With the Nook you can highlight stuff in a book, attach notes, and recall the highlights and notes anytime you want. It also can play mp3 files, and has a small set of speakers built into it, along with a headphone jack. You can listen to mp3's while reading the ebook as well. You can load .pdf files through the included adobe app, but you can't highlight the pdf document, at least not yet. I'm sure there will be a hack for that soon. With the Nook, you can swap books from your laptop/desktop back and forth, and if a friend has a Nook you can beam the title to their unit for them to use for 2 weeks, then it reverts back to your device. Money magazine just did a write up on the Sony,Kindle, and Nook and the Nook was the clear winner.
Additionally, you can read magazines and newspapers on the Nook, as well as Barnes Noble exclusive content while you are at the store. From what I've heard, you can also read a title in the store for an hour before deciding the buy it. Not to mention the million + titles available for it.

I have a Sony PRS-505. The NOOK and the SONY have the most formats by a hair-


the trick is to choose a very common format that can be read on almost anything- PDF or RTF. Alternately, get a program like Calibre that allows format conversion

I like my Sony, my father -in-law likes his kindle.

Also, there are millions of free books, and publishers are doing new free books daily.

As I understand it with the Nook, all books you purchase are stored online on their servers. If you lose or destroy your Nook you can download all the books again. You can also remove books from your Nook and store them online and download them later when you want too.

As to pricing, from what I have seen with the Nook, (as I stated I bought one for my mom but it hasn't arrived yet) most digital books that are new are $9.99, which is cheaper than the $25-$35 you pay for new hardcover. The benefit for mom is that she can now read any new book because she can use the larger font rather than waiting/hoping for her favorite authors to publish a Large Font edition. From there they descend in price down to FREE. B&N also has a massive library of old classics that run from Free to a couple bucks. I love reading classics like HG Well, Verne, etc.

Sony and Nook both support the epub format which will allow you to borrow books from your public library and they will delete themselves after 21days. With the Sony and Nook you can also download free ebooks from google several classic books as well as old trapping, cook books, hunting and other survival related subjects are there free for the downloading. I dont like the Kindle for the reason that they can DELETE your books off your machine without even notifying you, they say they wont do it again but the fact that they can if they want to dont sit well with me it also means that they can see what else you've been reading which means if you've been reading army tech manuals that you've bought on pdf format they could go "oh my god he's reading about weapons and tactics and military gear" and no telling who they would report it to.

Another $0.02 worth here.

I have been reading ebooks in various formats for several years, starting with my palm m500, then my palm TX and now my iPhone. The e-ink and larger size of the dedicated readers is offset by the portability and built in "light" of the more general purpose PDAs. With the PDA /iPhone I always have my books with me and can read anytime I have a few minutes to kill. I can't see carrying something the size of a kindle around like that. I also tend to read later in the day and carrying around a book light in addition to the reader would be more likely to reduce my usage.

- Eric

I own a Kindle 2 from Amazon. I have HUNDREDS of books on it.

At work, I have evaluated the Sony and Barnes and Noble Nook, as well as some other readers. I have found that it's a 3 horse race, and that only these three are worthy of purchase.

In ranking order it's:

1. Kindle
2. Sony (any of them)
3. Nook

Nook is a distant third at this time.


Here's what I think about them:

1. WiFi is not really needed, but a cellular data connection is very useful.

2. eInk is great - but it's got a long way to go before it's cheap enough for a nice newspaper sized device.

3. Tablets will likely not get anywhere near the battery life or light weight of an eInk based device.

I would buy a Kindle if I was buying a first eBook reader.

I think this comes down to what your priorities are.

My wife has a Kindle, and I have an 64GB iPod Touch which has a software Kindle reader, as well as another software book reader that is better at public domain books and some other apps to download/view various content, etc.

If your priority is READING, you probably are going to want something with the e-ink screen. They are much easier on your eyes than the traditional LCD screens, and of course, having a bit larger screen than my iPod Touch aids in reading as well.

However, with my iPod Touch, I can have lots of books, lots of different reference materials, and as Eric points out, it is small enough to actually have it with you all the time. FWIW, the 64GB Touch has the capacity to carry around a LOT of stuff.

