Temptation

[johnridley]

A friend at work reads books by the truckload on is Sony Clie (real fancy Palm). He broke the screen earlier this week, and ran out and bought a Sony eBook reader.

OMG, it's very nice. VERY nice. At $300, it's a bit above my normal "toy" price but I'm telling you, it's real tempting.

Comments

[sraun]

If you're really tempted, check out the product from http://www.naebllc.com/.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

Do they sell anything besides the Cybook? Someone else at work has a Cybook, and honestly, I like the Sony reader better, and it's cheaper.

[scs-11.livejournal.com]

If you yield to temptation, let us know the result. The only folks I know with Clies don't have trustworthy evaluating skills.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

My friend used his Clie for about 3 years, pretty heavily, and was quite pleased with it. Evals of Clies are pretty pointless now as they stopped making them a couple of years back.

The stuff I've seen indicates that the leading ebook readers, including the Sony, Kindle, and Cybook, all use exactly the same display from eInk company, exactly the same display hardware. So it just comes down to interface, compatibility, size and battery life. The Sony is smaller and has a less klunky interface than the Cybook (I've never seen a Kindle, and am not interested in it anyway).

The Cybook will read more file types, particularly Mobi and HTML, but converting file types is pretty trivial these days, and for $300 instead of $375 (even heavily discounted, $425+ normally) I can convert a few files.

Honestly, I probably won't get one soon, because I simply do not have time to read. I'm pretty much doing something hands-on every minute I'm not in bed. The only way I get through material anymore is audiobooks, so I can listen while I'm pounding nails or digging in the garden or riding to work or doing dishes. I haven't read an actual book, either paper or electrons, in many months. I'd like to, but no time.

When I get some time, the last Harry Potter book is probably first. I don't want to do that on audiobook so I've been putting it off. I promised myself I'd read it before I went to see the movie, but beyond that I can't be sure.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

As you can see from my more recent entry, I did take the plunge. Results so far are excellent; I have been able to find plenty of reading material to last me a long time, and functionally it's as close to a perfect reader as I can imagine. I'll do a better report after I've had it a month or so and have had a chance to use it a while.
I did order a hard case for it, since it's got a large screen and I'll be carrying it on my bike.

[scs-11.livejournal.com]

Cool, many thanks.

[mbcrui.livejournal.com]

Are there a lot of books available for them?

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

If you mean legally, I don't know, you can browse the Sony store. I think there's a pretty darn good selection. Otherwise, yeah, pretty much anything. It will read PDF, TXT and its own format directly, and you can convert pretty much anything else to its format. I get almost all my reading material either from free ebooks (I read so little that, for instance, Tor's "one a week" free ebooks is more than I could possibly read) or from alt.binaries.e-books.

For another $75, the Cybook reads a few more formats, is a little lighter, but seems a little flimsier and is a touch thicker. Same display though (made by eInk in both cases). A guy at work has a Cybook, and bought it specifically because it supported more formats and that's what he wanted, but by his own admission, the Sony is a better device if you don't mind losing a couple of formats; it's smaller, sturdier, has a much nicer user interface, and is cheaper.