My main interest is the "classics" - Dickens, Shakespeare, Chaucer, etc etc, all of which are available as out-of-copyright eBooks.
I love the feel of a good, properly bound, paper book - you just can't beat the experience of sitting in a comfortable armchair and reading a good book; the whole "ambience" of it - the smell of the leather and the paper, the texture of it, etc - is a part of the "experience". I've reached the stage in life where all my favourite books I now have in good quality hardbacks; I rarely, if ever, buy paperbacks any more.
When I'm away from home, however, as I often am through work, then the convenience of eBooks can't be beaten. I read for many years on various Pocket PCs, but now I have a Sony Reader. The eInk technology just transforms the "reading experience" compared with heavy, bulky, LCD-screen based devices both in terms of clarity and also things like battery life - the Sony just goes "on and on"; you can literally read for a month without recharging.
The answer to the original question, therefore, is that I must have a device which is "open" in terms of being to add my own content to it; I have little or no interest in commercial, DRM-protected material. I already have all the books, so my primary selection criterion is the device and the quality of the "reading experience" it provides.
|