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pwalker8 · 09-14-2008, 11:09 PM

Almost two years ago, at Christmas, I bought my first Sony reader. Last year, around this time, I bought the Sony 505. After watching the book counts in the the Amazon vs Sony content thread, I finally broke down and bought a Kindle for a couple of reasons. First, it's all about the content and right now, Amazon is much more aggressive about getting content for the Kindle than Sony is about getting content for the Reader. Second, I can purchase the content from Amazon and deDRM most of the books, thus being able to format shift the content that I purchase.

A couple of observations from my experiences. First, Amazon makes it so easy to buy books. I can buy via wireless on the kindle itself, I can buy via website and have it automatically sent wirelessly to my kindle or I can buy via website, download it to my mac and load it on the kindle via USB. With Sony, on the other hand, you have to really, really want to buy the book. I typically browse the Connect site via the web, write down any books that I want, then kick off Windows XP via Parallel, then bring up the Connect software and search for the books that I want. Then I download the books plug my Sony reader in and load them that way. You don't make money by making it hard for the customer to buy your product.

Second, I find that for simply sitting in the easy chair to do serious reading, I prefer the Sony. It's smaller, lighter and I find it much more comfortable to read. There are features on the kindle that I wish the Sony had (more font sizes for one), but none of these feature make up for how comfortable the Reader is in my hand when I read and how much easier it is to carry the sony than it is the kindle.

So far, what I've been doing is buying the books for the kindle, transferring it to my pc and then converting the book for the sony. So far, only one book has failed to convert and that was Glory Road, which came in azw1 format. Interestingly, that book doesn't appear to be encrypted, at least Stanza will pull it up, unfortunately the text is garbled.

I think that if I were going on a business trip, I would prefer to take the kindle, so I could easily buy new content, but for normal reading, I would carry the sony. All in all, right now, I think that I have the best of both worlds.

09-14-2008, 11:09 PM	#1
pwalker8 Grand Sorcerer Posts: 7,196 Karma: 70314280 Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Atlanta, GA Device: iPad Pro, iPad mini, Kobo Aura, Amazon paperwhite, Sony PRS-T2	Kindle vs Sony Reader Almost two years ago, at Christmas, I bought my first Sony reader. Last year, around this time, I bought the Sony 505. After watching the book counts in the the Amazon vs Sony content thread, I finally broke down and bought a Kindle for a couple of reasons. First, it's all about the content and right now, Amazon is much more aggressive about getting content for the Kindle than Sony is about getting content for the Reader. Second, I can purchase the content from Amazon and deDRM most of the books, thus being able to format shift the content that I purchase. A couple of observations from my experiences. First, Amazon makes it so easy to buy books. I can buy via wireless on the kindle itself, I can buy via website and have it automatically sent wirelessly to my kindle or I can buy via website, download it to my mac and load it on the kindle via USB. With Sony, on the other hand, you have to really, really want to buy the book. I typically browse the Connect site via the web, write down any books that I want, then kick off Windows XP via Parallel, then bring up the Connect software and search for the books that I want. Then I download the books plug my Sony reader in and load them that way. You don't make money by making it hard for the customer to buy your product. Second, I find that for simply sitting in the easy chair to do serious reading, I prefer the Sony. It's smaller, lighter and I find it much more comfortable to read. There are features on the kindle that I wish the Sony had (more font sizes for one), but none of these feature make up for how comfortable the Reader is in my hand when I read and how much easier it is to carry the sony than it is the kindle. So far, what I've been doing is buying the books for the kindle, transferring it to my pc and then converting the book for the sony. So far, only one book has failed to convert and that was Glory Road, which came in azw1 format. Interestingly, that book doesn't appear to be encrypted, at least Stanza will pull it up, unfortunately the text is garbled. I think that if I were going on a business trip, I would prefer to take the kindle, so I could easily buy new content, but for normal reading, I would carry the sony. All in all, right now, I think that I have the best of both worlds.