Posted by
timothy
on from the one-that's-out-next-year dept.
jacob1984 writes "A few years ago there was a question about which e-reader was the best. Since then, the market has beenfloodedwithnewadditions, many of them more open than others. Have you bought one yet? If so, which one did you find best and why?"
The Sony
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 5, Informative
By a very long mile. Great format support, including many open formats, great quality too.
Re:The Sony
by
WuphonsReach
·
· Score: 5, Informative
I find it very surprising that the most open eReader on the market today is the Sony. I always though that was one of the 7 signs of the apocalypse. They must be catching on to what consumers actually want.... I hope Apple is paying attention.
Yeah, I was rather wary about buying my PRS-505 two years ago, but went ahead and took the plunge when they got below $300. I'm extremely happy with it as it does exactly what I want for leisure, cover-to-cover reading. Open formats, a no-DRM source of books (Gutenberg and Baen's Webscription), and the fact that it stays the hell out of my way when I want to read. Takes a few weeks for the battery to wear down and I keep 200-300 books on it.
I've averaged 1 book every week or two for the past 2 years on it.
Very much a no-muss no-fuss e-reader. Which is a key selling point.
-- Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
I've owned an Illiad and a PRS-300 now, and the PRS-300 wins hands-down for reading books.
The Illiad was handy for taking notes, but really just wasn't up to snuff for heavy note-taking, and was generally slower than the PRS. The PRS also wins on price and battery life.
And, yes, Calibre is a must with Sony's.
Re:The Sony
by
minorproblem
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Agreed, PRS-300 is probably one of the best e-book readers out at the moment if all you want to do is read novels front to back.
My Sony Reader PRS 600 shows up as a drive (two, actually) when you plug it into your PC via USB, it has native support for PDF, LRF, ePub, plain text files and RTF. It also supports several image formats - if you like to see your photos in black and white, you'll be all set.
Re:The Sony
by
rotenberry
·
· Score: 3, Informative
PRS-300 has two advantages: no WiFi and no touch screen.
Neither Sony nor anyone else can hack in and erase your ebooks.
A touchscreen is makes the characters less crisp, more muddy. I much prefer clear text to the minor advantages of a touchscreen.
And it works well with Linux. Now if Sony did not supply such lame software...
They can have my PRS-500 when they pry it from my cold, dead hands.
I just got it back from Sony after the firmware upgrade and I found it hard to get by without while it was gone. No DRM, no restrictions. It's mine and I can use it as I see fit. Those are the highest recommendations I can think of these days.
The number of people that don't yet have a ebook and "don't get" the concept if e-ink is staggering. Clue: e-ink does not melt your eyes like a TFT with a backlight...
Sorry, but this is for the "best" eBook reader, not the one "most crippled by DRM."
I was waiting for that. It certainly must be acknowledged that the Kindle is DRM-laden. However, that doesn't automatically make it non-best. The hardware is amazing, and substantially more capable the the competition. On top of a remarkable screen, form factor, and battery life, it has WIRELESS DATA CAPABILITY! As a whole package, it's a slam dunk - notwithstanding the DRM issue.
-- I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
I still use my N800 daily...
by
IANAAC
·
· Score: 4, Informative
It reads pretty much anything non DRM I can throw at it, and it fits in my pocket.
Re:I still use my N800 daily...
by
masmullin
·
· Score: 3, Informative
The entourage edge It's not available yet (set to ship in March 2010), but it looks like its got what most people want and then some. I might be getting one myself. I've been hesitant, like most, because of price, ease of use, screen size, etc...
It's not too much more than some of the other readers, so it might be a nice alternative.
http://www.entourageedge.com/devices/entourage-edge.html
I own two Kindle 2s. DRM only means I can only buy protected content from Amazon, I am free to import content from other sources without involving Amazon in the process. Amazon has yet to interfere with any third parties selling content for the Kindle as long as they don't attempt to use their proprietary DRM scheme.
It is one hell of a reader, and in an emergency Whispernet is a nice backup to have. During Snowmaggeddon here in DC I was getting better network performance from the two Kindles than from our AT&T cell phones (probably you can't compare the network traffic between these two, ever).
