Each month or so I grant myself a toy of certain undetermined proportions. It’s generally something I’ve wanted for a while, and I only grant myself the chance to grab it once I’ve done a whole bunch of research to determine what it is that’s the best fit for me.
Perhaps the above iss just an all-too-general pre-roll which can be copied into any sort of tech I’m talking about.. but I’m keeping it there for now.
Case in point, this month I went ahead and purchased a Sony Reader Touch Edition from B&H, and the long and the short of it is that I’ve been really, really pleased with my decision.
Is the PRS-600 the most fantastic device out there, and the best that will ever come out for a time to come? No. I’m generally not interested in the “best” option, though, because it bumps into a law of diminishing returns of some sort or another. I generally shoot for 70% of best, and this generally makes me pretty happy. I haven’t broken the bank, if said device / object I have breaks or crashes and burns then it isn’t quite as much the end of the world, and, generally, when I’ve picked such an option there’s at least some reasonable user base of other people who have the same types of problems and, hopefully, solutions to those problems.
The Sony PRS-600 is one of the first more affordable electronic paper ereader devices which has a touch interface. There is an upside to that in terms of usability, and a slight downside in that the screen is a bit more reflective and less strong in contrast than non-touch models. I personally have had to shift the device around a bit in certain circumstances in order to see the screen properly, though as an amputee (my left arm stops a few inches after the elbow; been like that since birth, doesn’t hurt, etc.) this slight manuevering is still much more of an easy compromise when it comes to often needing two hands to properly hold a bound book.
Amazon‘s Kindle is certainly the big player in this market right now, and for good reason. The Kindle library is certainly more comprehensive, and in certain cases cheaper than alternatives out there. With that said, the Amazon solution is also largely a closed system. I like the model of the Sony Reader in that I can download the file, back up that file, and use the file with whatever Reader devices to which I authorize my content. Sony does have their own store, though you can also go to other content providers as long as they support the proper format. The newcomer to this space is Shortcovers which in two words, looks crazy promising. There’s also Project Gutenberg, whatever PDFs I want to throw into the device, and, hugely, the ability to rent out books from local public libraries via Overdrive.