[unkilbeeg]

Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic

• small screen: Before the Reader, I read e-books exclusively on PDA devices. My last PDA was a Dell Axim X50v with a "large" 3.7" VGA display. To me, the Reader's 6" screen is a gigantic leap forward.

• Yup. Bear in mind that for most of the world dead tree books are the benchmark. So it's a huge leap forward for eBooks. <shrug> eBooks have to be better than paper, or what's the point?
  

  "painfully gray-on-gray" low contrast: So it's not really black on white. Big deal. My daily newspaper and the paperback book I bought yesterday aren't either. Does it bother me? Given the proper lighting the answer is no.

  I probably agree with you here, but I haven't tried the Reader in a variety of lighting conditions. Again, paper is the competition. I occasionally read books on my Palm, but it's an availability thing (paperbacks don't fit in my pocket as well, I don't always have one handy.) Reading on the Palm is *never* a choice if I have a choice. For me, the contrast issue has always been the big reason why I didn't see eBooks as a viable format. The Sony Reader and its cousins are the first thing to come along that might make me rethink that.
  

  "lethargic" interface: The Sony Reader is not a Playstation 3. Why should it win any speed records? When you turn the page of a p-book, does it happen instantaneously?

  Pretty much. An order of magnitude difference in time is enough to qualify as "relatively instantaneous." Is it a fatal flaw? Maybe not, but it is a flaw.

  Had Mr. Manes visited our forums, he'd know the speed of flipping pages also depends on the document format and its complexity, and that there are ways to improve the speed by changing the format if it really bothers you. By calling the Reader "the most lethargic electronic device in recent memory" he demonstrates that he clearly missed the purpose of the device. Who cares if he had to wait "several minutes" for the device to restart after he "repeatedly pressed the reset button?" When Sony techs created the Reader, I am sure what they had least in mind were people who have the uncontrolled need to press a reset button.

  The first time I turned one on in the store, it took quite some time before I was certain it was even on. The power switch seems a bit flimsy to me, and there's no feedback for what seems like an eternity to let you know that toggling the switch did something.

  missing search: Yes, I miss a search functionality too. I miss it a lot. But I am not going to return my Reader because I cannot search documents right now. In fact, I have hopes that Sony will add search functionality later to the Reader in an upcoming firmware upgrade. Let's forgive Mr. Manes for not mentioning that the Reader software is upgradeable.

  Ummm. How? No keyboard, no stylus support. From a hardware perspective, how would you tell it what to search for? I agree that search would be a good thing, but I don't see how it would work with this hardware. Then again, it's not as critical for me as for some -- still, a paper book allows much faster searches than this thing would. Those "instantaneous" page turns, you know.

  missing built-in dictionary: My e-book device should enable me to read e-books. Anything else can be a welcomed or unwelcomed bonus. Personally I don't need a built-in dictionary, but I see how it could be handy for some people.

  I'm with you here. I suppose if I really wanted a dictionary I could load one -- but then we have that search problem again.

  missing speaker: Guess what... the iPod doesn't have a speaker either.

  Nor do any of my paperbacks. Sound support is something I can quite comfortably forgo in a book reader.

  "only" 64MB: It's too bad that the Reader is not suitable to store hundreds of 1920x1200 hi-res images of my puppy dog. But would it make sense? Perhaps to some people who also complain about lacking speakers and long reset routines. I have uploaded around ten e-books to my Reader and I still have plenty of room for more. And if things get out of control, I'll grab an SD card.

  Since the SD card is my only possibility of loading content on this thing, the internal memory is a bit irrelevant to me. Even if I was using it, though, 64M would hold quite a few books.

  "skimpy" book selection: I agree, the Sony store needs a lot of improvement. But they're working on it, something Mr. Manes didn't bother to acknowledge.

I don't imagine I would ever buy anything from their bookstore. The hardware is (potentially) attractive to me, but there is plenty of non-DRM material available, so I'd get my content elsewhere. It is to Sony's credit that they've made it (sorta) open -- were it not for that, I wouldn't even be considering it.

The Sony Reader looks interesting. Enough so that I'm here looking. Not enough that I've plunked down any money yet. But never lose sight of the fact that paper books are what it's competing against, not other eBooks.