Fred Seibert's Blog

I read books.

Sometimes in the interactive world and of moving pictures with sound plain old books are discounted a bit. But, I’m addicted. Good books, bad books, old books, new books.

So I’ve been a decent guinea pig for the electronic readers of the last 10 years, and I’ve finally found one that works good enough, the Sony Reader. The electronic “paper” it uses works like crazy and that’s the key. No backlight, no pixels, no eye strain. You need as much light to read from it as you would any paper book. A battery charge lasts forever and you can stores hundreds of books without strain. Oh, and it weighs a few ounces.

I’ve read dozens of books on it over the last six months and sometimes I wonder what I’m going to do when the thing breaks.

Sure, there are issues. Navigation’s not what it could be, the eBook Connect Store from Sony unfortunately illustrates what’s wrong with modern Sony, and the Apple like closed system is pretty annoying with few of the benifits.

But those are just the nits. The reader saves me on a plane or a subway, and makes me happy to waste my time with previously cumbersome airport trashy paperbacks. If you can admit you like books, this thing may be the device for you.