One of the devices that has enticed any and all self-respected book worms, is the digital Sony Reader that uses e-ink technology. It looks the company has started to listen to the complaints that their products receive, and this time around they really brought out a much nicer product.
Besides the obvious technological improvements, this player is identified by any Mac or Windows computer as a standard USB drive, and can have it’s memory upgraded thanks to it’s SD slot (sorry folks, no SDHC).
The Engadget reviewer, Ryan Block, still thinks that the $300 price is a little expensive for what it is, but this time around he is much more satisfied with the hardware it’s general response.
Although I find this technology great, I’d rather wait to see this technology embedded into another device like a cellphone. But for any avid book reader, this is definitely a device worth watching out for.
I bought one of these, after deciding only the week before they were released that the PRS-500 (the 1st gen) fell short of what I wanted by quite a bit. I’ve been converting fanfiction and books from project gutenburg since I bought it, and I have a couple dozen books on hand, wherever I go, in case things get dull. it weighs very little, has a great screen, and is reasonably fast at turning pages (generally done refreshing by the time I move my eyes back to the top of the page), though there’s a sizeable delay (still less than a minute) when opening a large file off the SD card for the first time. The image quality is great in the 8 gray shades for displaying images, though I don’t think I’ll use it for that very much.