Thank goodness, I have an understanding partner. She hasn't killed me yet with all the gadget clutter. An old work bonus brought this mess, but I'm having fun in mid-life.
I agree with weatherman and dgillette.rm about the eee as a good computing device capable of reading but that a dedicated reader is superior.
I've read ebooks on my palm tx, my wife's Sony PRS500, PDFs on eee and now stuff on the Kindle.
E-ink is indeed preferred for reading over lcd
-less eye strain
-less power
-greater print on paper like quality
The small screen on the Palm TX was great for ultraultra mobile portability, but it is eyestraining reading a novel. My middling eyes are not what they used to be.
Sony was great to read on but, hard to share with my wife since it's Hers
.
Asus eee pc was great on the bus, here goes the reading experience:
-open lid
-hit power button to wake from sleep
-hit Acrobat tab to read
-scroll around the trackpad to shift the large font text to accomodate the small screen real estate
-stop reading and close lid because of eye strain or battery warning
-it was worst when I had to exit the bus quickly and was lost to reading, almost missing my stop
-the eee is really suffering from poor barely 2 hrs battery life.
The new Kindle is great
-instant on: hit alt-font to wake from sleep
-surf for new content or hit search to find old title
-read, read, read without having to worry about power, eyestrain, scrolling around to read the rest of the text or sleeping the device
The above I think would apply to other dedicated e-ink readers: Cybook, Sony, etc
Granted I love my 4G xandros Asus eee for all the extended functionality: PDF, FBreader which covers all of the stuff I read except the Kindle DRM and Sony DRM books -plus I get to learn Linux, bash, and browse as another wifi device when the macbook is being used. I can't wait until Asus puts out a larger capacity battery; the eee really needs it.
Best,
tony