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Sony Reader Now Available
Yaksha42 writes "The Sony Reader, which debuted at CES in January, is now available for purchase on the Sony website. The six inch screen uses E Ink, rather than an LCD, to display the text, reducing strain on the eye while reading. While you can buy books on Sony's Connect site, you can also load eBooks and other text onto the Reader in a variety of formats, including PDF and TXT files. It also comes with the ability to receive newsfeeds, display JPG images, and can play unsecured MP3 and AAC music files. Additional information can also be found on the Learning Center site."
For example they have manga too(albeit a small selection right now). If Sony doesn't fuck it up totally it could be an interesting distribution model. But given their history in this type of thing, I don't have too much confidence.
Monstar L
This Sony device has some of the same advantages; potential for large number of books in hand and ability to buy books online at any time.
However, it still misses some of the point of an e-reader vs a dead-tree book!
Portability: it won't fit in my shirt pocket like the Palm does. Why is it the size of a dead-tree book? Because that's what people who haven't used ebooks much think that they want!
The paperback size is a compromise between having enough words to balance the effort and inconvenience of page turning, and having a reasonable thickness for an average-length book. When turning a page requires just a minimal thumb pressure, fewer words per page is less of a consideration.
Backlight: Sure, it shortens the battery life, but being able to read in bed without the light on is great. Or in any other environment where the light levels are low enough to cause your mother to worry about you going blind!
Dictionary: being able to tap on a word on the screen and have a dictionary entry pop up is so useful, especially with obtuse and erudite writers. I always _mean_ to go look up words, but with ereader and a 150,000 word dictionary loaded, I actually _do_!
Availability: my PDA is a general-purpose device and I use it as an alarm clock, an organiser, an MP3 player, a movie viewer, a calculator, a map (with BT GPSr), a note-taker, etc., etc. Because I use it so much, I always have it with me. Because I always have it with me, I always have my current book(s) and magazines available for those unexpected spare moments (or hours!) Since even a long novel is rarely more than 3-400kB, they really don't make much of a dent in a 1GB SD card.
I often hear fellow bibliophiles say that they wouldn't like an e-book reader because they really like the smell and feel of real paper, and the tactile experience of turning pages, and so on.
I imagine that their great-great grandparents thought that automotives were never going to be popular, because people would miss the feel of the reins and the clip-clop of the hooves...
Ogg support would be nice, but I wouldn't say that its abscence makes the product "nearly useless". If it provided a stylus or input method for adding comments and markup to PDF documents I would probably buy one. As it is, the functionality wouldn't be worth the price and clunkyness of carrying a fragile piece of equipment around.