Give me an E, for e-reader
Amazon has one. So do Barnes & Noble and Sony. Toss in iRex, and you have just the start of what will eventually be a long list of electronic readers that promise to reduce the number of paper pages you tote around.
I'm use Amazon’s Kindle2 and like its 3G-coupled store, which makes downloading samples and buying books and subscriptions easy. I don't think I'd use a model with a larger display much; the Kindle2’s size is part of its appeal for me. I also use the iPhone version of the Kindle reader, which makes all of my Kindle book purchases available on my phone, even if my Kindle is somewhere else.
There’s a lot of buzz about e-readers, but you may wonder where to begin if you want to buy one. I've been telling people to do their research online at each company's Web site. You should have a pretty good idea of how you plan to use the e-reader and what content you'd like to have in this portable, digital format. If newspaper and magazine subscriptions matter to you, you should look at devices that offer passive, wireless downloads. This way, the next editions of your chosen publications will be waiting for you when they’re ready, as they are on my Kindle2. I only had to set up my subscriptions and leave my Kindle's wireless connection turned on.
If copying documents from your computer or authoring documents is important, you should look for devices those features and read user reviews.
There's a new place to research e-readers. My friend Roger Fidler, director for digital publishing at the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri, has published an e-reader holiday buying guide (http://bit.ly/44PMfU). It includes side-by-side comparisons of the features and physical characteristics of five e-reader models. I'm guessing he will expand the list as new devices hit the market.
People will continue to read paper pages of books, magazines and newspapers, but e-readers will change how many they read. Just how many is the big question. Stay tuned.
