Which ereader device should I buy?
the-digital-reader.com
the-digital-reader.com
Reading tech books (manuals, reference material, etc.) get an iPad or subnotebook. Much faster to flip rapidly through as there's a much smaller page load delay, better search etc.
I'm so thankful for ebooks - there's a line in one of the perl docs that says "You can't grep dead trees", which has always been my beef with paper docs.
From worst to best:
1. The Kindle is pretty terrible for textbooks or other things used purely as references (some people supposedly read texbooks, I don't).
2. The Kindle isn't too bad for technical books that you actually want to read, but aren't going to use as references. For example I bought the Kindle version of Douglas Crockford's Javascript: the Good Parts and read it front to back without much issue. Code formatting was my greatest concern, but its not too bad. Sometimes when a code block flows between pages and you want to flip back and forth it can be a little annoying, but overall not much worse than having to turn a physical page back and forth. It can also display PDFs, which I used to read Robert Love's book about Linux Systems Programming. The PDF display functionality isn't the best, largely because it can't re-flow text to make things a good size. But as long as this isn't the main reason you want the Kindle, its not that big a deal.
3. The Kindle really comes into its own for books of pure text you just want to read front to back. My biggest gripe is that a lot of books in the Kindle store seem to have been scanned in with pretty terrible OCR (some books are perfect, but in others its comment for a '1' to be used in place of an '1' or 'i', or for some reason for 'F' to be used in place of 'I'). Since I've been in College I haven't really done much recreational reading, but the Kindle has really gotten me back into it. Since I received it about 10 days ago I've read a Tom Clancy book, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Javascript: The Good Parts, Red Planet and the Robert Love Systems Programming book (the name escapes me at the moment).
The real value of the Kindle (or really any e-reader, the Kindle just happened to be really cheap and reputable) to me is the instant delivery of books. When I want to read something, as long as I have Wifi (didn't get the Whisper-Net-whatever-version) I can find something to read. Even better, Project Gutenberg has a huge collection of free Kindle-formatted ebooks. I can't normally be bothered to go to a store to pick up a book, or even wait for one to be delivered, and I don't like reading off of a computer or phone. But when I can instantly have a book on a great screen, and even have a huge selection of free ones, suddenly I find that I can't stop reading.
It does have a lot of issues though. It has two screens, one e-ink, and one LCD. It uses Android 1.6 right now and has no access to the Android Market. The company that makes it has minimal resources and they are really not supportive of developers. The LCD screen is resistive touch and its responsiveness isn't great. You can get a very long time on a charge if you make sure to turn the LCD off while you are reading.It isn't the worlds greatest e-reader, but it might suit your requirements where nothing else does.
It was a super light, easy to ready, all e-ink, 8.5x11 touch screen. It worked great in my hands, but they had manufacturing issues, and delayed retails sales multiple times, and finally canceled that version. If it rears it's head in retail shelves giv it a look.
Only downside is it's not actually available yet. Pre-orders should be starting soon though.
>I want to be able to read ebooks that I check out from my local library: Nook or Sony Reader Daily Edition PRS-950
>I want to be able to go online and check email, use Wikipedia, read news, etc. on my device: Kindle or Nook
He seems to prefer the kindle to the nook however because ebooks are apparently cheaper on average, it has a newer eink display, the wifi version is cheaper, and it's easier to use (whatever that means...).