eReaders

[wellinghall]

We are thinking of getting eReaders, particularly with various short- and long- haul trips that are coming up over the next few months. What experience have you had of them so far?

I have used two very briefly - kargicq's (though I can't remember what it was), and a colleague's Kindle (which half my FList seem to have had for Christmas!) I liked them both.

Comments

[purplecat]

I recently bought myself the Sony PRS-350. This is the smallest of the Sony eReaders and I was deliberately aiming for something as portable as possible - my impressions in no particular order are

a) It is certainly nice and compact. Some people who've tried it have complained about the screen size but it is fine for me. At approx 11cm x 15cm it is still too large for the pockets of my favourite winter jacket but I'm choosing to blame the designers of women's clothing for this.

b) On the advice of several websites I chose to download the open source calibre software to manage books on it rather than to even attempt to use the software that came with it. Calibre installed easily on the Mac and integrated seamlessly with the ebook reader. Calibre lets you convert files in various formats, such as html, into the ebook formats, and lets you manage a library away from the device and on your computer where, for instance, you have a proper keyboard to type in tags and so forth.

This also allowed me to experiment with Calibre first before I bought the reader to see if I liked it. Calibre apparently also works with the Kindle and, if I had a Kindle, I'd be tempted to use it if I had one of those as well, but that's because I don't like to be locked in to one supplier. I'd certainly recommend playing with the program before purchasing an ebook reader.

c) So far I've not put any purchased software on it but focused on freely available books and fanfic. Fanfic is easy to convert into the readers format using calibre. ManyBooks.net has a huge range of free ebooks available but it is slow to browse, so it's not good for stumbling across stuff - you need to know what you want.

d) The page refresh rate is slower than I expected and took a little getting used to.

e) You can turn pages while standing on a railway station platform without removing your gloves. In other circumstances though I prefer the page turn experience on an actual book. I find the touch screen page turn unreliable (it's inclined to turn on the dictionary) and the buttons just have to be pressed a little bit more firmly than I'd like.

f) But if you are on a train in which the lights have failed then it's no easier to read than a paperback would be.

g) The documentation and interface encourage you to place it in sleep mode when you are not reading however it only holds its charge in sleep mode for about 24-48 hours. If, as I am, you are really only using it once a day and want to be able to fish it out of your pocket as you stand on a platform, then you really need to switch if off. This doesn't seem to be a problem beyond alarming the ebook reader which will flash warning signs at you when you do switch it off.

h) It's surprisingly good at reading PDFs. I didn't have high hopes there and some simply don't work with it but a lot of modern ones do, which is also good for reading academic papers on the train.