I don't know if you're a PC person or a Mac person, but the Sony e-reader doesn't play well with Macs. You can load text files and PDFs, but you can't connect to the Sony bookstore.

I will agree with that. If I didn't travel all the time, and love to read, I probably would have gotten rid of this thing, however the convenience of being able to carry 20+ books in something the size, and weight, of a paperback book is worth it to me....

I agree. I love the feel of a book but when you are humping around a heap of other equipment, having all your books on an ereader is great.

I use my Sony Clie, which is smaller than either the Sony reader or the Kimble but is just the right size to be able to pull it out and read on the train, standing in queues, etc - places that I don't bother to dig a book out even when I have one with me.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I agree...I don't think it would ever replace paper books (I don't think I'd take an ebook reader into the bath tub), but I love the idea of not running out of things to read while I'm travelling.

I run parallels on my Mac and connect quite nicely.

I use a Bookeen Cybook, which supports Mobipocket format and pdfs (plus various image formats and MP3 music). It's lighter and thinner than the Sony and certainly MUCH better than the horrible Kindle device.

You can buy books from mobipocket, ebooks, fictionwise and others.

Kindle has a great business model, but the hardware is terrible, and the wireless kills your battery-life.

Amazon owns Mobi, and the Kindle uses the mobi format, but with an extra security twist. There are various hacks that might allow you to port your mobi book to Kindle or maybe even your Amazon book to the Cybook.

http://www.bookeen.com/ebook/ebook-reading-device.aspx
http://www.booksonboard.com/index.ph...duct&PRODUCT=5

GBP 245 or USD 399

...but they are sold out at the moment

Right. Then let me amend my posting #16 to say... Macs don't play well with e-books unless you install Windows and possibly Parallels on your Mac and spend a couple hundred $$ in the process. And that assumes you have a Mac with an Intel processor.

I've been thinking about getting the Sony eBook - sat next to a guy with one on a flight late last year. One bonus for me is that I'm avid S/F fan, as was my seatmate. Turns out that Baen makes a number of electronic titles available at no charge. Not sure if you can load them on Kindle or not...

http://www.baen.com/library/defaultTitles.htm

Cheers,
Jeff

I sounds like the Kindle will be a better product.....but like many first-generation models, it needs some improvements, which will be made based on customer reviews. I'll wait for the next generation to come out.

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My mom went and bought me a Bookeen for an early birthday present...just in time for a busy travel month. My first impressions....quite compact, easy to use and pretty!

I just bought the Sony ereader at Borders and did my research on the devices BUT didn't check out enough the available books! Turns out it was a big waste of money for me because the books you can buy are very limited! And, it' proprietary format so if Sony doesn't have it, you can't buy it anywhere. I couldn't believe they didn't even offer popular travel guides! Couldn't even find a Grisham book which I figured would be their main offering type. It's just awful!

canalgal: I find it very surprising that you can't find enough books on the Sony reader to keep you entertained. It's true that the ebookstore doesn't have every author (or even every bestselling author) you'd find in a bookstore, but it usually has a large proportion of current bestsellers and is filling in those authors' backlists. While Grisham doesn't seem to have signed on (no great loss, as far as I'm concerned), there are thousands of crime and mystery novels (my favourites). As an avid reader, I've found that while I can't always find exactly the book I want, I can always find a few dozen books (new and old) to keep myself entertained.

Initially I was also surprised that the ebook store doesn't have travel guides, but now that I've had the book for a while, I've been thinking that the technology doesn't suit that kind of reference book yet. While it's possible to jump around in the book using a table of contents or specifying a page number, it's designed more for reading page-by-page. You use battery power every time you flip a page but not while you're reading a page. Flipping back and forth in a travel guide would use up a lot of power, and also the layout of the pages isn't developed very well yet for complicated page layouts, which travel guides usually have.

Jeff, Thanks so much for posting this link! Great site!

Sony opens e-book reader to outside publishers