Sunday, February 15, 2009

To E Read or Book Read

As time goes on and I continue to accumulate more and more books ,my wife gets more antsy about where to keep them. My dream is to have a man room that has walls filled with books.But till that ever happens I have to figure out what to do. I am going through 1-2 books a week minimum,which is about 60-100 books a year. Now most of these are paperbacks that I get at anywhere from 2$ to 9$ new from amazon.com.Never buy used books.For one the writer and publisher lose out and you also never know if the used book is missing pages.Has happened twice that used books I bought were missing pages.Now my options for this problem are pretty open.I continue to buy books and store them in the garage .Which while it fits into my life long plan its kind of a pain since we are bursting at the gills as it is.So option # 2 is to use either my Storm or pc to read books I can download  ,now while this is a cheap option it has some limitations.I have a huge laptop which will put out a ton of light ,essentially killing my chances of reading in bed.Plus the fans and heat put out by my laptop also will wake the wife. I have done a little reading on my Storm and it works out ok,but the screen is too small and I have to buy special software for each type of special file.(probably 50$ in all).If traveling my Storm will be ok but again not ideal as battery life becomes a concern. The next and probably best option is one of the E Ink readers on the market.The most well known of these is the Amazon Kindle and now the Kindle 2,but you do have some other options. The best seems to be the Sony PRS-505 reader. The Kindle is nice since it has wireless capability(uses Sprints 3g network) , but it has had durability problems which might be solved with the 2 .The wireless is not a huge issue with me as I am always near a computer of some sorts internet connection.If you want to use it as more of a work tool then the kindle might be better for the wifi instant(60 seconds for a book) download.The Kindle is also 50$ more which accounts for the wifi .The Sony on the other hand just seems to be a bit more refined.It processes pages a little faster,plays mp3 files and audio books (kindle 2 does the same). The interface just seems to be a little smoother and you can walk into any Sony store and get one.Kindles have been hard to get which might be the biggest downfall along with not supporting as many formats till the 2 version.The thing that really sold me on the Sony is that you get 100 classics for free if you buy it before the end of march,Now both E Ink readers need a light to read at night and sony has one for its reader which seems to be nice and fits well with the unit.The kindle you would use any old book light. In the next 2-3 years new versions will flood the market,some in color some will have more pc like functions .This leads to the question why not wait. Well to be honest E Books are cheaper and going to a reader will pay for itself over a year.If I save 2-5$ per book thats a lot of saved money. Plus the thought of having 100 books to brows through at any one second is amazing.Its like flipping channels to suit your mood. I still have a few more hard copy books to go through before I pull the trigger on the or Kindle 2,but I cant wait to start reading on E INK.

4 comments:

  1. What about audio books? I know it's a way different experience, but they're easy to store!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I totally lose focus on audio books.And I don't retain as much.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I used to love reading ebooks on my pocket pc.

    ReplyDelete
  4. How did you deal with the small text and eye strain?Thats why I dont read on my Storm so much.

    ReplyDelete