[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by SmokeAndMirrors

Why are those shaky reasons? I'll come back to this at the end...

I don't have a Nook and can't confirm this; I've heard that sideloaded books are treated differently--not part of the same directories, potentially limited in storage capacity (like, 2gb total--of which 500mb can be sideloaded). But I'm reporting rumours filtered through my don't-have-one, don't-really-care perceptions.

I'm sure it must be nice to not have to consider budget when purchasing things, but unfortunately I'm not really there, as a full-time student. I can't simply "drop that requirement."

I *do* understand. Really. And price does matter... but if it's *at all* possible to you, let it matter less.

If the choice is between "Ereader A, which has 80% of what I want, but costs $199" and "Ereader B, which has 60% of what I want, and costs $140"... scrounge for the extra $60. Amortize it out over how long you intend to use the device; if this is going to be your book reader for 3 years, $20/year should be do-able.

Yeah, I know student budgets don't work that way. But really: this is an area where the extra few dollars can mean the difference between "yeah, I have an ereader but I could never get the hang of reading on it" and "this is my ereader; no, you can't touch it; they will pry it from my cold, dead fingers someday."

The extra readings I have online are fairly short - 10-20 page PoliSci readings. I figure it should be ok for that, though I understand e-readers aren't ready for full academic texts yet. But they should be ok for that, yeah?

It's not so much length as formatting, but yes, shorter docs helps. And if you've got a netbook, you can use that to read anything that just does not work right on an ereader; it's easier to deal with the LCD screen if your eyes sometimes get a break.

But please don't tell me that my needs and my ethics don't matter, if they happen to disqualify the product you like.

Sorry it comes off that way. I think what we're trying to do is tell you that *nothing* fits exactly what you're looking for (or for that matter, what any of us are looking for; we've pretty much all got a list of features from several different devices we'd like to see combined into one), and while you should keep your ethics in mind while shopping--I don't buy from Walmart or Nestle, ever, no matter how good the price is--you should know what you're passing up. (If for no other reason than you're in a better position to pester the companies you *are* willing to deal with, if you can tell them, "hey, the competition has [this]. Why don't you have [this]?")

I don't like feeling like I have to justify everything on my list. The only person I should have to justify it to is me. I'm not coming down on anyone else's choices. They're just not my choices.

You don't have to justify your choices to us. Part of it is saying, nothing is going to be perfect, so here's what the options are if some of your criteria were different; you have to sort out for yourself which ones are most flexible. And part of it's that this is a busy forum with a lot of lurkers, and advice that might not be useful to you might help someone else with different criteria & limitations.

Mostly, we'd like you to be happy with whatever you pick, and not kicking yourself over, "man, the Kindles have what? And I passed that by because Amazon's a bit sleazy sometimes? That was dumb."

Not saying you should override your ethics--but we've got no way of knowing if you've really looked into Amazon, or if you're relying on random web-babble about "Amazon is icky." (They are. Apple is ickier.)

The ereaders with the best open source support are also the most expensive and tend to be behind the curve for new features, for fairly obvious reasons. Up to you to decide how to weigh the options.