[veysey]

Greetings all!

When Sony announced their new readers a month ago, I was prompted to re-examine the whole e-ink idea. I've long been a scientist and techno junkie, but am late to the party for a few reasons.

First, I have a tablet PC (latitude XT, flawed, but I find it indispensable), and had been doing most of my e-reading on that. But Sony's announcement made me realize that they've come down in price, and that there was this thing called epub.

Dug through the specs, and loved it - it sensible and open. I'm one of those linux/stallman/blah blah types, but really I like to think that when I buy a book (e or otherwise) that I can do what ever I want with it. I control it, can move it, convert it, etc. Epub can support nice open books, and I hope the market converges there. I had been relying on text, pdf (ugh), and html ... but I hate having multiple files in html ...

Once I found epub, I found calibre, which is even better! It puts me in control since I can switch around most formats. I cannot be trapped or beholden to a company (I'm looking at you, Amazon!) And the recipes are gravy. All praise to Kovid!

Calibre led me here, and while I've found MR forums to be helpful, I'm extremely impressed with all of the TLC that has gone into producing a nice collection of public domain ebooks. Those touches - quotes, contents, etc - make such a difference to the reading experience.

I'm planing on getting a reader ASAP, and am excited that the time has finally arrived. Quite possibly the 505.

Thanks to all the contributors who makes this such a great community.

- J