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?"
Re:The Sony
by
biryokumaru
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Plus you can mount it under Linux and just copy over your books. My wife has a PRS-500. It's a little slow, but it is one of the earliest models. Definitely the most consumer-friendly option.
-- When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
It's too damn heavy. I use a nokia n800 some but the screen is a little small. I'm eyeing the iPad. It looks like it's close to what I want and the wifi one is not too pricey. It may be a little big though.....must research more.
Just got a Nook
by
zwede
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Reason I went with the Nook is that it accepts non-DRM epub files (kindle does not).
For its intended use it is OK. But it also has its issues. The menus are sluggish. I have had a few crashes (automatic reboots).
I'm sure ebooks is an area where we will see massive improvements in the next year or two. Faster e-ink screens, in color, and touch sensitive (rather than having a separate touch screen).
The hardware is amazing, and substantially more capable the the competition
Not sure about that. I have an iLiad which doesn't waste space with a keyboard and has a wacom tablet over the screen for accurate drawing. It has WiFi, runs Linux and X11, and can run arbitrary applications. It supports CIFS, so it can sync with your computer over your WLAN. It has MMC and CF slots for other apps; someone even produced a version of Wikipedia for offline reading that fits on a 16GB CF card, and there have also been ports of web browsers and RSS readers, among other things (even a terminal; the device gives you full root access if you want, or a consumer-electronics type interface if you don't). The screen is bigger than the Kindle (800x600 for the Kindle, 1024x768 for the iLiad, both the same DPI) but the overall form factor is about the same.
Fooled me once, shame on you...
by
dpbsmith
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
...fooled me twice, shame on me.
I bought a Nuvomedia Rocket eBook in 2000 over the counter at Barnes and Noble. (The company and products were acquired by Gemstar and marketed for many years as the Gemstar REB-1200).
The device itself was fine. More than good enough. 20 hour battery life and that was for real. I read many long novels for pleasure on it. I took it on trips and loved the convenience of being able to carry eight full-length books with me in a device with the same size and weight as one trade paperback. Of course 2010 devices are better in every way, but the Rocket eBook was good enough.
What was not good enough was DRM.
I've been taught a lesson. I am now the proud owner of over $300 worth of useless bits. They are encrypted and keyed to a serial-numbered hardware device which bit the dust last year. In theory, this is no problem, as the books and Gemstar's record of my ownership remains on the servers. All I need to do is buy a new device, call Gemstar customer service, have them reencode my books with the new device serial number, and download them again. Except that Gemstar doesn't exist, Gemstar customer service doesn't exist, and the servers were shut down long ago.
Because of another limitation of DRM--I couldn't share my books with my wife even if she had her own Rocket eBook reader, which she didn't, she didn't know that I had purchased an e-copy for $15, and bought her own paper copy for $15. She can still read her copy. She will still be able to read it twenty years from now. She can lend it to a friend. She can sell it on eBay. Scarcely five years after purchase, I cannot read mine and will never be able to read it again.
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.
I've seriously considered writing to Jeff Bezos and saying I will only buy a Kindle if he will arrange to get me free Kindle copies of all the books I bought, which the eBook industry has rendered useless piles of bits. The word theft gets thrown around rather casually with DRM gets discussed. Well, I feel that denying me access to the books I bought and paid for in good faith is theft. When the eBook industry, as represented by Amazon, is willing to make me whole, then I will start buying eBook devices and content again.
Re:Fooled me once, shame on you...
by
Eric+Green
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The average print science fiction paperback sells approximately 20,000 copies (this is an actual number from an actual mid-level author who has a good reputation in the industry). The majority of the cost of a print science fiction paperback is not the marginal cost of production, which is miniscule -- it costs less than $1 to print and ship a typical mass-market paperback. Rather, the majority of the cost of a print science fiction paperback is related to the costs of creating the actual content -- the editor, the proofreader, the cover artist, and the author's advance, which is probably going to be about $12,000 on that paperback (and figure he's going to get around $8,000 more in eventual royalties before the book goes out of print). Baen appears to believe that if you price ebooks at approximately $2 less than paperbacks and sell them direct, you can make the same amount of profit that you made from selling paperbacks. That's probably a reasonable indication that the price of producing an ebook is not much less than the price of producing a paperback novel, because Baen can price ebooks this way only because they're selling direct, without the $2 markup imposed by the supply chain.