By the way, two of the most popular tools used to generate content for the Kindle, Stanza and Mobi Pocket creator, are both owned by Amazon. Or you could use Calibre.
Worried about generating DRM-free content for Kindle readers? Release your content as MOBI/PRC or PDF and that should do it, at least until Amazon feels the burn and issues a patch allowing Kindles to read EPUB.
The biggest problem that the Kindle faces is not the DRM, it's the tug of war between Amazon and publishers that want them to raise their $10 price point for new books.
Ah yes, this old meme. Unfortunately, books fail hard at carrying capacity. One book I picked out of my shelf has 57 chars per line * 36 lines per page * 774 pages = 1588248 bytes, and one of those takes up a full pocket. I can have a few thousand of those in an ebook reader, which also takes up one pocket.
Re:I hate to say it...
by
Daniel_Staal
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Basically everybody but the Kindle is using the ePub format, which is an open format. It supports DRM, but doesn't require it, and there are many sources out there who sell/provide books in it without DRM.
The conversion software available to ePub is a bit primitive at the moment, but it does exist, from practically any format you can care to name.
-- 'Sensible' is a curse word.
Re:Kindle
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 3, Informative
How about the you've-just-been-screwed-because-you-upgraded-your-kindle-issue?
Check out the one-star review by Gadget Queen on Amazon's site (last review on the page): http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Wireless-Reading-Display-Generation/dp/B0015T963C/ref=amb_link_116589822_2/181-8601578-0208657?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-1&pf_rd_r=0R4JH04FW7KYM843PYA4&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=528911022&pf_rd_i=507846
Particularly disturbing was the lost content she paid for when she switched from Kindle 1 to Kindle 2.
2. All of my previous issues of magazines and newspapers were lost (ie, I could not re-download them specifically for the K2) because Amazon does not back up subscriptions on their server for more than 6 days. SINCE I PAID FOR THE CONTENT, I SHOULD BE ABLE TO HAVE THAT CONTENT ALWAYS AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD. Sorry, but I won't consider buying any more newspapaers or magazine subscriptions to the Kindle 1 or 2.
and
4. Although Amazon says it keeps you content on their server, I found many instances where I could not download my books to my computer because the item THAT I PAID FOR was not available for download to my new Kindle2. Amazon said the book had been "pulled." Excuse me, but I paid for it, pulled or not, it should always be avaiable to me since I paid for it. When I asked for a refund for the pulled item now unavailable to me, SINCE I COULD NOT GET THE ITEM REDOWNLOADED, I was told that a refund was not possible. LESSON LEARNED: I now back up ALL my Kindle content on my computer. Since Amazon says "Don't worry, your content is safe with us." I respectfully disagree. Also, some authors issued new versions of their books for K2. However, then the original version for K1 "disappeared" from the server so I could not even download it to K2, nor K1.
Yes, there is plenty of evidence. A backlight causes prolonged constriction of pupils while eyes are focused at close range. This leads to fatigue, and will eventually get you glasses. There is also evidence that the blink rate diminishes when staring at a backlit display, causing eyes to dry out. Of course , E-ink doesn't solve all these problems, but is better than LCD displays.
For starters,
http://www.aoa.org/documents/EffectsComputerUse.pdf
-- Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
Running X11 means that you can take existing *NIX apps, recompile, and run them. They'll need a bit of effort to work well with an eInk display and a tablet, but you can make that effort with toolkits that you already know, not with something new designed just for the device. It also means that third-party developers can easily add features. For example, the community-developed PDF reader for the iLiad is much better than the stock one.
Re:Pure FUD and lies.
by
YA_Python_dev
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Can you please be more specific? What do you think is not true in my previous post? I was explicitly talking about books bought from Amazon with the Kindle (which are all DRMed) and you reply saying that it's also possible to read non-DRM books from third parties. What's your point?
-- There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()
Pirate Bay is the best source for books? I don't think so. Project Gutenberg is the best source for books, unless you want technical manuals--then it depends upon what you need.
