Hi, I've been reading many of the posts here avidly over the past few days, and I have a better idea now of what I want in an ebook reader, but none of the people here have had exactly the same priorities as I have.
I have a few questions, so please help me out on any of them if you can!
A few facts: I'm in the US. I also use a Mac, but I can get access to Windows if I have to. I will be reading novels 80% of the time on this (great big long, fantasy ones, usually, and non-fiction maybe 20% of the time). I want to make this ebook reader a replacement for buying books from a bookstore.
Priorities (in order of importance)
- Readability. I have fairly poor vision, and if the text is too small (typical paperback book size is fine, but no smaller), or if the contrast is too poor, or there is a glare, I won't be able to read the book.
- Ability to support at least a few formats very well. By this, I mean, that there is at least one format that will look like a normal novel, with no strangeness or formatting flaws. (E.g. it has text justified.)
- I have tons of .lit books on my computer already, and while I'm pretty sure that none of the readers can use this file type, if there is something I could convert it to that would look good on one of the ebook readers, I'd love to hear about it.
- Some sort of bookmark system and folder hierarchy would be great.
- I really would like to be able to manage the books on the ebook reader manually, as if it were just another hard drive, but I can stand some sort of forced application to do that if that's not an option.
I don't care about note-taking ability, audio, wifi, or dictionary lookup. I would never use any of those.
From my research it seems that I am excluded from:
- The Kindle: The best looking/designed of the lot. However, my understanding is that you have to pay Amazon $.10 for the "privilege" of using a format other than theirs on your $350+ machine. That's pretty dumb. Plus I would never use that keyboard.
- The two Sonys: Require a Windows machine for ebook management? Is this true, and if so, is there any way around it? I can get to a PC occasionally, but I don't want to have to do it every single time I want to add an ebook.
Please let me know anything I've forgotten, or tell me more about any of the readers. I am open to anything. Please advise; I will be eternally grateful!