[twowheels]

I found these forums to be very helpful during my search for the right reader for my needs, so I decided to join and maybe I can contribute something to others...

Been reading ebooks for a long time. Started reading Guttenburg texts on a Newton OMP, moved on to a Newton 120, Palm III, Palm IIIc, iPAQ 3850 (was still using that as of a year ago), a netbook rotated to be held like a book, a Motorola Droid, and now finally a Kindle 3... WOOOOOWWWWWW... I've been drooling over eink for a while now, but never could bring myself to buy a single use device for the prices that they were selling for. I watched the Kindle and Nook war from the sidelines for a while, getting a glimpse at the original Kindle now and then by peeking over the shoulder of other airline passengers... when the Nook came out I kept playing with them at B&N, but wasn't very impressed (they seemed clunky and slow to me)... Borders started to carry the Sony devices, but the screens were so bad for a while that I wasn't impressed... when the K3 started showing up in stores (though in kiosk demo mode, which is unfortunate) I was EXTREMELY impressed by the screen. So, last week I finally broke down and decided that the price is finally right.

I can honestly say for once that I'm more impressed with something after buying it than I expected to be when I made the purchase. That's a nice feeling!

I did feel some hesitation about buying the Kindle due to the lesser PDF support (which turned out to be a non-issue -- rotated it's just fine for my eyes and I haven't needed the TOC yet, though I'd like to see that show up in a future firmware update), and the lack of ePub support. I'd still like to see native epub support, especially for library use, but somehow I doubt that they'll implement that as it seems contrary to their goal of lock-in to their store. Perhaps we'll get lucky and they'll support unprotected ePub and library protected as a good will gesture. :-) I'm not a fan of DRM, and strongly considered the Sony for its more open formats, but the Kindle finally won out... Why? The Sony felt like a little computer that happened to read books, and the Kindle felt like a book reader. Little details... position of the page turn buttons, lack of external distractions, shape, etc... the Kindle seemed to disappear. More importantly the Kindle fonts appeared to be much better designed for the screen, whereas the Sony fonts, even on the same screen of the 650, weren't as clean. (I understand that you can fix that, but I didn't want to)

Anyhow... I'm loving my Kindle, but now I've gone and lost it... I made a really stupid mistake. I put a few books on it that my girlfriend wanted to read and now it's in her possession and not mine. I guess I know what I have to do now... silly thing just got twice as expensive as I expected. :-)

Edit: I am still suffering from an 'uncanny valley' like effect (google it), which is a bit of a distraction at times when I stop reading to stare at the screen and think about how it looks 'fake' -- there's no way that's not just silkscreened right onto the plastic! :-) How long does that feeling last? :-)

Edit2: Oh... and I forgot to mention the thing that finally convinced me to make the jump... I'd been waiting for B&N to make their next move in response to the K3 to see if they'd release a K3 killer... when they released the Nook Color I realized that they just didn't "get it" and gave up on them... looks like they just want to make a quick buck. Thanks to Amazon for realizing the value of pure text quality.