I recently had what I initially thought was a horrible choice to make.
I'm emigrating soon, and have thus had to pare down my belongings to the bare essentials. It's amazing how much stuff you are prepared to part with when you discover how much it costs to ship it to another country!
All of my cd's are ripped to mp3, all the cases for my dvd's have been discarded and the disks put into folders, but what about my books?
Luckily I mostly read classic fiction and I already knew about the Gutenberg project, but although I have used my PDA phone to read books I found it to be less than ideal. Good for reading on the move, not so good for your main source of reading material.
I started to do some research and decided on the Sony 505 over the Kindle before I was even aware that the Kindle isn't available in the UK through the usual channels.
I bought the Sony yesterday and I haven't put it down since
I find it just as easy to read as a conventional book, and don't feel in any way that I'm making a compromise because of my situation.
I'd say that even though I thought I was going to lose all of my books, I have in fact kept them and gained several thousand others into the bargain, by virtue of the fact that I have found a comfortable way to read the Gutenberg texts.
The reasons that I chose the Sony above the Kindle were:
It looks nicer in my opinion. The Kindle looks plasticy and cheap.
It's a bit smaller and lighter from what I can gather
it comes with a cover. Emigration means I can't go spending my savings buying accessories no matter how trivial.
It takes SD cards, which I believe the Kindle 2 does not, and which I have several of.
It doesn't have a keyboard. I want the device for reading books only. They Kindle's keyboard looks bad, makes the device bigger and is of no use to me.
It's easier to use with Linux, OS of the gods.
It's more versatile in the types of files it will read.
After using it for a day or so, I am extremely happy with it. The software is a little clunky but not enough to worry about.
My only gripe is the lack of a charger.
Being able to charge from USB is all very well, but unfortunately the device won't let you read a book when it's hooked up to a USB port. I can almost understand that, but even when I hooked it up to my USB phone charger it still behaved as if it was connected to a computer.
Fortunately I have found out that I can use a PSP charger, so I picked one up on ebay for about £3