I do agree, however, that the DRM situation is one decided reason to avoid e-books right now. The DRM situation is driving piracy right now because I, like you, am not going to invest large sums of money into throw-away content. I have files on my computer that are 25 years old now, that have been faithfully transferred from one computer to the next first via RS-232 serial cable and XMODEM, and later via Ethernet and either FTP or a network file sharing protocol. They're all still (mostly) readable because I avoided proprietary file formats, even though the first computer involved in this chain was a Commodore 64 and the last one is an Apple Macbook Pro. I cannot conceive of any scenario where I would allow a proprietary file format with no means of translating it into any other format exist on my computer.
I find it very surprising that the most open eReader on the market today is the Sony.
Sony is a huge corporation. While the left hand is suing downloaders and rootkitting customers, the right hand is sneaking off and selling DivX players. I was pleasantly surprised to put a home-burned DVD with 720p mpeg4 avi movie in a PS3, and it just played!
It hasn't been invented yet.
by
mark-t
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
We're getting close, but I don't think we're there yet.
My own expectations are:
color;
bistable display that consumes no power for a static image;
high contrast display, easily usable both indoors and out;
durable enough to withstand being stepped on without breaking;
utilizes SD cards or mini-SD cards for expanded storage for documents;
screen large enough to show a full 8.5x11" page without scaling it down;
high enough resolution to read smaller fonts (such as footnotes) without zooming;
screen update times of no more than a tenth of a second;
allows user supplied (PDF) documents to be displayed, and not just DRM'd documents; and
still costs less than a more functionally versatile device such as a laptop.
If a company can hit all ten of these requirements, I'd buy one in a proverbial New York minute.
I dunno. I like my Kindle, but all the math books I've bought have been so badly formatted as to be useless. When I read the same books on the Amazon reader for iTouch they're properly formatted, so I'm guessing something is broken with book rendering on the reader.
I've had my Kindle 2 hard reset. The books I'd bought from Amazon I was able to get back, but I lost all my notes and bookmarks on the books I'd loaded over USB -- one of the key buying points for me. No ability to put my own documents on, no sale. But the documentation doesn't explain that when it says notes are backed up over WhisperNet, that's only for books that you have bought through the Amazon store. That had me *pissed*, because they essentially told me they were backing my notes up when in fact they weren't.
Recently my Kindle has been taking a very long time to wake up from stand by or to go to stand by.. fifteen or twenty seconds. Enough to be annoying. At first I wasn't sure the Kindle was responding and so I'd hit the power button again, only to be rewarded by the Kindle turning on and off.
There have been lots of complaints about customer service -- especially where there have been screen problems. Several people I know (whom I trust as truthful) have had screens fail do to what should be normal handling for an ebook. Some people claim that the screen failed after being put through airport security, although that hasn't happened to anyone I know.
Finally, the user interface is really about as screwed up as you can make something that ought to be dead simple. Err. When do you want to hit "back" or "return" or "previous page" exactly? I know what to do if I think it through, but after over six months with the thing I still occasionally do the wrong thing.
Oh, it's a very good device overall, but there is vast room for improvement, even without talking about major updates like color or touch screen input.
-- Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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Plus you can mount it under Linux and just copy over your books. My wife has a PRS-500. It's a little slow, but it is one of the earliest models. Definitely the most consumer-friendly option.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
It's too damn heavy. I use a nokia n800 some but the screen is a little small. I'm eyeing the iPad. It looks like it's close to what I want and the wifi one is not too pricey. It may be a little big though.....must research more.
Personally, I prefer my desktop. It may not be portable, but the screen's much bigger and with my bad vision, that's an important consideration.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Reason I went with the Nook is that it accepts non-DRM epub files (kindle does not).
For its intended use it is OK. But it also has its issues. The menus are sluggish. I have had a few crashes (automatic reboots).
I'm sure ebooks is an area where we will see massive improvements in the next year or two. Faster e-ink screens, in color, and touch sensitive (rather than having a separate touch screen).
