Five-Year-old Versus Sony Reader (on Teleread)

[Daithi]

I have a Kindle DX on order and when I see my 4 and 6 year old niece and nephew over Christmas I plan on loading it up with some good children's books with lots of pictures. I still enjoy fairy tales with images by illustrators like Arthur Rackham and Kate Greenaway, and I hope they will enjoy them too. Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, A Christmas Carol, and so many other books are just way better with great illustrations.

I think it's pretty cool how young kids can be and adopt new technology. I remember being astounded when my 4-year-old son could work the VCR just as well as I could. I wonder if Gutenberg ever said, "Look at little Grettle. She doesn't even rip the pages out of the books like other children her age."

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by mjh215

One thing I do worry about is that most people seem to have a view of the plastic substrate eInk as some uber-material. You can still crease, dent and puncture it. It is very durable in that it will continue to work and won't crack like glass substrate, but you can still kill 'pixels' and leave lines, spots and such permanently damaged. Watch that insane destruction of the Esquire eInk for an example of what I mean.

Ever seen a kids toy that came through the growing pains of that kid without being scratched and dented? A good form factor will take care of the creasing, won't mind being dented (that's why I said, add some rubbery substance ) and if enough "pixels" are dead, its useful live has been over and it's time to replace it. As you probably do with a lot of electronics you buy for kids these days. I've no idea what the average life span of kids electronics is, these days... But if I see those DS's from my nephews, they don't mind a few dead pixels