Quote:
Originally Posted by advocate2
Koland,
How kind of you to trash the Sony readers. My only question to you is: How many Library ebooks have you borrowed on your Kindle? I've owned the Sony 505, 600, and 900 and never had a problem with any of them. I also read on average one library ebook a week on my Sony. That's a savings of about $500 a year. Enjoy your Kindle. I sold my DX a month after I bought it and got fed up with being locked into Amazon.
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Well, I've only had it a week and spent the first four days trying to get my Sony library on it. I know many people who would have given up long before I managed to get it to work. Then again, perhaps it does work well, if you have no books yet; not that it helps the awful Sony bookstore interface or the problem the Sony software has of losing it's menus, which has happened to me several times and to my mother (who had it happen first), requiring the manual location and removal of a file (which I only found out about here, after a LOT of digging and after several unsuccessful uninstall/install attempts).
Plus, my library has no books, only audio. So, which reader I have is pretty much irrelevant (we are one of the larger counties in the state and all the large counties are audio only, while ALL the smaller counties are audio and books; which means it is likely a state law involved). In order to try a library book, I'll first have to find one to join (at added cost), then brave that software interface as well (btw, I've been a computer professional for three decades, so have used thousands and designed/programmed dozens of these; it takes a lot for me to truly despise a program as much as I do the Sony Reader Library at the current moment).
On the other hand, I have received hundreds of dollars in free books on the Kindle (and on the Sony, although fewer). The downside is that many are books I won't read (but my mother will, who is on the account). Others I will read, but may not have been my choice had I been purchasing, so are worth at least something. And from what I've been able to tell, when checking the Overdrive selection of nearby counties that do support ebooks, much of what they carry isn't what I would read, anyway (I don't need "dummies" books and generally avoid most Oprah selections and bestsellers). I would like to use the library option, but don't see it in the near future. Instead, this reader was for a boomerang kid to read on and for me to read the Sony books that I didn't get on the Kindle as well.
As for "locked" - they all are, to some extent, if you consider DRM. Try to buy an iBook selection for any other reader (or read it anywhere else). B&N is often in ereader format, which won't work on the other two. Sony and kobo (at least so far) are epubs that can be read elsewhere (but how long before the decide that proprietary is better?), so long as you ignore the LRX files that I have that they haven't moved to epub yet (and the two or three in my library that say they are epub, but can't be downloaded, for some unexplained reason; they just generate an error every time I try).
For those looking to buy this late in the game, I simply offered an observation on the differences in the reading (and book loading) experience. With Kobo coming out at such a low price point (and the touch screen? not such a big deal, to me - too slow and now my bookscreen is smudged), I'd suggest waiting to see how the US reviews go (as there will probably be a lot more info on them, by then).