Mildly off-topic, but for Project Gutenberg books I'd greatly recommend ManyBooks.net, they have most of the PG books available in multiple formats (and I *do* mean multiple, check it out) and with user reviews to help you find the better ones.
-- No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
Re:Fooled me once, shame on you...
by
Low+Ranked+Craig
·
· Score: 3, Informative
eBooks should cost far, far less than print books, not merely because their marginal cost of production is tiny, but because they deliver far less value than a print book
Not at all true. almost everything that has to be done to produce a print book needs to be done to produce an e-book.
Editing, typesetting, formatting, proofing, marketing, artwork, etc all still needs to be done. Only the distribution is different. In one case you're printing a book (an automated manufacturing process) or you're publishing a book to an e-marketplace (a bunch of servers, software and bandwidth (not free)). The reality is that the great majority of the cost in producing a book is labor, and it's all still required, regardless of print or electronic distribution, so while printed materials may cost more to produce, the cost difference is not the huge amount that people seem to think it is.
-- I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
Re:your numbers don't make sense
by
Eric+Green
·
· Score: 4, Informative
The vast majority of novels never appear in hardback. The number of fiction authors whose books appear in hard cover barely cracks three digits in any given year. In particular, a typical midlist science fiction author such as John Scalzi will virtually never have any of his books come out in an mass market hardcover edition -- if he wins an award or something which puts him into the ALA's "buy this" lists, there might be a special hardcover library edition put out, but not a mass market hardcover edition.
Regarding the actual numbers, I must admit that I simplified. As Scalzi explains on his blog, "In the course of the production of my book, it is touched and receives positive benefit from (in no particular order): A writer, an agent, an editor, a copy editor, an art director, an artist, a book designer, a marketer, a publicist, a distributor and a bookseller. As an author, if I lose one of those people, the final product — a saleable book — suffers in one way or another." But the point is that up-front costs before the book ever hits the printer are what comprise most of the costs for a typical trade paperback, not incremental per-unit costs. This of course is inverted for best-sellers, where the up-front costs are amortized over far more units, but there were only 157 fiction books that sold more than 100,000 copies in 2008. That's it, according to Publisher's Weekly, and I suspect the numbers for 2009 are little different. And BTW, authors typically get a percentage of the cover price that is about $1.50 per hardback, about half that per paperback. Just in case you're wondering. That gets applied toward their advance until they sell out their advance.
In short, the argument that ebook versions of a novel should cost way less than paperback novels due to a lower marginal cost of production simply doesn't match the actual numbers. The marginal cost of production is not the primary thing driving book costs, whether ebook or otherwise. Rather, it is the up-front sunk costs in the editorial department and the fixed costs for marketing and publicizing the book which drive the costs for most books. Then there are the best-sellers, those selling more than 100,000 copies... but those are a distinct minority and are the only ones on which book publishers make any actual profits. In all of these scenarios, the marginal cost of production is not going to be even $1 for a trade paperback and will rarely be over $1.50 for a trade hardcover (obviously the last big brick Harry Potter novels cost a teeny bit more due to sheer volume of paper needed to print a 750 page novel, but not *that* much more), meaning that if we're talking marginal cost of production as the difference in price between a paperback and an ebook, we're not talking about a huge difference in price. Clearly the expectation that ebooks should cost a lot less than paper copies of the books because of lower marginal costs of production doesn't match the reality that marginal cost of production really IS marginal even for paper books. A little less, okay. A lot less? Well, that money will have to come from something other than marginal cost of production... probably either author advance, or by publishing fewer books by more marginal authors (those who sell less than 20,000 copies). Either alternative is not very good for those of us who enjoy books and buy hundreds of books per year -- mostly *not* the 150 books on the bestseller lists.
Slashdot Mirror
By a very long mile. Great format support, including many open formats, great quality too.
Hope you enjoyed your eyes.
The number of people that don't yet have a ebook and "don't get" the concept if e-ink is staggering. Clue: e-ink does not melt your eyes like a TFT with a backlight...
Sorry, but this is for the "best" eBook reader, not the one "most crippled by DRM."
