accesable on both the PDA and other computing devices is also a killer feature, so are charging from USB and wifi.
I would never shell out a large amount of cash on a single purpose device, simply because I would mean another gadget to carry around, charge and maintain.
"Yes the information in the O'Reilly books is available elsewhere on the internet for free (as one other commenter pointed out), but having it available collected in one location makes it worth having."
I have one word for you: bookmarks.
Seriously, I understand the benefit of having multiple references in one place but I don't see it as beneficial for work unless you happen to do a lot of travel and work on airplanes or in airports where connectivity is much less convenient/likely.
I've been using my iPhone to read books. Mannybooks.net has a bunch of free/CC novels up (try "Geek Mafia") in a variety of formats, including a couple for the iPhone. I've been surprised that the iPhone works so well for this, although I haven't tried to read for more than an hour at a time or so.
In most contexts people are referring to the last one, A device you can upload documents to for reading. Sometimes it can also refer to the first one. Some people argue that a dedicated reader is stupid and that they should just get a PDA or tablet PC, but that overlooks certain design decisions incorporated into dedicated readers should as incredibly long battery life, ergonomic design (for holding in your hand for long periods), and typically light and minimal design so it's simple to transport. Sometimes
As I type on my new XO (just got it through the G1G1 program) in Black and white mode, I can attest to the screen's clarity. It is like reading a newspaper, and the refresh rate is far superior to both the sony/amazon readers. Sure, its "not a reader", it's bigger than the other readers and its only available for order for another two weeks. However, with the upcoming sw update it will have close to a day's worth of battery in reading mode. It is also about the same price as the readers, and it is a laptop w/ built in wifi. Show me a current ebook reader that you can go to a website and download your book/pdf/news story.
If you want a fast refresh, laptop capability and wifi enabled, go with the OLPC. And, did I mention you could accidentally drop it and spill you coffee on it and it will still work?
None of the above. Electronic books currently are nothing but publishers trying to kill used book resale, and I don't see why anybody should stand for it.
Theoretically though, in time, the e-books should be much cheaper than the equivalent books. And the other reason to use e-books is one of convenience, which if you've got any kind of library you need to slough around with you every time you move house, you'd understand.
Last time I did it, I just wanted to die. And then I decided "No, if I can get all my b
Suspicious motives? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've read some reviews, but their motives can be somewhat suspect.
I'm actually more curious about why you wrote that than I am about the eBook readers in question.
The one that isn't Sony (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The one that isn't Sony (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:The one that isn't Sony (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:The one that isn't Sony (Score:4, Informative)
Oh, and for some reason, the idea of being able to just plug in a thumb drive to the side of these things has escaped both of these companies. I can understand Sony's argument, since they make a whole line of flash media, but SD cards and the like are for cameras, not for storing books.
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Re:The one that isn't Sony (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:The one that isn't Sony (Score:5, Informative)
Ask and you shall receive:
http://www.bookeen.com/ebook/ebook-reading-device.aspx [bookeen.com]
It supports the same DRM mobibook format that the Kindle does, also has unencumbered support for HTML, PDF and more, doesn't have the ugly casing or awkward controls that the Kindle has. And yes - it runs Linux.
Happy to help,
-H.
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Re:The one that isn't Sony (Score:5, Informative)
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Neither... (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
And here is some propaganda material: http://www.defectivebydesign.org/DRMEbookFlyer [defectivebydesign.org]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I own some readers (Score:5, Interesting)
The best ebook reader around, however, is the Ebookwise 1150. The LCD screen doesn't have great resolution, but it has instant page-flip. The price can't be beat. The back-lighting is wonderful for night reading.
If I were Amazon, I would have released a cheap reader to go along with my expensive reader. Something like the 1150, with just one or two modern improvements (USB file transfer).
