Quote:
Originally Posted by NatCh
This pretty much doesn't apply to any Kindle owners here, they're pretty demographically similar to the Sony owners here.
Please read that sentence twice before you get on my case. 
I think Amazon's customers are mainly folks who didn't know e-reader devices existed until the Kindle appeared on Amazon's home-page one day. I think they're folks who mainly read best-sellers, read them once, and then go on to the next one, never caring if they can ever read them again. These two things combine to mean that they're mostly unaware that they can get content anywhere but Amazon, so they get all their content there.
Whereas Sony's main demographic is probably more like folks in this community: they're more likely to have known about e-reading for years, know all sorts of places besides Sony's store to get content, and how to convert it to work on their Reader. They're also more likely to avoid DRM when they can (because they know about the long-term hazards of it, and want to be able to access their books again later), which further reduces the likelihood, or at least the frequency, of them buying from Sony. |
I don't see how the above examples are relevant. In effect, you're saying that the "hardcore" readers will gravitate towards the Sony. Even on this forum we see that's not the case, as everyone here is in effect a little more hardcore than the mainstream, and the split on devices is pretty broad.
Really, all the devices handle non-DRM content about the same. Both Sony and Amazon have their own DRM format (and even the Cybook has it's one format it can accept), and outside of that they handle one primary format for ebooks. Pdf doesn't count, since most people don't find it very usable on the Sony; conversion from other formats also doesn't count, as the end result of what you put on your reader is one primary format.
I think they're both really nice devices, and considered them both for quite a while before I ordered one.
These discussions really just boil down to personal preferences, mostly related to design or a couple of extra features. Anything more is just looking to stoke up the old tired Mac vs. PC flames. I would hope we're all better than that here.
David