I was waiting for that. It certainly must be acknowledged that the Kindle is DRM-laden. However, that doesn't automatically make it non-best. The hardware is amazing, and substantially more capable the the competition. On top of a remarkable screen, form factor, and battery life, it has WIRELESS DATA CAPABILITY! As a whole package, it's a slam dunk - notwithstanding the DRM issue.
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
It reads pretty much anything non DRM I can throw at it, and it fits in my pocket.
The entourage edge It's not available yet (set to ship in March 2010), but it looks like its got what most people want and then some. I might be getting one myself. I've been hesitant, like most, because of price, ease of use, screen size, etc... It's not too much more than some of the other readers, so it might be a nice alternative. http://www.entourageedge.com/devices/entourage-edge.html
I own two Kindle 2s. DRM only means I can only buy protected content from Amazon, I am free to import content from other sources without involving Amazon in the process. Amazon has yet to interfere with any third parties selling content for the Kindle as long as they don't attempt to use their proprietary DRM scheme.
It is one hell of a reader, and in an emergency Whispernet is a nice backup to have. During Snowmaggeddon here in DC I was getting better network performance from the two Kindles than from our AT&T cell phones (probably you can't compare the network traffic between these two, ever).
By the way, two of the most popular tools used to generate content for the Kindle, Stanza and Mobi Pocket creator, are both owned by Amazon. Or you could use Calibre.
Worried about generating DRM-free content for Kindle readers? Release your content as MOBI/PRC or PDF and that should do it, at least until Amazon feels the burn and issues a patch allowing Kindles to read EPUB.
The biggest problem that the Kindle faces is not the DRM, it's the tug of war between Amazon and publishers that want them to raise their $10 price point for new books.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
Ah yes, this old meme. Unfortunately, books fail hard at carrying capacity. One book I picked out of my shelf has 57 chars per line * 36 lines per page * 774 pages = 1588248 bytes, and one of those takes up a full pocket. I can have a few thousand of those in an ebook reader, which also takes up one pocket.
Basically everybody but the Kindle is using the ePub format, which is an open format. It supports DRM, but doesn't require it, and there are many sources out there who sell/provide books in it without DRM.
The conversion software available to ePub is a bit primitive at the moment, but it does exist, from practically any format you can care to name.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
How about the you've-just-been-screwed-because-you-upgraded-your-kindle-issue?
Check out the one-star review by Gadget Queen on Amazon's site (last review on the page):
http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Wireless-Reading-Display-Generation/dp/B0015T963C/ref=amb_link_116589822_2/181-8601578-0208657?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-1&pf_rd_r=0R4JH04FW7KYM843PYA4&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=528911022&pf_rd_i=507846
Particularly disturbing was the lost content she paid for when she switched from Kindle 1 to Kindle 2.
2. All of my previous issues of magazines and newspapers were lost (ie, I could not re-download them specifically for the K2) because Amazon does not back up subscriptions on their server for more than 6 days. SINCE I PAID FOR THE CONTENT, I SHOULD BE ABLE TO HAVE THAT CONTENT ALWAYS AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD. Sorry, but I won't consider buying any more newspapaers or magazine subscriptions to the Kindle 1 or 2.
and
4. Although Amazon says it keeps you content on their server, I found many instances where I could not download my books to my computer because the item THAT I PAID FOR was not available for download to my new Kindle2. Amazon said the book had been "pulled." Excuse me, but I paid for it, pulled or not, it should always be avaiable to me since I paid for it. When I asked for a refund for the pulled item now unavailable to me, SINCE I COULD NOT GET THE ITEM REDOWNLOADED, I was told that a refund was not possible. LESSON LEARNED: I now back up ALL my Kindle content on my computer. Since Amazon says "Don't worry, your content is safe with us." I respectfully disagree. Also, some authors issued new versions of their books for K2. However, then the original version for K1 "disappeared" from the server so I could not even download it to K2, nor K1.
