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Sony eBook reader
May. 24th, 2008 09:27 pmWhen I have read anything for the last few years, I've been doing it on my Palm Tungsten E. This has been OK, many people say the screen is too small and the resolution too low, and those are fair but it's worked as far as it went. Honestly, it's the only reason I got any reading done at all; I always had it with me so if I were at the dentist's office, or waiting in line or on the table while giving blood, or whatever else, I had a stack of books to read.
The big problem is, the batteries just don't last. Even with the backlight turned down all the way, in 2 hours it's beeping at me to either plug it in or turn it off. I never really used it as a PDA (I don't really do anything but go to work and go back home again), and I eventually stopped carrying it as a reader as well since it seemed like the damn thing was always out of juice.
A friend at work also had been reading from a Palm for a couple of years, and he had a Sony Clie, which has much better battery life. A couple of weeks ago he broke the screen on it, and went out and bought a Sony reader (he also has no need for a schedule keeper, and he uses his phone for contacts). I really liked the display, and the batteries last an insane amount of time (7500 page turns, equivalent of reading a dozen books or so, probably a month's worth of regular reading) between charges. Also the price has come down a lot since I looked at them a year or so ago, and the screens have gotten better.
I did some research and determined that for me, the Sony was the way to go. So today I went over to Borders and picked one up:
It's much more of a unitasker than the Palm; it doesn't do contacts, alarms, schedules, or any of that. It's a reader, and it's a much better reader than the Palm on every count. Since that's all I was using the Palm for anyway, it's a win. Some users have written a game or two for it; there's a Sudoku, but playing Sudoku with a directional paddle stinks and the display is great for reading but glacial for playing even things like card games.
A little browsing on eBay indicates that these things hold their intrinsic (but possibly not book) value. By that I mean, the guys who bought the 1st gen Sony reader a year or two ago for $450 are selling them now for $230 or so, when the 2nd gen are selling for $300. Sure, they're only getting about 50% of their original price out of them, but they're getting pretty close to the price of the next generation device.
These things really seem to be getting hot now. eBay auctions get lots of bidders, and the first Borders I went to said they've been getting a dozen a week and selling them all before the next shipment. Luckily the Arborland borders had 4 or 5 in stock. Sony stated that they only expect to sell 10,000 units worldwide this year, I think they may be mistaken (of course, Ann Arbor is probably ahead of the average for something like this).
There's a very nice program out in user-space that will convert almost any other ebook format to Sony's format (or the Sony can read RTF/TXT), and also Baen has their titles available in Sony format directly. I tend to be a bit of a pirate when it comes to ebooks, mainly because the idiotic publishers are in the habit of charging hardcover prices for ebooks, THEN slapping DRM on them, but Baen will sell me ebooks for $4 with NO DRM in a variety of formats.
I was talking to a guy at work who bought a reader a few months back and went with the Cybook (which is a bit more expensive). He's been paying closer attention to the market, and he says Amazon has shaken up the market with the Kindle; they have the market presence to demand reasonable pricing on ebooks, and they've done it, and the publishers have been forced to lower prices accordingly. Hopefully they'll get clued in faster than the music industry, which still shows no sign of recovering from their rectal-cranial inversion syndrome.
Honestly, I've had a problem with paperback prices since they went over $5. If I can buy books for $4 again, I will probably start doing so. But ONLY without DRM. I played the DRM game with Peanut Press back years ago when I first got the Palm, and I now have files I can't remember the password for. Not going there again.
The big problem is, the batteries just don't last. Even with the backlight turned down all the way, in 2 hours it's beeping at me to either plug it in or turn it off. I never really used it as a PDA (I don't really do anything but go to work and go back home again), and I eventually stopped carrying it as a reader as well since it seemed like the damn thing was always out of juice.
A friend at work also had been reading from a Palm for a couple of years, and he had a Sony Clie, which has much better battery life. A couple of weeks ago he broke the screen on it, and went out and bought a Sony reader (he also has no need for a schedule keeper, and he uses his phone for contacts). I really liked the display, and the batteries last an insane amount of time (7500 page turns, equivalent of reading a dozen books or so, probably a month's worth of regular reading) between charges. Also the price has come down a lot since I looked at them a year or so ago, and the screens have gotten better.
I did some research and determined that for me, the Sony was the way to go. So today I went over to Borders and picked one up:
It's much more of a unitasker than the Palm; it doesn't do contacts, alarms, schedules, or any of that. It's a reader, and it's a much better reader than the Palm on every count. Since that's all I was using the Palm for anyway, it's a win. Some users have written a game or two for it; there's a Sudoku, but playing Sudoku with a directional paddle stinks and the display is great for reading but glacial for playing even things like card games.
A little browsing on eBay indicates that these things hold their intrinsic (but possibly not book) value. By that I mean, the guys who bought the 1st gen Sony reader a year or two ago for $450 are selling them now for $230 or so, when the 2nd gen are selling for $300. Sure, they're only getting about 50% of their original price out of them, but they're getting pretty close to the price of the next generation device.
These things really seem to be getting hot now. eBay auctions get lots of bidders, and the first Borders I went to said they've been getting a dozen a week and selling them all before the next shipment. Luckily the Arborland borders had 4 or 5 in stock. Sony stated that they only expect to sell 10,000 units worldwide this year, I think they may be mistaken (of course, Ann Arbor is probably ahead of the average for something like this).
There's a very nice program out in user-space that will convert almost any other ebook format to Sony's format (or the Sony can read RTF/TXT), and also Baen has their titles available in Sony format directly. I tend to be a bit of a pirate when it comes to ebooks, mainly because the idiotic publishers are in the habit of charging hardcover prices for ebooks, THEN slapping DRM on them, but Baen will sell me ebooks for $4 with NO DRM in a variety of formats.
I was talking to a guy at work who bought a reader a few months back and went with the Cybook (which is a bit more expensive). He's been paying closer attention to the market, and he says Amazon has shaken up the market with the Kindle; they have the market presence to demand reasonable pricing on ebooks, and they've done it, and the publishers have been forced to lower prices accordingly. Hopefully they'll get clued in faster than the music industry, which still shows no sign of recovering from their rectal-cranial inversion syndrome.
Honestly, I've had a problem with paperback prices since they went over $5. If I can buy books for $4 again, I will probably start doing so. But ONLY without DRM. I played the DRM game with Peanut Press back years ago when I first got the Palm, and I now have files I can't remember the password for. Not going there again.