I've probably got well over 100 books, both commercial and public domain (takes very little space), 2000 songs, an off-line copy of Wikipedia, off-line dictionary, off-line maps, random reference materials, podcasts, TV shows, pictures and I have space leftover.

As for Kindle books, you buy a book and you can download it to your device(s). I think you get at least three devices you can have it on concurrently. So it works fine for me to have a copy of purchased items on my wife's Kindle, my iPod Touch, and even on my PC (they have a PC version of the Kindle reader now). If you delete it from the device, or de-activate the device from Amazon's web site, it goes back into the pool of available copies.

The Kindle's user interface is kinda clunky, but works fine if you are just reading books. But a general purpose device it is not, much contrary to my iPod Touch.

It should be noted, that the clunky UI of the Kindle does make it somewhat difficult to jump around, making reference material less friendly than it could have been. The Kindle really should have had a touch screen.

Not all books are available on the Kindle, but the majority of new books are. Right now, a sampling of the commercial (purchased) non-fiction on my Touch:

- 2009 Current Medical Diagnosis & Treatment
- Mountaineering First Aid
- Medicine: For mountaineering
- Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary
- Dog Owner's Home Veterinary Handbook
- Illustrated First Aid Guide
- First Aid: A Pocket Guide
- 98.6 Degrees

To show what kind of books I wanted that were not available on Kindle, here are a few:

- Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine (2001)
- Sunset Western Garden Book (2007)

Apple is rumored to release an "Kindle Killer" this month, although the rumor goes on to suggest it won't actually ship until March. If this runs some variant of the iPod Touch/iPhone OS, then it will likely support Kindle books via a software application.

Oh, the Kindle has very good battery life, the iPod Touch does not. I carry an external re-chargeable battery pack to make sure I always have juice.

-john

The mythical Apple Tablet is just that. Its not coming out in March. Its just a rehash of bogus blogging from 2009 regurgitated for New Years. If you do a web search you will see that Apple has never commented on a tablet being released or what it looks like and no reputable computer writer or reviewer has seen one.

However, if Apple did put out something that was iPhone/iTouch like but the size or larger than a Kindle/Sony/Nook it would very well be amazing. As long as the battery lasted longer than a couple hours.

As I mentioned earlier, my aim is to have a very good tool for a specific purpose. I'm too old to enjoy reading books on a PDA screen; did that with the Handspring device 8-10 years ago; darn trifocals make that hard nowadays. I have the same problem with the iTouch and similar products, screen's too small and I can't use thumb-type keyboards (don't have two full thumbs). I've not had much luck using tablet computers and really, to be useful as computers, they need to be of a size that makes them unwieldy as a casual device to carry around.

To sum up the my position so far (and many thanks for your suggestions) I would prefer a lighweight, purpose-built, long battey life device with an easy to read screen, simple controls, multi-format capable, don't have to take to a store to download new books and be able to have control over my library.

Not so hard, eh?

For those who have them, what price range are the books you purchase? Is one (Amazon vs. B&N) cheaper than another?


Thanks for all the input!

If you want the larger and easier to read screen and the purpose built, the Kindle does work reasonably. I can't compare it to units like the Nook since I haven't seen them.

I don't know if B&N or Amazon are cheaper, but the Kindle books on Amazon are typically several dollars less than the paper versions.

A sample:

2009 Current Medical Diagnosis and Treatment
Kindle: $38.85
Paperback: 43.17

Pirate Latitudes: A Novel, Michael Crichton
Hardcover: $14.00
Kindle: $9.99

Neuromancer, William Gibson
Paperback: $10.20
Kindle: $5.59

As for the Apple tablet, I wouldn't rule it out and it rumors suggest it would compete with the Kindle directly. It is noted there is a planned even on the 27th:

http://www.macrumors.com/2010/01/04/major-new-apple-product-on-january-27th/
"The gathering is to be held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, a space Apple often uses for media events like these. According to other sources, it will occur on Wednesday Jan. 27"

Obviously it could be false, but if you are not in a major hurry, it couldn't hurt to wait until then and see if there is an announcement, and if so, if the product sounds worth waiting for.

*shrug*

-john