Yes, there is plenty of evidence. A backlight causes prolonged constriction of pupils while eyes are focused at close range. This leads to fatigue, and will eventually get you glasses. There is also evidence that the blink rate diminishes when staring at a backlit display, causing eyes to dry out. Of course , E-ink doesn't solve all these problems, but is better than LCD displays. For starters, http://www.aoa.org/documents/EffectsComputerUse.pdf
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
Running X11 means that you can take existing *NIX apps, recompile, and run them. They'll need a bit of effort to work well with an eInk display and a tablet, but you can make that effort with toolkits that you already know, not with something new designed just for the device. It also means that third-party developers can easily add features. For example, the community-developed PDF reader for the iLiad is much better than the stock one.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Can you please be more specific? What do you think is not true in my previous post? I was explicitly talking about books bought from Amazon with the Kindle (which are all DRMed) and you reply saying that it's also possible to read non-DRM books from third parties. What's your point?
There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()
Pirate Bay is the best source for books? I don't think so. Project Gutenberg is the best source for books, unless you want technical manuals--then it depends upon what you need.
Mildly off-topic, but for Project Gutenberg books I'd greatly recommend ManyBooks.net, they have most of the PG books available in multiple formats (and I *do* mean multiple, check it out) and with user reviews to help you find the better ones.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
eBooks should cost far, far less than print books, not merely because their marginal cost of production is tiny, but because they deliver far less value than a print book
Not at all true. almost everything that has to be done to produce a print book needs to be done to produce an e-book.
Editing, typesetting, formatting, proofing, marketing, artwork, etc all still needs to be done. Only the distribution is different. In one case you're printing a book (an automated manufacturing process) or you're publishing a book to an e-marketplace (a bunch of servers, software and bandwidth (not free)). The reality is that the great majority of the cost in producing a book is labor, and it's all still required, regardless of print or electronic distribution, so while printed materials may cost more to produce, the cost difference is not the huge amount that people seem to think it is.
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
Regarding the actual numbers, I must admit that I simplified. As Scalzi explains on his blog, "In the course of the production of my book, it is touched and receives positive benefit from (in no particular order): A writer, an agent, an editor, a copy editor, an art director, an artist, a book designer, a marketer, a publicist, a distributor and a bookseller. As an author, if I lose one of those people, the final product — a saleable book — suffers in one way or another." But the point is that up-front costs before the book ever hits the printer are what comprise most of the costs for a typical trade paperback, not incremental per-unit costs. This of course is inverted for best-sellers, where the up-front costs are amortized over far more units, but there were only 157 fiction books that sold more than 100,000 copies in 2008. That's it, according to Publisher's Weekly, and I suspect the numbers for 2009 are little different. And BTW, authors typically get a percentage of the cover price that is about $1.50 per hardback, about half that per paperback. Just in case you're wondering. That gets applied toward their advance until they sell out their advance.
In short, the argument that ebook versions of a novel should cost way less than paperback novels due to a lower marginal cost of production simply doesn't match the actual numbers. The marginal cost of production is not the primary thing driving book costs, whether ebook or otherwise. Rather, it is the up-front sunk costs in the editorial department and the fixed costs for marketing and publicizing the book which drive the costs for most books. Then there are the best-sellers, those selling more than 100,000 copies... but those are a distinct minority and are the only ones on which book publishers make any actual profits. In all of these scenarios, the marginal cost of production is not going to be even $1 for a trade paperback and will rarely be over $1.50 for a trade hardcover (obviously the last big brick Harry Potter novels cost a teeny bit more due to sheer volume of paper needed to print a 750 page novel, but not *that* much more), meaning that if we're talking marginal cost of production as the difference in price between a paperback and an ebook, we're not talking about a huge difference in price. Clearly the expectation that ebooks should cost a lot less than paper copies of the books because of lower marginal costs of production doesn't match the reality that marginal cost of production really IS marginal even for paper books. A little less, okay. A lot less? Well, that money will have to come from something other than marginal cost of production... probably either author advance, or by publishing fewer books by more marginal authors (those who sell less than 20,000 copies). Either alternative is not very good for those of us who enjoy books and buy hundreds of books per year -- mostly *not* the 150 books on the bestseller lists.
Send mail here if you want to reach me.