Which eBook Reader is the Best? 469
Mistress.Erin writes "I cannot decide between Amazon's Kindle and Sony's Reader. I've read some
reviews, 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.
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)
Re:The one that isn't Sony (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:The one that isn't Sony (Score:5, Informative)
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though i do agree with the other points. the only one that is close so far is the iRex Illiad. though you might as well buy four OLPC's and keep one for your self at that price.
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.
Re:The one that isn't Sony (Score:5, Informative)
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Neither... (Score:4, Informative)
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Dead trees FTW.
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Plus you can't easily do full text searches on things made from dead trees, nor carry 10,000 of them in your pocket. Both have advantages.
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And here is some propaganda material: http://www.defectivebydesign.org/DRMEbookFlyer [defectivebydesign.org]
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).
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Tags (Score:5, Funny)
Which reader? (Score:5, Insightful)
ebook readers (Score:2, Interesting)
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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.
Mine's a Brother (Score:2)
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?
iPod Touch....not (Score:4, Informative)
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Doctrine of first sale, drm, and used book stores (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Doctrine of first sale, drm, and used book stor (Score:2)
I don't get your statement at all.
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I think the GP's post was intimating this question: once you get an eBook reader, how many used books do you think you'll continue to purchase?
By moving to eBook, there is no resale because of DRM issues; everyone will have to buy their own "new copy."
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The question isn't "Is an ebook reader a good deal for me today?", it's the much more interesting "What will the social result be if everyone gets an ebook reader with DRM?". The answer is simply that the publishers will have the full control over your use of written human knowledge that they've always wanted - which should be a prospect that makes the convenience argument seem largely irrelevant.
This is a v
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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
Answer.... (Score:2)
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.
My own, far-from-best alternative (Score:2)
For what it's worth, from what friends whose tech-savviness I trust have told me, the Kindle is quite cool and
Nokia N800 or N810 (Score:5, Insightful)
Boy, that's a good question... (Score:2)
Pretty much the only 2 things I like about the Kindle are: Built-in wireless and Amazon.com's ebook selection appears to be greater. I love the idea that I can be on the bus and get the urge to pick up something and download it and start reading right then. I don't like how plastic-y it looks and I agree with tha
best reader or best format? (Score:2)
If you get your eBooks in a nice format like PDF, PostScript, or EPS then you can use any reader for those formats. A PDF reader is available for just about every platform. PostScript, TeX, and EPS aren't far behind. HTML's even a pretty good choice. If you can get your books in one of these formats, you can probably choose your device.
If you choose your device first, there's a good chance you can't choose your format.
Dead Trees (Score:2)
Beyond dead trees, neither of these both use DRM. First company with large publisher support, no DRM, excellent readability, low power use, extreme durability (drop the sucker in the ocean, or down the side of a mountain and it lives) will win this field. Like that'll happen!
Sony PRS-505 (Score:4, Interesting)
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Yes. These steps sound
Emacs. (Score:4, Funny)
I have two answers (Score:2, Informative)
The best Ebook reader (Score:2, Informative)
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It ain't the hardware... (Score:2)
I have no experience with either device, but am tempted by both. Either comes with their own DRM hell. If the past and other devices are an indicator, I'd bet that Sony's reader is a beautiful piece of hardware that is utterly crippled by the software t
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.
read "the emperor's new clothes" (Score:2)
its cheap, its battery life is infinite, it has excellent contrast in bright light, and no DRM
eBooks to me are like electronic voting or verbally asking computers natural language questions rather than using a keyboard: weird technofetishist fantasies that don't improve upon existing technology, and are forever doomed to fail
you watch, kindle, and the sony reader will be forgotten in 6 months, like all the previous eBook tech that came with great
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The questions was the best e-book reader, not the best book reader.
E-books certainly improve on paper books in information density and (with certain reader software and devices) search functionality, at a bare minimum. Whether those are important fea
Iliad Reader (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.irextechnologies.com/products/iliad [irextechnologies.com]
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I'm afraid (Score:2)
* Ahh! But doe
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.
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I know of a guy in my office who bought an XO for just that purpose. He brought it in to show it off. To be honest, from what I have seen it's perfect for reading ebooks. Course, that was one of the things it was made for. But at $400.00 its a little pricey.
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.
Re:The XO from OLPC? (Score:5, Interesting)
Posting this from my XO.