The hardware is amazing, and substantially more capable the the competition
Not sure about that. I have an iLiad which doesn't waste space with a keyboard and has a wacom tablet over the screen for accurate drawing. It has WiFi, runs Linux and X11, and can run arbitrary applications. It supports CIFS, so it can sync with your computer over your WLAN. It has MMC and CF slots for other apps; someone even produced a version of Wikipedia for offline reading that fits on a 16GB CF card, and there have also been ports of web browsers and RSS readers, among other things (even a terminal; the device gives you full root access if you want, or a consumer-electronics type interface if you don't). The screen is bigger than the Kindle (800x600 for the Kindle, 1024x768 for the iLiad, both the same DPI) but the overall form factor is about the same.
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...fooled me twice, shame on me.
I bought a Nuvomedia Rocket eBook in 2000 over the counter at Barnes and Noble. (The company and products were acquired by Gemstar and marketed for many years as the Gemstar REB-1200).
The device itself was fine. More than good enough. 20 hour battery life and that was for real. I read many long novels for pleasure on it. I took it on trips and loved the convenience of being able to carry eight full-length books with me in a device with the same size and weight as one trade paperback. Of course 2010 devices are better in every way, but the Rocket eBook was good enough.
What was not good enough was DRM.
I've been taught a lesson. I am now the proud owner of over $300 worth of useless bits. They are encrypted and keyed to a serial-numbered hardware device which bit the dust last year. In theory, this is no problem, as the books and Gemstar's record of my ownership remains on the servers. All I need to do is buy a new device, call Gemstar customer service, have them reencode my books with the new device serial number, and download them again. Except that Gemstar doesn't exist, Gemstar customer service doesn't exist, and the servers were shut down long ago.
Because of another limitation of DRM--I couldn't share my books with my wife even if she had her own Rocket eBook reader, which she didn't, she didn't know that I had purchased an e-copy for $15, and bought her own paper copy for $15. She can still read her copy. She will still be able to read it twenty years from now. She can lend it to a friend. She can sell it on eBay.
Scarcely five years after purchase, I cannot read mine and will never be able to read it again.
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.
I've seriously considered writing to Jeff Bezos and saying I will only buy a Kindle if he will arrange to get me free Kindle copies of all the books I bought, which the eBook industry has rendered useless piles of bits. The word theft gets thrown around rather casually with DRM gets discussed. Well, I feel that denying me access to the books I bought and paid for in good faith is theft. When the eBook industry, as represented by Amazon, is willing to make me whole, then I will start buying eBook devices and content again.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
http://www.entourageedge.com/entourage-edge.html
It will be out in a month, but so far seems amazing. Runs on android. Has one side of e-ink and one of lcd.
I find it very surprising that the most open eReader on the market today is the Sony.
Sony is a huge corporation. While the left hand is suing downloaders and rootkitting customers, the right hand is sneaking off and selling DivX players.
I was pleasantly surprised to put a home-burned DVD with 720p mpeg4 avi movie in a PS3, and it just played!
We're getting close, but I don't think we're there yet.
My own expectations are:
If a company can hit all ten of these requirements, I'd buy one in a proverbial New York minute.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I dunno. I like my Kindle, but all the math books I've bought have been so badly formatted as to be useless. When I read the same books on the Amazon reader for iTouch they're properly formatted, so I'm guessing something is broken with book rendering on the reader.
I've had my Kindle 2 hard reset. The books I'd bought from Amazon I was able to get back, but I lost all my notes and bookmarks on the books I'd loaded over USB -- one of the key buying points for me. No ability to put my own documents on, no sale. But the documentation doesn't explain that when it says notes are backed up over WhisperNet, that's only for books that you have bought through the Amazon store. That had me *pissed*, because they essentially told me they were backing my notes up when in fact they weren't.
Recently my Kindle has been taking a very long time to wake up from stand by or to go to stand by .. fifteen or twenty seconds. Enough to be annoying. At first I wasn't sure the Kindle was responding and so I'd hit the power button again, only to be rewarded by the Kindle turning on and off.
There have been lots of complaints about customer service -- especially where there have been screen problems. Several people I know (whom I trust as truthful) have had screens fail do to what should be normal handling for an ebook. Some people claim that the screen failed after being put through airport security, although that hasn't happened to anyone I know.
Finally, the user interface is really about as screwed up as you can make something that ought to be dead simple. Err. When do you want to hit "back" or "return" or "previous page" exactly? I know what to do if I think it through, but after over six months with the thing I still occasionally do the wrong thing.
Oh, it's a very good device overall, but there is vast room for improvement, even without talking about major updates like color or touch screen input.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.