Hello everyone,
I've been checking in on this site for information for a few years now, and finally decided to actually register so I can post a question to the gurus of ereaders. I'll do that within the appropriate forum, once I decide where it should go.
A little about me:
I will read just about anything fiction that some people (stuffy academics for the most part) would consider "not real literature". I read about a book a day, often 2 or 3 per day if I don't force myself to go to sleep so I can get to work in the morning. I re-read many of my books when a new book in the series is published or when I'm in the mood for a particular author or type of story. The house was getting quite full with >7000 paperback books and a few hundred hard cover books stuffed here and there. That was just my collection! My husband was saying we should get rid of some of them
, which was right around the time I could not find any copies of a new-to-me author's older books except as ebooks. I bought a Sony PRS-950 ereader instead of moving to a larger house or fracturing my marriage with the weight of all those books or spending way too much money on beaten-up used books on ebay. Best thing I ever did for the packrat/book hoarding problem. DH is happy not to see the new books coming in, I started reading more books from the public library and public domain sources, I started including non-fiction for a change, I spend almost the same amount on books electronically as I did at brick and mortar stores without having to drive anywhere, and I absolutely love carrying around 800 books all the time without breaking my back or my luggage.
There are a few downsides to this ereading business that I am sure you all know about, like having no book on take off or landing because the powers that be still insist we'll cause a plane crash if we use the ereaders (yet the woman sitting next to me is texting or surfing the internet on her iphone as we approach the runway) or having to wait for the reader to load all those books after a sync/reset or not being able to buy used copies for reduced cost or having to buy another copy of the books I already own. I used to find a lot of new authors and books just by browsing the bookstores. It is a lot harder to browse for new authors electronically. These drawbacks are nothing in comparison to the benefits of never being without my reading materials!
My big fear is that my Sony readers will have battery failures or some other problems as they age and I will be forced to search for a less wonderful device that forces me to buy from only one source or that won't be capable of using pdf files. The PRS-950 Daily Edition is The Absolute Best Reader Ever, so of course they stopped making them soon after I got mine. I bought a 350 for back-up, and it's very nice, too, but it has no wi-fi or 3G or large screen. I'm worried that the various manufacturers will stop making e-ink devices, forcing us all to eventually have to read on backlit screens
. We'll see what the future holds!