Tags (Score:5, Funny)
Which reader? (Score:5, Insightful)
iPod Touch....not (Score:4, Informative)
I have the Kindle, and recommend it (Score:5, Informative)
- Text search capability
It's hard to believe that in 2007, the latest Sony reader has no ability to search through the text of a book. This is important for technical reference manuals and textbooks, and was a dealbreaker for me. I don't use the Kindle store (other than to purchase one book when I first got it), so I leave the wireless off to save batteries.
I find the Kindle is dead simple to use. Plug it into your computer with USB, drag some Mobipocket, RTF, or TXT files onto it (convert your
Also, some people will complain about no native PDF support on the Kindle. This is not a bad thing. Sony reader displays PDFs, but shrinks an entire 8.5x11 page down to the size of the tiny screen, so it's almost unreadable! This is why you must convert your PDFs into Mobipocket format first, so that the Kindle can resize the fonts, etc., and it becomes an actually readable e-book, and not a glorified thumbnail viewer.
Nokia N800 or N810 (Score:5, Insightful)
Sony PRS-505 (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes. These steps sound
Emacs. (Score:4, Funny)
FBReader + the tiny Asus palmtop? (Score:3, Insightful)
When I saw the tiny Asus machine, "ebook" was the first thing I thought of. Battery life is not great, but I'd be willing to plug it in on the couch/in bed, reserving battery power for being away. My Pocket PC only runs for a few hours too, and it's almost always enough to get me back to a charger-YMMV.
Iliad Reader (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.irextechnologies.com/products/iliad [irextechnologies.com]
The XO from OLPC? (Score:5, Informative)
From the specs page of the XO PC at One Laptop Per Child:
http://laptop.org/laptop/hardware/specs.shtml [laptop.org]
* Liquid-crystal display: 7.5" Dual-mode TFT display;
* Viewing area: 152.4mm × 114.3mm;
* Resolution: 1200 (H) × 900 (V) resolution (200 DPI);
* Monochrome display: High-resolution, reflective sunlight-readable monochrome mode; Color display: Standard-resolution, Quincunx-sampled, transmissive color mode;
* LCD power consumption: 0.1 Watt with backlight off; 0.2-1.0 Watt with backlight on;
* The display-controller chip (DCON) with memory that enables the display to remain live with the processor suspended; the display and this chip are the basis of our extremely low power architecture; the display controller chip also enables deswizzling and anti-aliasing in color mode.
Re:The XO from OLPC? (Score:5, Interesting)
Posting this from my XO.
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Re:The XO from OLPC? (Score:4, Insightful)
The thing about the Kindle is that it has a lot of eBooks available that are
- not mostly old things that are public domain
- not too expensive
The Kindle appears to be the first eBook reader for which someone who is a reasonably avid current reader has a chance of satisfying most of the reading needs with, without spending a lot more money (other than the initial cost of the device itself). As far as the device cost, note that this is offset somewhat by the reduced storage costs. For someone who buys and keeps a lot of books, the savings in not needing to buy as many bookshelves could actually be more than the cost of the unit!For those looking for an eBook reader that also lets you read your own files, and things like that, the Kindle isn't there. But for those looking for something that is an alternate way to deal with books, it looks like the best so far.
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Kindle's free wireless is interesting (Score:3, Interesting)
HanLin (Score:4, Interesting)
The current model is about the same as the Kindle, minus the wireless, nice button interface, and DRM, and plus some real format support (PDF, various images, even doc files to some extent).
The new model due out in the early part of the new year will make ebooks are really worth looking at. 825x1200 resolution on a ten inch screen with PDF support makes me very interested.
Great tip, thanks (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.teleread.org/blog/2007/09/18/hanlin-ereader-v9-due-later-this-year-with-10-inch-e-ink-screen-new-vizplex-tech-included/ [teleread.org]
Of all the readers out there, the only one that has me really interested is the Iliad (discussed briefly in a comment above), but the high price tag is making me a bit reluctant to jump. The price of the current Hanlin is much more reasonable, and I've been dying for an eReader with a big screen for me to read technical PDFs and RTFs on.
