Ranadok …finally remembered his login info

Books come in Electronic now?

I've always thought that ebook readers were a little goofy. E-ink was an interesting technology, but the readers seemed to be there just to give the screens a reason to exist, not to actually solve a problem that anybody actually had. Why would anybody want to read on an electronic device, when they could just read the actual book, which would no doubt be a better experience?  I had read a couple of books on my computer or my PDA over the years, and never really found it to be as satisfying an experience as reading the actual paper copies.

Obviously, my opinions have changed. I had a chance to play around with both a Kindle and an older-model Sony Reader (PRS-505) over a weekend back in March, and was quite surprised. I had heard that e-ink screens were nice to read on, but these were just incredible. I was expecting something like my old grey scale Palm screen; readable even in bad light, but nothing to write home about. However, the e-ink screens on those two devices were really quite impressive. I read quite a bit on the two devices (mainly on the Sony Reader, I liked the device a lot more than the Kindle) over the course of that weekend, and decided to buy one for myself.

After I did the research, I ruled out everything except for Sony's offerings.  In short, the Kindle was too expensive and non-open... and all the other options don't exist, so far as Canada is concerned. Easy decision, I guess. The only hard part was choosing between the Sony Reader Touch or the Sony Reader Pocket. I tried both out at LD, and ended up going with the Pocket. It was $100 less, though it sacrificed the touch screen (obviously), card reader, music playback, and a couple other things that I don't remember and can't be bothered to look up (in-line dictionary and photos, I think). Basically, everything but book reading. The thing is, pretty much every other device I have already plays music and has a touch screen. All I really wanted was an ebook reader. And between the two, the Pocket Edition was by far the better for reading, at least to my eyes. The Touch touch layer added a nasty glare that the Pocket didn't have, and I really didn't want to deal with that. So the Pocket Edition it was. Of course, there have been price drops and new products and all sorts of other things going on in the ebook market that makes my carefully-researched decision woefully out of date, but I still think I made the right choice, and I still have a darned good ebook reader.

This is either blue or black, depending on who and when you ask. Right now, I say it's blue.