SIZE:
When I looked more closely at the various different things that I currently used for reading, the variety was enormous. In the print field it ranged from a tiny pocket dictionary through to large coffee table style books, and newspapers that were bigger than all of them. (see pic below) My on-screen reading already went from a 2” phone screen through to a 24” iMac.
None of these are hard for me to read - not even the phone screen (the quality seems more Important than its size). One of the big surprises of the exercise was discovering how comfortable it was to real entire books on the little iTouch that I’d bought for music.
My range of daily reading covers anything from text messages on the phone through to novels, instructions manuals, news sites, on-line magazines, forums, email, sheet music, etc and there really didn’t seem to be any particular reason why I should need to read any of it on something that is the size of the common e-readers. In fact, there were many compelling reason not to use devices with 5” or 6” screens as they mostly tend to do a fairly poor job of displaying the more complex formatting found in many magazines and manuals - if they do it at all.
For instance, the Story and Kindle may have roughly the same external dimensions as some (unopened) paperbacks but their screen area is much smaller than the average paperback (half or less than the ones I compared it to) - and that’s just looking at a single page. A real book shows you two big pages at a time. This may or may not matter depending on what you're viewing.
RE-ASSESSED CONCLUSION:
For my needs there really isn’t any reason to assume that the size of a closed paperback novel is some sort of ideal or limiting size. In reality:
a) I’m comfortable with a far wider range of sizes, and
b) There isn’t a close correlation between e-reader screens and ‘real’ book sizes anyway.
WEIGHT:
This turned out to be even more unexpected than the size issue. My first guess was that anything much heavier than a regular paperback might soon feel uncomfortably bulky. However, after weighing a few of my books, I realised that wasn’t such a issue either. Plenty of my hard-backed books weigh as much as a small netbook, with some weighing several times as much (up to 11lbs or more).
I also looked at how I hold books when reading. Basically there were three variations:
1. Sitting at a desk or table, typically with the end of the spine resting on the table.
2. Sitting in an armchair with the book resting on my lap
3. Lying on the couch or in bed with the book leaning against a convenient leg (often my own
).
None of these required the sort of light weight that I might prefer if I was, for instance, standing up and reading for any length of time (which I don’t do).
CONCLUSION:
Anything up to 5lbs would be fine for my needs. In fact anything up to the weight of a cat, small dog or baby sits fine with me. In practice, I don’t find holding even the heavier printed books a problem when sitting at a desk or in an armchair. But, if I did feel like a change of position when reading electronically, any of the e-reading devices could be propped up and read ‘hands free’. I frequently read lying on the couch with the reading device leaning against my leg, only needing to use a hand at all when it’s time to click something to turn the page.