E-book/e-ink readers

[nebulinda]

Having just received a substantial paycheck from my new job, I want to avoid being responsible by buying something superfluous, and have decided to get an e-book reader. I've been looking around, but when I see lists of tech specs my eyes kind of glaze over, so I need suggestions. I'd like it to support all sorts of file types (and I expect that I'll get a great deal of books from project gutenburg), lots of storage (or slots for more memory cards), e-ink screen (am very headache-prone and something backlit wold be bad for me), and compatible with Mac. I don't care too much about playing audio, internet access, or being able to write stuff/make notes.

I'm leaning toward the reader from Sony because a friend has one and loves it, but there are possibly others out that are better.

(And I am aware that there is an older thread, but I didn't really want to resurrect that one because I don't want to discuss paper books vs. ebooks. I love real books and will never give them up, but I also do a fair amount of traveling and moving and have limited space.)

[Sandikal]

I'm waiting for the prices to plummet.  The only two I know of are the Sony Reader and Amazon's Kindle.  From what I can tell, the Sony Reader is less expensive and handles more file formats.  That would be good if you download a lot of free material.  They don't have a very wide selection of books specifically for the reader though.  Amazon's Kindle is more expensive, but it provides free wi-fi connectivity to the Amazon Kindle store so you can browse and buy books anytime.  And, just about every book on Amazon seems to have a Kindle edition.

Frankly, it seems to me that these readers should be a lot less expensive.  Sony and Amazon's costs for e-books has got to be practically nothing (royalties) and they can sell them for almost as much as a paperback.  If they sold these readers cheap, more people would buy them and create the market they need to sell the books.

[stePH]

I'm waiting for the prices to plummet.  The only two I know of are the Sony Reader and Amazon's Kindle. 

There are at least two others, the CyBook and the iLiad.

[Sandikal]

That Cybook looks so cool.  It reminds me of the "books" Captain Piccard reads.  I like that it uses SD cards.  Sadly, it's too expensive. 

The iLiad looks like the most expensive and it only has 64 megabytes of memory.  It takes CF cards, but not SD cards.  Does anything use a CF card anymore?  SD cards are the way to go.  They're inexpensive and you can get up to 4GB capacity now.  (Maybe more, it's been a while since I looked.)

[wintermute]

Does anything use a CF card anymore?

Most pro-grade digital cameras. Anything where durability, transfer speed and capacity are important factors. CF cards go up to 64GB right now, with 256GB coming within a couple of years. And, because I/O is handled on the card, rather than on the device, you aren't going to get a situation where the device can only deal with certain capacities, as happens with other card types.

In all, CF isn't going away any time soon.

[wintermute]

Oh, and High-Capacity SD cards currently go up to 32GB (but could, theoretically reach 2TB), but they can only be read in SDHC-compatible devices. Regular SD cards only go up to 4GB.

[Bdoomed]

you want to wait a bit.  Kindle right now i think is the best, but it has some major hardware usage flaws.  I'm waiting for the next build of it.
i know someone who has it tho and she likes it a lot.  she recognizes its problems but says it doesnt bother her.

[Russell Nash]

I think that the kindle is getting us to the tipping point.  WE'll get some magical combination of new tech breakthrough and public demand increase that will start the big price drop.

[nebulinda]

I'm stuck between wanting a cool new thing right now, and waiting for more variety/lower prices. But I'll probably end up not getting one anyway. It's not like I have a whole lot of time for reading anyway. Sigh.

[Russell Nash]

200 bucks is where I won't be able to say no.  I don't know how much before than I'll cave in.

[AarrowOM]

I just got a Sony PRS-505 (for my birthday).  I finally got around to installing the software and uploading some pre-made ebooks (you get to choose 100 classic titles for free if you register the machine by the end of August) and some converted Gutenberg.org files last night and I love it!  I specifically chose the PRS-505 over the Kindle since I have a lot of ebook files in differing formats.

[Russell Nash]

I just got a Sony PRS-505 (for my birthday).  I finally got around to installing the software and uploading some pre-made ebooks (you get to choose 100 classic titles for free if you register the machine by the end of August) and some converted Gutenberg.org files last night and I love it!  I specifically chose the PRS-505 over the Kindle since I have a lot of ebook files in differing formats.

Price and other details, please.  What other text files, OS compatibility, etc..

[AarrowOM]

So far I've used .pdf, .rtf, .txt, and the Sony formats (.lrf, .lrx) for ebooks, .jpg, .gif, .png, and .bmp for pictures, and .mp3 for music.

With regards to the non-Sony ebook formats:
PDFs can still be scaled with the zoom function on the PRS, albeit only if the reader recognizes the text as text.  In RTF, the reader recognizes the metadata (Author, Title) that MS Word saves, so it's far easier to organize like the Sony formats. 

For pictures, I chose a random assortment of comic strips from online, full color 6-megapixel digital photos, and non-animated gifs (animated will apparently crash the PRS).  The conversion to grayscale is fairly good and I can still see fine details for all images.  The larger the file, the slower it loads, but that is to be expected.  Photos of written material are perfectly legible, too, albeit dark.  One suggestion I would have is that you rotate the pictures before you load them so as to maximize their size.  Alternatively, you can rotate the display (via the PRS settings) to landscape.

As for price, it was whatever Best Buy sells them for.  I'll have to ask my parents if you really want to know.

I'm running Vista Premium (32-bit), so the included elibrary software kept crashing until I disabled the DEP for it.  I'd suggest joining Mobileread.com in order to employ their fora.

[wherethewild]

i'm also interested in e-readers, but will probably wait a while. I did find this today 8although i haven#t read through it much) which may be useful for those of us looking at them:

http://www.mobileread.com/forums/index.php