As mentioned I’m flying to Amsterdam tonight. Actually, I’m flying from Hong Kong to London and then to Amsterdam. Since my laptop battery won’t last that long, I’m bringing along two books, The Little Schemer and The Trouble with Physics, both of which I started before but haven’t finished yet.
Lately I’ve been reading a lot of electronic books as PDFs. I couldn’t take my computer book library with me to Hong Kong, so I bought electronic versions of what books I could find. I’ve actually come to enjoy some of the features e-books provide, such as quick search, annotations, and bookmarking. But reading on my laptop screen is still not as nice as reading paper (and it strains my eyes).
So I’ve been on the lookout for a good e-book reader, primarily for reading PDFs. The two best options on the market right now are Sony’s Reader and “iRex’s Illiad.”http://www.irextechnologies.com/products/iliad From the reviews I’ve read about Sony’s device, its use as a PDF reader is limited. I haven’t seen any decent reviews of the Illiad. Both are over-priced in my opinion, but I’m starting to get desperate. Being able to take several books and articles with me to read on boats, trains or planes (let alone the beach) is a convenience I need.
The critical features of a good e-book reader are long battery life and excellent screen contrast. The best screen technology out there right now is E-Ink which despite only being gray-scale is perfect in just about every other way. Smartphones and PDAs are simply too small and have too poor of battery life to be seriously considered.
If anyone knows of other solutions, I’d love to hear of them.
