Follow-up: Sony Reader
If you read the "old version" of Brad’s Reader (the one hosted by Blogger) you might recall that I bought the semi-new Sony Ebook Reader and gave it a quick review with my first impressions and other thoughts. Well, this is the update to that post.
I’ve had the Sony Reader for several weeks now and I have had a chance to put it through its paces. My verdict: satisfied! The device is portable, lightweight and very user-friendly. I carry it with me to school on a daily basis and find it easy to pull out, power up and get some reading done between classes. Even on the train, which I commute on daily, it’s easy to use.
The small memory space has yet to be a problem. If I ever start getting low on memory, I can always remove some of the book excerpts and other books that came with the Reader (it comes pre-installed with over a dozen titles!) that I will probably never read. And once I read a book once, I can always take it off the Reader, but keep it in my library online, so I still have it without taking up valuable memory.
I still can’t say much about the battery life though. I have only charged it once since it arrived – it came pre-charged. Sony advertises that you can read several books on one charge of the battery, though I have yet to test this since I haven’t read several books yet. Nevertheless the battery does seem to last a while, as the reader takes very little battery power to operate.
My only real complaint is with Sony’s online bookstore. Yes, the selection is good and I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the titles I’ve been able to find. But the prices are still way to high for ebooks. Sony does discount the books from the print versions, but it doesn’t seem like enough. No ebook should be much more than $10 (US). I found some titles in Sony’s bookstore that were closing in on $20. One of the big selling points of the Reader is to be able to save space AND money. After all, ebooks don’t require any printing, paper, stock, shipping and everything else that adds up with a print book.
Overall I’m very happy with my purchase. The real test for my Reader will be time. Will it break on me after a year (especially after the warranty expires)? Will I lose it? There are many things that can go wrong. But I don’t want to dwell on that.
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