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Bob, I'm going to take this simple common question, and turn it into a big picture question. Ultimately, what did you purchase the reader for? I'll go even further, what made you a gadget geek? When I was a teenager, I tended to pay more for the slightly larger than cassette size Walkmen for the convenience of the most portable music player available. I pinpoint that Walkman as my first gadget obsession.
When I started in the workforce, I had this nice small leather organizer for years. I had these coins in there my uncle gave me, a signed Allman Brothers backstage ribbon by Greg Allman, and every phone number and appt that took years to accumulate into this book. One day I left it on a payphone when I was talking to someone, and it was gone. I was devastated. I replaced it with a Casio Wizard, and put numbers in there....but there was no backup system available, so I used it reluctantly. Then came the Palm Pilot. I upgraded every time a new one came out, even went to Pocket PC for a bit, and went back to Palm. I have since settled on a Nextel Blackberry 7520 for the convenience of having all of my PDA needs and phone and e-mail in a small package on my belt clip. I especially love the fact that my information is backed up in 2 places, and can be brought along platforms for pretty much any device.
I love music, I always had a car with a backseat and passenger seat full of CD's and made cassettes. I would get organizers, but for some reason, CD's would still find themselves all over the car. Along came Ipod. It took me 2 months, but eventually, almost 5000 songs later, every song I own is in this little device thats smaller than a cassette box and backed up on my laptop and an external hard drive. I can play it in my car, walking, bicycling, the gym, etc. Full access to my entire collection whenever and wherever I choose.
I tend to read 2-3 books at a time. I like reading when I'm out eating on my lunch break, or at a Coffee Shop. So many times I forgot a book I'm in the mood to read at home, or wanting to start a book and forgot to bring it. Sometimes I run into the same issue I had with music, books in the backseat or trunk. Along came Sony Reader, the ability to bring along 80 books in on board memory plus whatever I could fit on a memory card. Never forget to bring a book again? No more books cluttering the back seat, bags or trunk?
Do you see a pattern here? It's a longwinded way of saying we get these gadgets for better organization, less clutter, and convenience of portability. I bought the Sony Reader with 2 things in mind. I'm hoping Sony is to e-book technology what Apple is to MP3 technology. They made a great device, created a buzz, and hopefully market it on a larger scale. When I threw $350 at this, it was with the anticipation of keeping it for quite a while, and committing to Sony for my E-books and BBeB format the way I committed to Apple Ipod and AAC format for my music. I made that commitment with the understanding that overall I will be investing good money in E-Books as I have with Itunes music.
If you are that confident that you will eventually move to another device, then I would buy the books that I planned to read various times in Hard or softcover books, and get my casual reading in electronic format. I think your decision should be based on your confidence level of device manufacturer and formats if you plan to switch up even fairly often. With all of this in mind, I would had paid the extra couple of dollars to download it, and hold onto it.
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