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Owner of both Kindle and Sony Reader (Score:5, Insightful)
1. The eInk screen is substantially easier to read. The Sony 2G is actually uncanny... looks like stickers stuck on the screen. The Kindle is much less contrasty and harder to read.
2. Battery life. eInk does not use significant power unless you are turning the page, so the battery life of these things is on the order of 1week plus with heavy usage. When I have used laptops or PDAs for reading, the batteries die quickly (before I want to stop reading).
Comparing the two.
Sony:
Much more contrast on screen. Very easy to read.
Smaller
Lighter
Much more intuitive user interface. It has multiple choice buttons for navigations.
Better physical design with buttons in convenient positions
Feels more solid and less cheap than Kindle
Software allows you to retag and organize files.
DRM and limited store is a big minus.
Better multiple format support
Kindle:
Staggeringly bad industrial design. Only really one good way to hold the thing without hitting one of the buttons which inexplicably are found on every side.
Want to turn up the contrast on the screen.
Bizaarr user interface that requires scrolling and multiple clicks with a secondary lcd screen to perform simple functions.
Keyboard take a lot of space.
No software to tag and oragnize files. So the list of files on the device is unweidly, long, and filled with incomprehensible tags from Gutenberg, Manybooks, or Fictionwise.
Very restrictive DRM which cancels out its advantage of having a much larger and easier to use store for books.
Wireless is good for subscribing to periodicals, not much else.
Amazon has a staggeringly inefficient mail-in system for conversion. No conversion has worked well so far, strange spacing and formatting even in simple documents.
They need simple PC software to manage the thing. The self-contained bit is inefficient and a waste of wireless and organization.
I figure there are three kinds of reader:
1. Like me - buy and keep books forever. Neither reader much good because DRM keep you from owning the books forever, just until the store dies or you want to change to a better competing reader.
2. Buy books read and resell - no right-of-resale with either device.
3. Buy "beach books" and throw them away. Both readers were made for you with the Kindle having a better store.
XO laptop! (Score:3, Insightful)
It depends on your goal (Score:4, Informative)
If you want it for the reading experience, get the Sony.
If you want it so that everyone will think you're geeky, get the Kindle.
If you want it because you're truly geeky, get the Irex Iliad [irextechnologies.com].
There's more information than you ever wanted to know about e-book hardware, software, formats, etc. at MobileRead [mobileread.com]
My experiences in selecting an ebook reader (Score:5, Informative)
1) Know what you are getting into.
Ebooks have some great advantages. However:
* DRM is common
* books are pricey
* selection is very limited
If you're still interested, continue.
2) LCD vs Eink
I read a lot on my Palm. Now that I have an eink reader, I'm not going back, I never thought LCD was "hard" to read on until I read on something else. However, eink means $$$ and few choices, while there's a number of established as well as new LCD devices for much, much less. LCDs can also scroll, while the eink has a
Your question implies you've picked, so we'll continue on, but others are recommended to visit a Borders and take a peek at a demo Sony Reader - the viziplex screen is pretty much the same for all the major eink readers.
3) Pros and Cons
There are basically 4 readers to choose from here (ignoring the fringe players):
Bookeen
Sony
Kindle
Iliad
Iliad has some real perks, but I wanted a reader not a computer, and certainly not $700 worth.
Bookeen has some nice features, but after my painful Zaurus experience, I wanted to stick to something intended for my language and a little more commercial support. When I bought my reader, the Cybook was still finishing off the rough spots. It may now be worthy of consideration, as it has a much wider selection of formats than the Sony Reader.
Kindle - though it wasn't out when I got my reader, it came out shortly afterward. Major Pros are wireless access to snag books, improved book selection (still limited), and much better prices on books. Major Con is the highly restrictive DRM. That latter is what kept me content with my Sony.
Sony - My eventual choice. It takes props as one of the only technology choices I didn't quickly regret. It has its limitations, most notably the crappy book selection, even crappier prices, and the eink refresh time. But it does what it tries to do reliably well.
