Sony Reader image
I’ve had my Sony Reader for about 5 months now, so I thought I’d post about how I’ve found it. I wouldn’t say it has made books obsolete for me, but it comes pretty close- about 90% of my reading is now on the Reader rather than books.
The screen is really something; a real boon when reading long PDF articles for my philosophy course. I’ve also tracked down some shareware, Calibre, which is great for importing and converting various free ebooks, and turning news RSS into a handy ‘magazine’ format.
I would say that the relatively ‘open’ formats supported by the Reader really give it the edge compared to the likes of the Kindle. And, since long battery life is a key feature for extended reading, I think the lack of WiFi is probably no bad thing.
I’m still very underwhelmed by the book-purchasing options (via Waterstones et al). It’s quite a fiddly process- you have to install Adobe Digital Editions on a PC, authorise the Reader there, then install Adobe Digital Editions on a Mac, then buy books, then locate them on the Finder, then drag and drop them into the Reader. Considerably more complicated than getting free books or RSS feeds- have Sony learnt nothing from Amazon/itunes??
things that might have been otherwise 