Hardware Kindle vs Sony vs Cool-er eBook Readers

Is your collection of books threatening to take over your home like some unstoppable beast of literary greatness? Never fear! Thanks to the joys of flash memory and E-ink screens, you can now condense your collection into a thin slab of gadgety goodness.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/peripherals/2010/01/10/kindle-vs-sony-vs-cool-er-ebook-readers/1

 

Sony Pocket Edition PRS-300: Memory 512GB!!!!!

Typo i assume?.

 

Yup, it only has half a gig if I recall. Still plenty of room for over 100 books, give or take.

The kindle has my back up. I like the idea, I do not like the locked to Amazon who can control your books. If it's my e-reader I'll have what I like on it thank you very much.

Also I prefer open formats for ebooks (especially as my wife is getting into publishing her short stories as an ebook).

 

What you don't mention here is that the Kindle cannot browse the web in the UK at the moment, you are limited to the Amazon book store however apparently Amazon are working to get a contract with a UK network and Wikipedia access will be free. We have no idea when this will happen.

 

I wonder who will be the first author to complain about pirates stealing their work.

 

Fixed, thx!

 

No mention of the PRS-900 from sony? apparently that is supposed to be their main competitor to the kindle

 

Umm... the formatting is all screwed up in this article. Information about the Cool-er is under the Amazon and Sony readers, and not under its own section....

 

According to the Gutenberg website there's software to convert epub format to something the kindle can read. Here if anyone's interested.

 

also the scores seems strange, like how the kindle scores higher in all three areas and yet has the same overall score as the other two...

 

http://torrentfreak.com/furious-author-cancels-pirated-book-080904/

(September 2008)

 

this book was a "counter-view novel to Twilight", so canceling it was the best that could happen
who needs such crap

 

Does the Sony reader remind anyone else of the 3rd gen iPod? Its got a round bit in the middle with four buttons in a row above it and a screen.

Cool-er is a slightly wonky Mini

On a (very slightly) more serious note - thinking about the way I read a book, which is often in bed, I think the Kindle looks by far the best as it has large side sections. If the text on a book is too close to the edge it can get buried in the bed so you can read it which is rather annoying!

I'll be interested to see if the Kindle gets cracked to work on more site than Wikipedia over here. Something about a free, unlimited data tablet is rather appealing

 

well, i would go with the kindle, the proprietary file format is obnoxious but easily dealt with; there are hundreds, if not thousands, of hacks, mods, and the like for the kindle. someone said the online system for the kindle is restricted in the UK, but
I'm in America so unrestricted web access makes the kindle into something every self-respecting nerd has been longing for since childhood: http://xkcd.com/548/

 

The kindle seems for too much like Apple's locked-in ecosystem for my liking. Seeing as they also demonstrated their remote book deletion feature on George Orwell's 1984 of all things, i'm not sure it's sensible to trust them...

I really want one of the new Sony readers though, i keep drooling over them every time i'm in a Waterstones

 

Whilst I'd love an ebook reader I think I'll be waiting a bit longer to see if something better comes a long as quite a few are being brought out at the moment.

As for the kindle I wouldn't touch it as it can't read .epub but as the DRM has be circumvented and one can access the American version of the store the amazon store looks like a decent place to nab ebooks from for now until publishers get their act together an offer the same selection of books everywhere at the same price...

 

Small error in the review: you mention the Kindle has WiFi. It doesn't, it only has 3G connectivity.

 

As long as there are paper books I'll always prefer them, thank you very much.

 

Don't get me wrong, I love books. Have a rather large collection overall. However I got a P505 ereader from my wife for my birthday last year, and I love it. It's dead handy for long trips, I can load countless books onto it, it has a sony pro duo and standard SD card slot for expansion, and for going to conventions (I am a gamer) I can load it with all the books I'd need (and already own standard but are heavy).

 

I still can't get the books I want on them sadly (40k Novels and other such sci-fi)

What would have also been nice is to compare these to some of the e-reader apps for portable devices (iPhone/iPod Touch - Kindle, Stanza, etc) to see just how much better or perhaps worse, a dedicated device is to an application for this sort of thing.