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delphin · 02-15-2011, 11:14 PM

I have close family members with both Kindle 3s and the Sony PRS-650, and after seeing both products close up, I picked the PRS-650.

The Kindle does have a few features that the Sony lacks like Text to Speech, but I wasn't impressed enough with them to be willing to live with the Kindles clunky interface.

The touch interface on the Sony is a joy to use, and at least the features that the PRS-650 does have do work well. For example the Sony's built in MP3 player is quite nice, with cover art display, repeat, and shuffle, etc. The Kindle's built in MP3 player is one of the most useless pieces of garbage I have ever seen (Alt-F to jump forward one track, are they kidding???)

I get most of my books free from my public library, and Kindle can't do that without the hassle of striping the DRM and then converting the books from MOBI to EPUB. Call me old fashioned, but I think that in the case of library books with DRM, if they are nice enough to make the books available at no charge, then you should probably play by their rules.

I would not feel that way about stripping the DRM from a book purchased from Amazon if it got in the way of my converting a book that I had purchased from them for use on my Sony PRS-650, because if I pay perfectly good money for a title, then I should be able to read the book on whatever hardware I chose.

Luckily, the temptation of having to strip the DRM from an Amazon book, because it is ONLY available from them, has NOT come up yet, because I have yet to find a book that I couldn't find somewhere else. Actually, given the fact that I can get books from Sony, Kobo, Google, etc, and that Amazon choses to play these proprietary games and not support EPUB, then I WOULD PREFER NOT TO BUY FROM THEM.

When I do go shopping for e-books online I prefer to just use my Netbook as opposed to trying to shop from the device, so the Kindles built in link to the Kindle Store would not be a big plus for me. Certainly not enough to be worth the hassle of being locked into only one source for books.

02-15-2011, 11:14 PM	#51
delphin Evangelist Posts: 434 Karma: 346901 Join Date: Dec 2010 Device: SONY PRS-650	I have close family members with both Kindle 3s and the Sony PRS-650, and after seeing both products close up, I picked the PRS-650. The Kindle does have a few features that the Sony lacks like Text to Speech, but I wasn't impressed enough with them to be willing to live with the Kindles clunky interface. The touch interface on the Sony is a joy to use, and at least the features that the PRS-650 does have do work well. For example the Sony's built in MP3 player is quite nice, with cover art display, repeat, and shuffle, etc. The Kindle's built in MP3 player is one of the most useless pieces of garbage I have ever seen (Alt-F to jump forward one track, are they kidding???) I get most of my books free from my public library, and Kindle can't do that without the hassle of striping the DRM and then converting the books from MOBI to EPUB. Call me old fashioned, but I think that in the case of library books with DRM, if they are nice enough to make the books available at no charge, then you should probably play by their rules. I would not feel that way about stripping the DRM from a book purchased from Amazon if it got in the way of my converting a book that I had purchased from them for use on my Sony PRS-650, because if I pay perfectly good money for a title, then I should be able to read the book on whatever hardware I chose. Luckily, the temptation of having to strip the DRM from an Amazon book, because it is ONLY available from them, has NOT come up yet, because I have yet to find a book that I couldn't find somewhere else. Actually, given the fact that I can get books from Sony, Kobo, Google, etc, and that Amazon choses to play these proprietary games and not support EPUB, then I WOULD PREFER NOT TO BUY FROM THEM. When I do go shopping for e-books online I prefer to just use my Netbook as opposed to trying to shop from the device, so the Kindles built in link to the Kindle Store would not be a big plus for me. Certainly not enough to be worth the hassle of being locked into only one source for books. Last edited by delphin; 02-15-2011 at 11:22 PM.