Reviewing the Sony Reader
We’ve been talking a lot about ebook readers at the office over the past few months. Charlie and I enjoyed checking out an iRex iLiad, the best of the new electronic paper-based ebook devices, on display at the Frankfurt Book Fair; unfortunately, it retails for over $800. Charlie recently picked up a Sony Reader, which is somewhat similar to the iLiad, but much cheaper, and somewhat less user-friendly. He’s been fiddling with the RSS reader, and has been developing tools to help him do more of his computer-based reading on the Reader.
Marty Manley of Alibris has been trying out the Sony Reader as well, and just posted an interesting review of the Reader on his personal blog. His take is rather mixed:
“I have been used the Sony Reader for the past six weeks. I read all of Bob Woodward’s State of Denial, Bush at War, Part III on it, and two books of cop fiction. My conclusion: if you read books serially, you don’t need or want one of these, but if you read several books in parallel, you might.” (more…)
New media rarely replace in full what came before; they tend to carve out new niches. There’s absolutely a place for ebook reader systems, but I think it’s unlikely that they’ll replace the traditional book; I’d love to find out what types of new applications and behaviors they’ll enable as the technology becomes cheaper and more accessible.
[Now reading Design Like You Give a Damn: Architectural Responses to Humanitarian Crises by Architecture for Humanity]