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Samsung Papyrus E-Book Reader, Coming Soon
kanewm writes with a snippet from Portable-Ebook-Reader.NET: "Samsung's new, highly portable e-book reader, dubbed 'Papyrus,' will be available in Korea in June 2009 and in the UK and North America sometime later (likely within several months)." As the site notes, though, this lacks some features of the Kindle, the obvious choice for comparison in the American market.
well, if DRM is one of those "features" it lacks, I'll consider it. Kindle 2 is nice, but its draconian DRM it is a big no no for me.
Another ebook reader.
I am not left-handed, either!
Well, there are quite a few readers http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E-book_devices with much less draconian DRM or even completely without DRM:
Sony Reader PRS-700, Sony Reader PRS-505, Bokeen Cybook Gen3, IRex Digital Reader, IRex iLiad, The Jinke/Hanlin, Ganaxa GeR2, Soribook, Readius, Hanvon N510 , Hanvon N516, astak EZ Reader, Astak Mentor, the new 5" models from several manufacturers and quite a few clones and rebranded OEM versions of above mentioned devices.
No wireless. Less space than a Nomad.
Lame.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Um exactly. I see WAAAAY ore Sony 505's in people's hands than the Kindle. Target had a sale on them a few weeks back and they were $249.95.
I have seen 1 kindle in the wild, and at least 30 Sony readers. What I like is that I can carry years worth of my favorite magazines and every technical manual with me. My buddy bough a Sony reader for his garage after I showed him where to get all his motorcycle assembly and repair manuals in pdf form online. He said that the silicone covers for the unit keep grease and oil off them very well.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Many of those have DRM that is just as bad. I know the Sony readers have it from personal experience, and the Sony store sucks a heck of a lot more than Amazon. Of course, they all read a variety of free formats without DRM as well, as do all the readers I know about. The problem is not that the readers handle DRM, its that online stores are selling books in a variety of incompatible and restrictive formats. The Sony store sells books that are DRMed with a format only readable on the Sony e-book readers. The Amazon store only sells books readable on the Kindle. As an owner of the Sony e-book reader, I cannot buy e-books from Amazon. With a Kindle, I could not buy books from Sony. This fractures the market and turns e-books from "any book ever written (within reason)" to "any book your manufacturer bothered signing a contract with". This fractures the market and destroys much of the usefulness of an e-book reader. The sole reason I recommend the Kindle to people is because the Amazon store seems to have the best selection, I dislike some of the features of the actual reader itself (i.e. I don't see downloading books over a cell phone as a feature, since you have to pay for it with higher priced books and a short battery life if you forget to turn wireless off).
Of course, there are stores out there that sell books in a non-DRM format. Baen was one of the first publisher to do this and I have bought a lot of books from them. However, they are a small fraction of the books published today (3ish new books a month, all sci-fi or fantasy) and the same seems to hold true for the other stores I've found. Fictionwise seems to come up in conversation a lot, but only some of its books are DRM-free, and the 6 times so far I've gone looking for a specific book from them, they've had it only in DRM encumbered format. And since Sony doesn't want to release its DRM scheme, none of their DRM formats will work with my reader. I just added up my order history for Baen, and I've spent $936 on their e-books over the past 3 years. I'm more than willing to pay for books, but there are a lot of e-books out there where people simply refuse to take my money.
The alternative to all of this, of course, is to pirate books. This is generally a pain in the ass and can result in some poor quality books, but there is a lot more available this way than there is from legitimate non-DRMed books. I haven't found a specific site that works well for downloading books. Many of the major torrent sites have large collections of books available for download, but they can be pretty spotty and the quality is... variable. There will often be issues with the lines being too long for the reader, and wrapping in weird ways or with extra spaces between lines. There are some that are perfectly fine, but it is often a crap shoot. On the other hand, the first time I got frustrated with Fictonwise's DRM only books, I found a collection of sci-fi and fantasy that was 9 gigs. A good portion of that was scans of graphic novels, but you can fit a mind-blowing amount of text into even a small part of a 9 gig compressed file. Once I downloaded that, my first stop for new books is Baen, and the second stop is my hard drive. Its rare that I bother looking for anything else now. I still check for some new releases on various websites, but more often than not I'm disappointed in the results. I'm not going to pay $18 for a book that has been out in paperback for 6 months. And that was just the one book lately that _was_ available.
Though I may have got off track a bit, I think the real problem here is not that readers can handle DRM, its that online stores are fucked up. I could easily have spent an extra $1k on books if they were available in a format that works in my e-book reader. The fact that publishers won't allow those formats is the problem, not the fact that a specific reader has DRM for file format Y, but not Z. They're just asking everyone who doesn't have their specific e-book reader to pirate the books, instead of selling good quality versions for sale with reasonable fees and an easy to use system to download what you want when you want it.
I'm waiting for the one which has DON'T PANIC in big friendly letters on the front.
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
I bought a Sony E-Reader last November. I travel a lot for work, and I thought it would be nice to take books with me on the plane. I like reading computer books, and most of them are about the size of the Chicago phone book. Carrying a 5-10lb book around in my backpack "in case" I feel like reading is not something I wanted to do. It is amazing how many computer manuals come with PDF copies of the books on CD. If I have to choose between two books, I will always go for the one with the PDF copy, even if I feel the one without it is a little better. A mediocre book I will use is much greater than a good book I won't.
As far as purchasing electronic books, I've never done it yet. I don't plan on it. I'd be telling a lie if I said I had never pirated an eBook, but in my defense 95% of them have been books that I already own. I am more likely to buy the book and then pirate the electronic format than to buy the electronic format. Call me old fashioned, but I like having the book around, even if I never need to open it. I wont buy an ebook unless the price comes down significantly from the paper version AND the DRM is removed or significantly transparent and portable.
I am a huge Discworld fan. I got hooked in the 90's after I played the Discworld PC game. I went through his books like crazy, and I now own every Discworld book. I purchased many of them from the UK when Pratchett was having difficulties with US publishers. While I support Terry Pratchett, I don't intend on repurchasing his books. I hope he can understand and forgive me for seeking alternate means of acquiring his materials. If I said I felt guilty, I would be telling a lie.