e-readers

Whether to buy an e-reader or not... It's been a question that I've been thinking about for quite a while.

I first heard about e-readers and e-ink when my dad suggested I worked for them (e-ink) when I was thinking about what to do with my life, and was considering various environmental jobs. The concept is simple, e-ink allows easy to read text on a small screen. It is supposed to look like paper, and can be read in bright sunlight. The devices are highly portable, about as thin as a box of matches and weigh less than a paper back. It is normally bigger than your average book. The battery typically lasts for roughly 7000 page turns (when the text is being displayed it hardly uses any power), which is enough for at least a weeks serious reading.

The reason for me to buy one would be mostly environmental, however the speed at which you are able to download and start reading a new book is definitely a plus.

Environmentally I'm not totally convinced, but let's look at the pros and cons. In the e-readers favour is the fact that every book is displayed on the same device - this means no printing and transporting the books around (I normally order books online), however the life cycle of the e-reader has to be taken into account. The manufacture includes all nasties of all our electronic gadgets - mining, plastics, chemicals - they'll all be there. Of course there is also the disposal - I haven't yet found a disposable e-reader!Greenpeace has done a great job highlighting the problem. So what have I found?

There seem to be 4 big names of purpose built e-reader. They are (with links to their websites:

Bebook
Iliad
Sony eBook
Kindle

All four are roughly similar, except that the Sony and Kindle only let you use formats that they specify - the Kindle particularly as it only lets you buy books from Amazon.com (who sell it), and you actually have to pay to read .pdfs on it (which immediately ruled it out for me). The other two run on linux based systems and allow you to read a number of formats on them.

The problem with all of them however, and my reason for not buying one at all, is simply the selection of books currently available as e-books. There just aren't enough (and particularly not of the ones I want to read). Having an e-reader and still having to buy the odd real book just seems silly - more just e-showing off, geek factor.

So lessons I've learnt through all this - I still need to join the library, I need to get my book club swapping the books we have rather than all reading the same book at the same time, and lastly, that I won't be buying an e-reader for a long time.

Shame though, could've impressed my mom.