[MacEachaidh]

Maybe of parenthetical interest:

The magazine I subedit is doing a short-and-sweet review of eReaders in its coming edition. It reviewed four -- the Story, the Kindle, and two Sony models (it's of necessity concentrating on devices available here in Australia). For whatever reason, it didn't include the Kobo. And strictly speaking the Sony ones aren't available here yet, but they will be by the end of the year.

I always find these sorts of articles a mixed bag. The mag is primarily IT focused, and so the reviews were written by a bloke who looked at the readers as electronic gadgets but has no real experience of using them as readers.

The results were fairly predictable. The Kindle got a score of 6/6 (largely because of the Pearl screen) and a "Recommended" flag. The two Sonys got 5/6 each (largely, it would seem, because they're Sony, and gadget-reviewing journos seem as subservient and beholden to Sony as purely IT ones used to be to Microsoft back when Word was fighting WordPerfect for dominance on the new Windows environment). The reviewer generally liked the Story but felt the screen didn't have as much contrast as the Kindle; it was a generally positive review, but then for no clear reason he scored the Story 4/6. (Not surprising, if only because reviewers usually mark harder on the one without the commercial brand recognition.)

I felt the article was flawed because it didn't look at things like breadth of formats supported and avenues for sourcing software (a limitation for the Kindle, I feel, especially with geographic restrictions severely whittling down the range of books available to Aussies), and I flagged it as such to the Editor, but it's late in the production schedule so I doubt they're going to consider rewriting it now. But I think those things are relevant to someone who's going to actually want to use these devices, as opposed to a curious gadget geek.

Anyway. I'm pleased to see that the Story is at least getting acknowledged along with the "big guns".