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Originally Posted by HansTWN
I actually had the opposite experience. Everybody asks and is quite surprised how good the text looks. It just seems to be me that you had unrealistically high expectations -- or read material that is not suitable. If you just like to read the text then it is a very positive experience. And for an expat financially it is a no-brainer. You can get very few books here, what you get in HK is totally overpriced, now I can get everything instantly. No more books piling up, no more mailing charges, etc. I saved a lot more than 300$ in a very short time. But even my wife, who is a local, has fought me over it to read some classic books.
No, the current readers are not 100% like a paper book. Most of your points are valid, but I don't feel they are important for the actual reading experience for text in books, only for books with lots of pictures. But they are so much more convenient to read, to store, to buy, or to download old books. Navigation on the Sony is very intuitive and quick. Page turns are not immediate, but faster than on a real book. Holding the reader is much better than holding a paper book. And when I am actually reading I often tend to forget I have an eboook, not a "real" paper book.
Of course, when it comes to news, PDF files, etc -- then reading on the 6 inch screen and navigating is torture.
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I've had a lot of people look at my reader and want to try it out. There's nothing that displays well, just less horribly than the stock Dutch Roman. I set my own books up for it and do a pretty good job, considering how futile it is to customize text for the device. I've heard a few people go "wow much nicer than an LCD" but that's just what they read in an article somewhere and thought it sounded like a good polite comment for "exotic" technology, but I normally invite them to look closer and they see pretty much as I do...that e-ink stuff is pretty rubbish under most circumstances. A relatively low density photocopy of a low-quality fax isn't too far off a description. Certainly not just my device either...but yes perhaps I had unrealistic expectations when reading hype about it being comparable to paper.
Navigation through menus is relatively fine, but through books is pathetic. Page turns faster than manually? Sure, if you have only 1 finger, or if you don't do any global navigation (i.e. navigating across the document quickly, skimming the paragraph structures for landmarks; I tend to do this at around 5-10 pages per second when I'm in the local area of the relevant text). I find many situations where I like to cross-reference or flip around to different sections of the book, but then I realize it'd take forever on the reader and instead zip through it on my computer instead, which actually offers some semblance of navigation (not ideal, but at least the ability to move quickly through the book). If I only read linearly without any intratextual navigation, it'd be fine, low quality screen aside.
I'm actually amused that someone else posted that popularity stemming from Oprah's endorsement was actually due to exposure, and not due to fan worship like her book club and everything else about her generally is.
I sound like a hater, but I don't mind my device that much. I try to remember that I'm reading books, sometimes decent ones, and that lets me tolerate the reader. They remain more of a future possibility than a present solution though.