I've had PDAs since shortly after they started to become popular (Newton MP2000, Palm III), but didn't use them for reading so much as writing. I take notes in lots of odd places, sometimes for work, sometimes for school, sometimes for various creative projects I'm working on.
But I do read voraciously, including re-reading practically everything I enjoyed the first time through, and my paper book collection seemed to be growing without bounds. Every time we moved, there was that pressure to cull the books-- a pressure I resisted as far as I could, feeling I'd be losing old friends. When I was younger, I fantasized about being able to afford to have a whole room dedicated to books-- a personal library. Now I fantasized about being able to reduce it all to bytes, even if I'd have to view them on a laptop, but it didn't look like the publishers were ever going to get behind ebooks, and the thought of having to scan and OCR all my books made me shudder. (I actually daydreamed about becoming wealthy enough to be able to afford to hire someone to do it for me.)
I heard about the Rocket eBook reader and other early attempts at dedicated readers, but they seemed expensive as single-function devices, and more to the point, there were few books available that I wanted to read. I didn't know about darknet scans in those days, or I probably would have started reading on the Newton.
About 3 years ago, I started seeing news about e ink. It was fascinating, but there didn't seem to be many devices using it. The Libre was only available in Japan, and had what looked like really obnoxious DRM. And where would I find books to read? My Japanese is pretty limited.
I kept following e ink news, though, and eventually stumbled across Mobileread about a year and a half ago. The iLiad had arrived by then, though I didn't think I'd ever be able to afford one. But through this site, I learned about other options I'd overlooked before, and new sources of books like Baen. I asked for and was given an eBookwise as a birthday gift in January 2007. By May of that year I was able to purchase a second-hand iLiad from someone who wanted a Sony Reader instead, justifying the purchase because I hoped to be admitted as a doctoral student shortly (which has since happened), and between the annotation capabilities of the iLiad and the software expansion potentials of Linux, I could see a lot of ways that this tool could help with my degree. Since then, I've used my iLiad to read PDF journal articles, write notes in classes, work meetings, and at conferences, and-- of course-- read fiction. And I've finally found sources of ebook versions of many of the books in my existing paper collection that I want to re-read, as well as new favorites. (It certainly helps that I like science fiction!)
There are things I wish could be improved about the iLiad. It works very well for reading fiction, but the slow boot time makes it difficult to use for taking notes except in extended settings like classes or meetings. I wish it could recognize handwriting, at least in the background for search purposes, so I could more easily find notes I've previously written. There are a lot of user interface improvements that could be made. It would be great if I could run PDA software that would sync with my work calendar (which was why I eventually switched from the Newton to the Palm III). And I
really wish it had integrated lighting, e.g. a light-wedge.
But it meets my immediate needs, and now that there are several more popular readers competing in the marketplace, I'm hoping that more and more publishers will decide to get into electronic publishing. I still have that dream of being able to replace all my books with bytes.