Here are the things about the Sony reader that the review may not cover (505 only, not always true for 500)
It's a USB Mass storage device - so you can install books from any computer. What's more, it takes SD cards (and memory sticks, but I haven't mucked with that), and when the card is in the reader and the reader is connected to the computer, the card also appears as a drive on the USB device. I've been able to use my Reader on multiple computers, Windows and Linux, with no issue. There is no need to use the Sony software except to download from their crappy bookstore.
You may see talk of a credit at the bookstore - that's for "Sony Classics" only, i.e. books you can grab off of Gutenburg for free. I recommend you turn to mobileread.com for your ebook needs and wait for Amazon et al to get a clue like they have (started) with Mp3s. Either way, don't factor the $100 credit into your comparison.
The Sony Reader can handle LRF (it's propriety but not necessarily DRM'ed format) well, offering hyperlinking and 3 levels of magnification along with landscape/portrait modes. It can also handle TXT (I believe the zoom offerings are the same). PDF is also handled, but (1) Not "Digital Editions" (Adobe's DRMed books) and (2) It only offers 2 "sizes". Most PDF books come across as very small even when I have it zoomed and landscape. RTF doesn't resize in my experience, but it works well enough. Notably HTML, Mobi, Palmdoc, Word doc, and Openoffice formats aren't supported.
Installing a book can be done with their crappy wanna-be Itunes like software...or you can drag and drop via USB and ignore that. I recommend the latter.
The charge for me, reading a couple of hours each day, is a little less than a week. It charges off of USB no problem, standard mini connector. Your current position in books is lost if it goes dry, but nothing else, including hard boo
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Hyperlinks, bookmarks and notes are another powerful feature of an eReader. I only wish that you could share this meta data with other users more easily.
And free content....well, sort of. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm with you. And, I went to my local library and got a card. And now, I have access to thousands of titles for the cost of my tax dollars.
I think a big part of the popularity of the e-readers is because it's just another gadget. Folks will come up with plenty of rationalizations as to why they need it or how it's so superior to a book. But that's the consumer mentality, I guess. It goes the same for fast cars (need them to merge with traffic!), SUVs (safety after all and I have kids!), computers, cameras, etc...
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Re:And free content....well, sort of. (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't wait to be able to load up a book series and be able to cross reference names and events from within the series.
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Re:And free content....well, sort of. (Score:5, Insightful)
Time to blow some karma.
What is it about the eBook articles on slashdot (a tech geek site FFS) that seems to bring all the Ludites out of the woodwork? I can understand people complaining about DRM, but at least half the negative posts are people saying eBooks are stupid and you should just buy the paperback. What's wrong with these people? Are they also going around campaigning for the return of the slide rule? I can appreciate if they give reasons why they think eBooks aren't ready yet, or what changes they'd like to see in eBooks, but just flat out condemning the technology for no reason other than they don't like it is silly.
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Re:And free content....well, sort of. (Score:4, Insightful)
Portability, I guess, but I don't really need to take 50 books with me.
Also that they (should be) searchable. Those are the killer factors. I don't yet have an eBook reader for all of the other reasons that you mention.
The eBook reader format that Oreilly adopts is likely to be my next favorite device, however. How would you like to search every instance of a function across their entire library, at once, on the plane?
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Re:And free content....well, sort of. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:I imagine it's mostly ignorance (Score:4, Informative)
You're right; it's illogical. However, there is method behind the madness. I haven't, and wouldn't, come right out and say, "I've never seen an e-book, and I think they suck," but I'll venture an apology for those who do. I've been hearing people proclaim that displays are good enough to replace books, newspapers, etc. for twenty years. Not just futurists or marketers, but real people who actually used the technology. That's two-thirds of my life, so you can't blame me for being cynical by this point. E-book proponents suffer from being preceded by decades of enthusiasts who eagerly and prematurely embraced whatever technology was currently available as the successor to print.
