[NatCh]

Originally Posted by crionox

I don't see how the above examples are relevant. In effect, you're saying that the "hardcore" readers will gravitate towards the Sony.

That's certainly not what I mean to be saying.

I'm trying to say that I think most of those who have bought Kindles are likely to look mainly or exclusively to Amazon for e-content, but that those who bought Readers are more unlikley to even mostly look to Sony for their e-content. I see that as a theory about how "e-book aware" each set of buyers are, and I don't see a correlation between that and how hardcore their reading habits might be.

I tried to specifically phrase my comments to exclude people here -- at least as far as Kindles go -- because I think our Kindle owners are more similar to our Sony owners than they are to average Kindle owners. I see this as being a result of the marketing targeting that I see on the part of each company, that I mentioned above.

Originally Posted by crionox

These discussions really just boil down to personal preferences, mostly related to design or a couple of extra features.

You're very correct, excepting of course those cases where some specific user need makes one set of hardware more usable in a concrete way.

Is it so far fetched that folks with similar preferences might be similar in other ways? I'm not talking about a cause-and-effect, mind you, just a correlation.

In any case, I don't have a problem with different folks having different preferences, either from one another or from me. And I certainly didn't mean any of my comments as demeaning or derogatory to anyone, only as observations.

Originally Posted by crionox

Anything more is just looking to stoke up the old tired Mac vs. PC flames.

Not necessarily, I think there's a lot of interesting stuff to explore in this area, without it being simple sniping.

Originally Posted by crionox

I would hope we're all better than that here.

We are, generally, and we work pretty hard to keep it that way.

Originally Posted by Nate the great

I think Natch meant that a person had to be at least moderately techie in order to get content on to the Sony Reader, and that it's much easier to get content on to the Kindle (Amazon does most of it for you).

Something very like that: I meant that the average Sony user was more likely to be, as you say, "at least moderately techie" than the average Kindle user (again, not talking about MobileRead Kindle users), largely because of the marketing approach the two companies have taken, and the people those approaches are most likely to reach.

Originally Posted by DaleDe

While we may know that the Sony can be used outside the USA with a little extra work that is not common knowledge I believe and certainly not advertised on the Sony site. I believe the average user on the street will think that both the Amazon and the Sony are targeted at the USA.

I think that the U.S. is the market that Sony and Amazon view themselves as being targeted at (certainly it is for e-books), so a U.S. only scope to the discussion of who's selling more e-books is probably appropriate.