An opinion only: pretty much all of the better e-readers have at least one drawback each at present, whether it be price, lack of user-friendliness, or the inability to download decent content once it travels from one country to another. Having said that - and having done lots of research, as I'm hoping to be selling e-readers in the bookshop by this time next year - the Apple iPad is probably the best of the lot; expensive, but worth it as long as you utilise the thing to its full capacity (in other words, use all the extra doohickeys that come with it). The Sony E-reader and Kindle are also pretty good, but make sure you go for the Sony with the bigger screen, or the Kindle Australia (as the US model won't download a vast amount of supposedly available content in Australia).
For what it's worth, the general advice I give to customers who come into our store asking about e-readers is: if you want one *right now*, just buy the cheapest ereader you can get in order to get comfortable with the technology, because by this time next year the next generation of top e-rearders (with most of the various bugs sorted out) should be available, plus a whole bunch of brand new models (such as the forthcoming HP), and there'll be more and better models to upgrade to.
But the "there will be better models out next year" argument -always- applies to tech. The trick is to do your research and not succumb to buyers remorse when the new models come out.
That's certainly true, no question; where e-reader tech differs slightly, though (and I should have clarified this in my first post), is that it's really only over the past year that we've seen the tech advance to the point where the mass market is expressing interest in buying (regardless of the fact that e-readers have existed in more primitive forms for at least the past 15 years). Big companies are finally pouring serious resources into the tech, so, to all intents and purposes, we're talking about 'new' tech, as opposed to, say, DVD and CD players, or digital cameras, which have been around for a while and obviously get updated on a constant basis. With the older tech, certain models have been around long enough to prove themselves, and people will happily purchase a given model (even knowing it'll be superceded almost immediately) because they're aware of their individual requirements of that tech, and won't be looking to update for at least several years. With e-readers, however, there's no 'track record', so regardless of how much research you do, there's a major element of taking a punt on your current choice. By this time next year, though, there will be a greater wealth of reviews and feedback, baclked up by 12 months of public use, not to mention new models with new and/or upgraded features.
In a nutshell, if you buy an e-reader now, you're far more likely to be buying for the short-term than if you were buying any other sort of gadget; if you buy next year (and I'm talking specifically about 2011, not making some general statement about putting stuff off indefinitely), there's a far, far better chance you'll end up with a product that (unless you're a tech obsessive) you potentially won't have to update for seven, eight, nine years or so, hence my advise to customers.
There is no "Kindle Australia" (never was, though there's a lot of misinformation about that in ebay listings)) or current US-model Kindle (hasn't been a US-specific one in a couple of generations), only the international Kindle. The Kindle will download all the available content from Amazon, though exactly what is available depends on which country you have it registered to. Currently, there are nearly 500K books available from Amazon to Kindles registered to Australian addresses, and of course, you can also download in Kindle format from the Gutenberg library and a few other ebook sellers.
I'd say if you want it only for reading, don't go for an iPad, go for one with a good e-ink screen. iPads do all sorts of other wonderful things, but they don't have e-ink. Go for an e-ink ereader or go for an iPad, but avoid at all costs the halfway house of a dedicated ereader with an LCD screen.
I'm very happy with my Kindle. Amazon have great customer service and will let you return within 30 days if you buy one and don't like it. They also recently replaced my >1yr old Kindle 2 with a new/refurbished one when it developed a minor problem, no questions asked.
A perk of the Kindle with 3G is that you get free web browsing (on a very basic and pretty slow web browser built into the Kindle) in >60 countries around the world. This is a perk that they could withdraw at any time, as it is "experimental", but it has been available for quite some time now.
It doesn't have a touch screen like some of the other models and is only okay on PDF handling. I'm told the latest model (the Kindle 3) is much better with PDFs, as well as having much better contrast than the K2. (My Kindle DX - the large edition Kindle - has the new screen if you want to see what it looks like).
For what it's worth, the general advice I give to customers who come into our store asking about e-readers is: if you want one *right now*, just buy the cheapest ereader you can get in order to get comfortable with the technology, because by this time next year the next generation of top e-rearders (with most of the various bugs sorted out) should be available, plus a whole bunch of brand new models (such as the forthcoming HP), and there'll be more and better models to upgrade to.
Hope that helps. :)
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The trick is to do your research and not succumb to buyers remorse when the new models come out.
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In a nutshell, if you buy an e-reader now, you're far more likely to be buying for the short-term than if you were buying any other sort of gadget; if you buy next year (and I'm talking specifically about 2011, not making some general statement about putting stuff off indefinitely), there's a far, far better chance you'll end up with a product that (unless you're a tech obsessive) you potentially won't have to update for seven, eight, nine years or so, hence my advise to customers.
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I'd say if you want it only for reading, don't go for an iPad, go for one with a good e-ink screen. iPads do all sorts of other wonderful things, but they don't have e-ink. Go for an e-ink ereader or go for an iPad, but avoid at all costs the halfway house of a dedicated ereader with an LCD screen.
I'm very happy with my Kindle. Amazon have great customer service and will let you return within 30 days if you buy one and don't like it. They also recently replaced my >1yr old Kindle 2 with a new/refurbished one when it developed a minor problem, no questions asked.
A perk of the Kindle with 3G is that you get free web browsing (on a very basic and pretty slow web browser built into the Kindle) in >60 countries around the world. This is a perk that they could withdraw at any time, as it is "experimental", but it has been available for quite some time now.
It doesn't have a touch screen like some of the other models and is only okay on PDF handling. I'm told the latest model (the Kindle 3) is much better with PDFs, as well as having much better contrast than the K2. (My Kindle DX - the large edition Kindle - has the new screen if you want to see what it looks like).
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