Quote:
Originally Posted by Latinandgreek
Both are great devices, I wouldn't say that one is better than the other, it just depends on your needs and preferences. The Kindle has wi-fi access, the Sony doesn't. The 350 has a 5 inch screen, which is great for gents who want to carry their reader in their shirt pocket. The Sony products have better PDF viewing capabilities than the Kindle products, but again, with the 5 inch screen you'd be getting a smaller screen. (With the Sony products you can use dictionaries with PDFs, which I don't think you can with Kindle products; you can mark up your PDFs, which, again, I don't think you can do with the Kindle, also the zoom feature seems to work a lot better on the Sony products, from what I've seen on youtube reviews.) With the Sony products you can also use them to read library books for free, which is a great advantage in my opinion, and the Sony products come pre-loaded with 12 dictionaries, which for me make them worth the price for that feature alone... but then again, I read a lot in foreign languages, so YMMV.
The Sony 650 has a 6 inch screen and the 950 has a 7 inch screen. (I'm looking to get myself the 950. It's on sale now for $250, I believe). I'm not sure how good the Amazon store is for textbooks, to be honest... try looking up some textbooks that you'd need /want and see if they carry them. Any textbooks that I have are in PDF format. To be honest, the products that would probably fit your needs best are the Kindle DX, the Sony PRS-950 and the Pocketbook 902 or 903, which are all above your price range.
Here are some videos that show the PRS-350 handling PDfs, as well as the Kindle, so that you can get an idea of how they work:
PRS-650
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE6Ivnk817E
Sony 650 vs. Kindle:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtrKo5UWpco&feature=fvw
Kindle PDFs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlZ9cqjzOik
Hope that helps a bit. |
I echo LatinandGreek - the Sony 350 does a reasonable job with PDFs but the 650 is much better with respect to the PDFs from journals and textbooks; the screen for the 600 was pretty mediocre and difficult to use. Using the 350/650 ereaders, for scientific articles the B&W text is crisp and readable even for small icons or 1/8th or smaller page figures. Being older and (many) years out from grad school, I definitely appreciate the better screen and would make the trade off for that with a 5" diameter v. a larger but with less contrast/quality image. FWIW. Best of luck with your decision.