No one answer (Score:2)
If you don't need the extreme runtime epaper can provide (no power use when displaying static text... except for the Kindle if you don't disable the radio.) just get a small laptop, tablet computer or pda. The Nokia handheld has close to the same number of pixels in smaller space so the dpi is actually better.
For epaper devices it really comes down to three choices, Amazon, Sony or Other
Amazon is selling you a cell phone with an epaper displa
dictator (Score:2)
dead-tree editions rule (Score:2)
PDA or an XO (Score:2)
I plug Baen every chance I get: they give away some ebooks for free, they sell the others at good prices, they offer multiple formats, and they don't wrap the books in DRM.
Baen Free Library (free ebooks) [baen.com]
Baen books for sale [webscription.net]
Most of my rea
The XO laptop (Score:2, Redundant)
Kindle's free wireless is interesting (Score:3, Interesting)
Sony's reader is great (Score:2)
I just bought a Bookeen Gen3 (Score:2, Informative)
The real nice thing about the E-Ink devices (Sony Reader, Kindle, Bookeen,
The Sony is sleek and well designed, didn't like being locked into one store though. I ended up getting a Bookeen Gen3 and am very happy so far -- it weighs very little and looks much nicer than the Kindle. It supports the Mobip
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I can't wait for eBooks to take off, it will bring a whole new level to story telling.
Writing text with different fon't won't be a nightmare, interactive drawings.
eReader owner (Score:2, Informative)
You can get books either through Sony's eBook site or by uploading RTFs and PDFs. (And a few other formats, that I don't use.) I have yet to buy a book from Sony, but I'm a big sci-fi reader so I'
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.
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.
Definitely the OLPC XO-1. (Score:2)
Display size is a bit small but it's more than usable, especially when folded up with the display out. All open source (Linux, etc.) and a bargain at twice the price (which is what you'd be paying; but take comfort in the fact that in addition to an electronic toy for yourself you'll be contributing to the education of a child elsewhere in the world).
Flybook subnotebook (Score:2)
I mainly use a Flybook [flybook.com] subnotebook at 8.9", with enough batteries for about 15 hours of use (if I carry all batteries with me). An HTC Universal [wikipedia.org], with more than 15 hours of use (again if I carry both of its batteries) is a helpful alternative in cases I need something smaller. A few times I use other devices as well, but these are the ones most useful for ebooks. Coupled with 3G UMTS or 3.5G HSDPA they ar wonderful, especially the Flybook, which can be used easily even while walking. It isn't the "perfe
s/bug/big (Score:2)
gosh... of course I meant big compiles...!
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]
Sony's Wasn't So bad actually... (Score:3, Informative)
The hardware is actually surprisingly attractive. The body itself has a nice brushed metal feel to it now, not unlike a MacBook Pro. Buttons were a silver plastic I believe. The device is also really thin, which was a nice change over the first Reader I saw, as that one was a little on the chunky side.
This being a store demo unit, I did not get to try out the Sony Connect store. This being Sony though, I'm not surprised if the experience had a tendency to suck. The Sony Connect music store's already been shut down, if you were curious how that effort was going in general.
Read the Ars review [arstechnica.com] if you want a more real-life experience though. Personally, I'd like the Sony Reader hardware and exterior combined with the Amazon software and EVDO connection as an ideal ebook reader.
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
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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...
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.
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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While books are relatively small in disk usage terms, I doubt you're going to fit the whole library on an e-book sized device. Maybe a laptop, but I kind of doubt even O'Reilly is "free" enough that they're going to give you their whole library on a laptop with only some DRM to protect it. One dedicated cr
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
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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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.
Amazingly, you use a computer? (Score:2)
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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What do you recommend for maximum format compatibility and not making my eyes bleed?
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I still love my Clie NX70 as an ebook reader. For software I really like iSilo [isilo.com]. It only reads its own format (and plain vanilla Palm DOC format) on the device, but the PC-side converter software does an amazingly good job with HTML and CSS. I pull down a number of websites and RSS feeds to read when I'm offline, and I have a large collection of fiction in electronic format (mostly from Baen Books [baen.com]). The converter software comes in GUI flavors for Windows and Mac, and command-line flavors for Windows, Mac,
Caveat (Score:2)
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Light weight, easy to turn pages. With a good eBook I can lay on my back and read it. Something that's not as easy with a laptop.
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DO you use iSkoot with it?
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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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On a 7 hour flight, it is a tiny slice of time. Am sure any ebook would have run out of juice by that time and reading during landing is the least of your worries, unless you travel by Business/First class.
If you are THAT concerned, get a paperback.