The Great eBook debate...

[ufkacbln]

I am a fan of both and whilst I love the smell, feel and handling of a real book

However I have used a Sony EReader for the last eighteen months and it is fine, where it really excels is while touring or traveling where it saves a lot of bulk.

It reads PDFs so you can carry a whole load of info, guides, and maps as well.

Wgat needs to be sorted is the disparity of some books.....

For instance I enjoy Susannah Gregory as a filler when sudying or wroking and grabbing a few moments.

However Waterstones want £7.99 for her "Westminster Poisoner" in book form and £32.99 for the ebook!

 

[marinyork]

I'm not unopen to the concept I can see how useful they are. I think they need to be priced about the £100 price point, certainly not more than £150. They need to sort out the vat and full price problem also. I think the current generation of ereaders aren't good enough, they're going to have cold water poured on them by what is coming out this year which is more like it.

 

[ufkacbln]

Can you also store your own PDF's on there? Or is it dedicated files only?

Have partially answered this above.

I have a Sony Ereader and it will read PDFs and some text, Word and other documents. They do however need to be loaded via the Sony software as there is some conversion.

 

[Danny]

I think they could be useful for things like large text books and manuals where you want to be able to look up information easily and bookmark relevant sections.

However I am not sure I would ever want to read a novel on one.

 

[forty-two]

I have read several ebooks on my Iphone, whilst the screen is small it is very esay to read and not at all tiring on the eyes. You need to download an app. Also try logging onto Project Gutenberg, literally 1000's of ebooks free to download legaly. If you have the phone try it you will be presently surprised.

 

[rh100]

Have partially answered this above.

I have a Sony Ereader and it will read PDFs and some text, Word and other documents. They do however need to be loaded via the Sony software as there is some conversion.

when will sony learn? Great hardware let down by software that has to do it their way. i've got a great sony mp3 walkman, but the software is clunky as hell but i'm stuck with it unless i go for some freeware, wish i could just cut and paste the tracks but the files have to be converted.

 

[Chromatic]

Can you also store your own PDF's on there? Or is it dedicated files only?

Have asked her about this. Apparently you can if you convert them to a file type recognised by the kindle, she also said that doing this may not copy over all the formatting and you may get problems with that.
Software is readily available for file conversion, she uses Calibre which was a free download, although as far as I'm aware she has not tried converting pdfs but she told me it will do them.
It seems to me that if it possibly mucks up the formatting then then it isn't much use for your own pdfs.