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Originally Posted by Bilbo1967
Welcome CEW4!
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Thanks!
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How are you finding the Oyo?
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I'm downright enthusiastic, actually. For years, I've read articles about ebook readers, how they are holding promise, how they are not taking on, how this company and that company tried again with a new device, how this publisher and that made the monumental announcement to support ebooks in the future and so on.
All this time, I was sure never to buy into the scheme: Why should I? Why should I spend so much money to make my reading actually worse than it had been before? My paper book never has depleted power supply, the picture/contrast is the best it could possibly be, and if I accidentally sit on it on the train, no harm done. While being a nice gadget, an e-reader had only drawbacks for me, not a single (not one!) benefit.
Of course, if there would be a device that could display any content I already had in digital form, from that user manual that I scanned (GIF), that NASA report I'd been glancing at (pdf), and that Microsoft tutorial (whatever), not to mention all the ASCII texts I've collected during the past 25 years, all this with a decent battery life, then the issue would be a whole lot different.
But there wasn't a device like that. A device that I could not access myself at will like an USB-stick was not even a contender. And for years, all readers had exactly that flaw. Granted that you may have been able to circumvent this on a few devices by manually converting your content, but that was work, and again: Why should I pay money only to be required to work more than I had before?
The Oyo cleared all those issues for me:
- It is affordable enough to "take the risk and see how I like it"
- It is not locked in any way, you could transfer grandma's bus pass onto it and it wouldn't care
- It serves the basic formats natively (PDF, TXT, EPUB) and thanks to Calibre (invaluable!) displays anything in my store
That's the facts, probably equally important, after all, are the personal impressions:
- The Oyo is a basic down-to-earth no-frills provide-what-you-really-need device. I don't need a camera in a reader. I don't need a Facebook client. I don't need a shining silver polish that I have to wipe clean after every touch from the finger prints, either.
- On the other side, all you need is there: Mechanical keys so you don't have to use the touchscreen for basic operations (I really hate that gesture-mania. I want a "prev/next" key. Period.) For complex menu operations, the touch screen is still there.
From that description you can see why the Oyo is for me: I don't mind the slow touch screen response because apart from the menu, I don't use it. The display speed has also been criticized, but it's quick enough for page-turning, and I don't require more from it. The casing is plastic, not en-vogue-aluminium, but I rather have the plastic if I could choose, too. On the other hand, the textured back (still plastic) is very agreeable to me. And having left out all the frills I would in part not need and in part even resent, the device was within a friently price range.
Bottom line: My device. :-)
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I was in Essen earlier this week and spotted the Oyo in a book shop there. I'd never seen one before (or even heard of it) so had a look. It looked quite nice, but I already have 3 Sonys and my wife would kill me if I spent any more on e-readers 
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While I don't think it's a must have for everyone, for me it's just about tailor-made. I'm even considering getting a second one - after all, you can't buy each book two times so you can have one laying around on each of your favourite resting spots, but with digital content that, too, might just possibly change... ;-)
Regards,
CE4