Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
The Sony is a good reader, but it's very much "last generation" technology being sold at a premium price. Sony have failed to come out with a reader to compete with the front-lit solutions now offered by almost all their rivals.
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You're making a lot of assumptions. First off, without knowing where the OP is, your supposed "premium price" may be entirely mythical. Currently, in Canada, for example, I could have a T2 direct from Sony for $99.99. A Kobo Glo will cost $129.99. A Kindle Paperwhite is not available for shipping to Canada. I could spend several hours and a fair number of dollars travelling across the border where I can get it from a Best Buy for US$119.99. I assume this is the ad-free version, but the BB site doesn't say. Sony is the least expensive by far. Sure, the Sony price is a sale price, but it doesn't matter, I can have it in my hands for a lot less than the others. And I don't have to travel to Buffalo to get it. If you've ever been to Buffalo, you'd understand just how big an advantage that is.
As for being "last generation" technology, the only Kindle I can order from Amazon is the $89.00 Kindle Wi-Fi with five-way controller and page turn buttons. For eleven dollars more, you get a touch screen (and buttons) from Sony. Furthermore, Kindle's Whispernet for personal documents isn't available in Canada, so you can't e-mail yourself books to put them in your Kindle, if I understand how that works correctly (and I'm sure I'll hear about it if I'm wrong). Library borrowing, with Sony's support of EPUB, is great here in Toronto. No Kindle library borrowing, though. A quick search suggests there is not a lot of library support in Canada for Kindle.
So, if the OP lives in, for example, Toronto, like I do, a Kindle seems like the most troublesome, least useful solution to the answer of what e-book reader to buy. Unless someone said they are happy to buy every book they read from Amazon (which the OP indicated he/she had no intention of doing), I'd never suggest a Kindle to someone in Canada. A Sony or a Kobo is definitely a better choice. Depending on where the OP is, the location may be more Kindle-appropriate.
I will concede that Sony does not offer a front-lit model. As I have a lamp, I do not find this to usually be a problem.