In fact, as the technology has become better and better, the predictions of the death of print have been toned down considerably. People made ridiculous claims about the supremacy of 80-column text on monochrome CRTs that no one would dare make about the Kindle today. I repeat, these were not (all) futurists, marketers, attention whores like Dvorak, or semi-literate basement gnomes, but real, educated professionals who had to spend a considerable amount of time in front of those CRTs. So, people who have never seen an e-book and feel safe disregarding all positive reports are just adopting a strategy with a proven track record. It's cheaper to assume e-books are useless, because you'll probably be right for years and years and save yourself tons of time and expense checking out new products, and then one day you'll be wrong, and you won't lose much over it. Unless you're Amazon, which is why they're going to be on the cutting edge the whole way, just to make sure they don't miss the turning point.
By the way, I do have a Nokia n800, and I'm pretty sure it does suck
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Re:I imagine it's mostly ignorance (Score:4, Insightful)
I prefer a device with a decent screen (a nice 4" Transflective VGA screen works well) that I can use for a multitude of things, listening to music (or in my case BBC Podcasts), browsing the web, reading my email, reading documents (normal office documents and PDF's), watching a film, displaying the photo's on my camera etc... On top of that I would like it to be a diary, calender, address book and note taker.
That basically describes a decent PDA. The killer is the display if you can get a PDA with a decent display you are on to a winner. For me it is about having something that is useful on a day to day basis (i.e. the scheduling and communications element) as well as having general entertainment value (listening to Music / podcasts etc.. say in the car or at lunch). As well as also being there if I am travelling, commuting or decide I want to read something whilst I am out.
I prefer my phone to be a separate entity, simply due to the fact that battery technology wont give me 10 hours of mp3s + reading a book whilst leaving me a decent standby and talk time at the end of it, but then that is a personal choice, plus there is nothing to stop you carrying a spare battery.
The ability to carry multiple Gb worth of data (my PDA has both CF and SD slots so I use my SD slot as removable media) that are accesable on both the PDA and other computing devices is also a killer feature, so are charging from USB and wifi.
I would never shell out a large amount of cash on a single purpose device, simply because I would mean another gadget to carry around, charge and maintain.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I have one word for you: bookmarks.
Seriously, I understand the benefit of having multiple references in one place but I don't see it as beneficial for work unless you happen to do a lot of travel and work on airplanes or in airports where connectivity is much less convenient/likely.
Re:Ah, teh good old days (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been using my iPhone to read books. Mannybooks.net has a bunch of free/CC novels up (try "Geek Mafia") in a variety of formats, including a couple for the iPhone. I've been surprised that the iPhone works so well for this, although I haven't tried to read for more than an hour at a time or so.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
And the only downsides vs (say) Kindle?
10x the weight.
1/20th the battery life.
No cell-net connectivity
signifigantly larger closed
Immensely larger open
Much slower to come on / off
can't really be used with one hand
The list goes on. I love my laptop, but would never consider it as a book replacement. An E-Book reader is pretty much there.
one word: OLPC (Score:5, Interesting)
If you want a fast refresh, laptop capability and wifi enabled, go with the OLPC. And, did I mention you could accidentally drop it and spill you coffee on it and it will still work?
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Theoretically though, in time, the e-books should be much cheaper than the equivalent books. And the other reason to use e-books is one of convenience, which if you've got any kind of library you need to slough around with you every time you move house, you'd understand.
Last time I did it, I just wanted to die. And then I decided "No, if I can get all my b
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Re:Suspect? (Score:4, Informative)
"Disclaimer: This is all based on what I've seen and read. I haven't seen a Kindle in person. Yet."
WTF?
If you want an excellent review that goes through the whole thing in excruciating detail, you should read the AppleInsider review:
In-depth review: can Amazon's Kindle light a fire under eBooks? [appleinsider.com]
Disclaimer: I wrote it.
If you like that sort of non-stop information that demands an attention span, I also wrote about iPod/iPhone video cables [appleinsider.com].
I also wrote a disassembly of the George Ou Mac OS X vs Vista Vulnerability Numerology [roughlydrafted.com]
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