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Originally Posted by da_jane
It's the AVID reader who is likely to buy this product and it is the AVID reader, not the techno geek loving reader (like me), who needs to fall in love with this product for it to be successful.
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This sums it up to me. Most of us reading the forum are pretty comfortable with the idea of reading an e-book and the effort it can take to get a book into a format that can be loaded onto our reader. For me it's been various PDAs for the last 5 years or so. If I can't get it to text I don't read it. I have not had to resort to reading a paper book yet so no worries for geeks like me who are willing to do what it takes to get content. This is not going to work for the public at large.
The ability to share content is important as well. The one thing I miss more than anything due to my switch to using a PDA to read is swapping books with my father. He and I like the same kinds of books and when one of us likes a book it's great to share. Now if I really like a book I have to buy him the paper copy if I want to share. There is hope that the Sony Reader will make a believer out of him but to have to share the same connect store account in order to share books is pushing things (whose credit card will be on the account? How do we split up costs? ...). I guess if I still lived at home it would be easy but that was over 20 years ago... Hopefully there will be an evolution to allowing sharing to work in a fair manor.
Being a PDA reader whose wife goes to sleep before me, the ability to read in the dark without bothering her is a big deal to me. It is something I have now that I'll have to recreate with a clip on light or something. I am confident that I will be able to solve the problem and still have a better reading experience than my eye burning, sucks to read outside PDA gives me. That said I really don't think it's a big deal to paper book readers since they don't have expereince with backlighting. For the Sony Reader to be successful it's the paper readers that are going to need to be converted not us "techno geeks" who have already drunk the cool aid.
I'm really not sure if I think the Sony Reader will be successful. I know I want it to be. I am very sure that it will be successful for my usage. If I can get my wife to use it then it will be a hit for sure. So far she laughs at me for even suggesting that she would want to use it over a paper book. She loves her iPod though
