I started writing this as a comment in response to Dave’s question and realized it was getting long enough to be a post so here it is:

There are quite a few devices out there in the market. The main ones are from: iRex, Hanlin, Bookeen, Sony and Amazon. Each has its advantages and disadvantages.

Almost all of the devices these days use the new generation Vizplex eInk screen, so their display is almost the same. I say almost because in some cases it isn’t, like with the new Sony PRS-700. Adding the touch screen capability has reportedly detracted from the crispness of the screen. Anyways, aside from the screen the differences are therefore in these areas:

1. Formats supported - ideally one should match the source and format of their reading material with the ‘right’ kind of device that is able to display it in the best way.
2. Price
3. Build quality / looks
4. Extra features - music playback, annotating, wireless connectivity etc.

I went with the Sony instead of the Kindle or one of the others for these reasons:

1. The Kindle supports less formats and the main place to get books is Amazon via the wireless (phone) network, which isn’t available outside the US, not even Canada.
2. The Sony fully supports PDF’s with a nice feature of re-flowing the text to handle the full A4 size.
3. The Sony is cheaper.
4. The Sony has some nice 3rd party tools like Calibre and converters like PDF2LRF. I like to tinker with those sort of tools. It also means that it basically supports all formats, either natively or by using a converter.
5. The Sony looks more sexy. This might not sound like an important reason but this device is used by way of staring at it for long periods of time :-)

For someone in the US it’s probably worth it to take a closer and harder look at the Kindle. Especially if you’re already getting most of your reading material from Amazon. There are rumors of a next gen device coming “soon” btw.

Lastly, there’s a really good forum for discussing the pros and cons of devices, following industry news and downloading royalty-free ebooks called MobileRead.com. I lurked there for quite a while doing my research before pulling the trigger on the purchase.

More Readers Are Picking Up Electronic Books - NYTimes.com

“E-books will become the go-to-first format for an ever-expanding group of readers who are newly discovering how much they enjoy reading books on a screen,” said Markus Dohle, chief executive of Random House, the world’s largest publisher of consumer books.

I agree. I love my Sony Reader PRS-505. Since I got it 3-4 weeks ago it has easily become my top favorite gadget. I’ve been reading a lot more, and for a lot less. This includes material of immediate interest, classics and stuff from way down my mental wishlist. I have about 76 ebooks on my device and I’m reading maybe 5 or
6 concurrently depending on mood, time of day etc. Stuff like popular fiction paperbacks, trading related material, and classics by authors such as Tolstoy and Charles Dickens. When was the last time you thought to yourself: “hmm I feel like to go down to the bookstore to buy something by Tolstoy.”

Alas, it’s not a cheap device. Especially if you live outside the USA. The Sony Reader I got is only sold in the US, Canada and recently in the UK. So I had to get mine from eBay, brand new with the cover+light accessory and after shipping it was $400. You could buy a mini laptop for this price, but that would be far inferior to reading from a dedicated reader. So why do I like it so much?

1. The number one reason is, of course, the screen. The eInk technology is fantastic. Much more comfortable and easier on the eyes than reading off LCD/LED screens. It looks just like paper, you can read it from any angle, even in normal bright daylight.
2. I now carry dozens of books with me in a very slim and lightweight package you can comfortably handle with one hand. Imagine lying in bed late night fully horizontal and holding a laptop, even a netbook, above your head for an hour vs. holding a slim 250grams device.
3. Space wise, I put in a 2GB SD card that I had lying around and at 76 books I’m not even using a quarter of it.
4. Books are cheaper. The new ones due to bigger discounts and no shipping fees, and the old classics are available completely for free from places like The Gutenberg project
5. Because the books are electronic it’s so much easier to just download them instantly and then immediately back them up and not have to worry about losing them, damaging them, or lugging them around when moving.
6. They are more environmentally friendly - no dead trees (see, Klaatu, we can change ;-) nice movie btw)
7. Battery life is super, you can read thousands of pages without going thru the battery

The downsides?

1. Not all books are available in a digital format, but enough are that it’s not a big deal.
2. The price, as mentioned is not cheap. But it costs less now than when I bought and will probably pay off for itself in under a year if you read a lot.
3. I am seriously running out of USB capacity and have another cable on my desk lol

All-in-all, a really fantastic device. Highly recommended.

MacBook Pro: Distorted video or no video issues

In July 2008, NVIDIA publicly acknowledged a higher than normal failure rate for some of their graphics processors due to a packaging defect. At that same time, NVIDIA assured Apple that Mac computers with these graphics processors were not affected. However, after an Apple-led investigation, Apple has determined that some MacBook Pro computers with the NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics processor may be affected. If the NVIDIA graphics processor in your MacBook Pro has failed, or fails within two years of the original date of purchase, a repair will be done free of charge, even if your MacBook Pro is out of warranty.

Ha! “Apple-led investigation”, yeah sure. How about thousands of people turning their machines in for repair, Sherlocks, did that kind of hinted that something might be wrong? And it took what, “only” 6 months for them to recognize this and issue a statement and a promise to repair the machines. I was lucky I got mine repaired under warranty as it failed just before its end so I don’t have to go through the process of claiming back anything.

The cost of the above for AAPL: $200 million charge to earnings. Can they claim this from NVDA maybe? :-)

Time to keep up and upgrade Wordpress. Hopefully this will go through smoothly, if not, I’ll be back soon..

Nice work by Google, not only is there a new feature to apply themes but they also released plenty of really nice looking ones from day one. Neat. Now we need want the same for the Reader.

P.S. wow what a massive down trend yesterday, one of those days you wish you have taken more trades and on larger size. Still, can’t complain, at least it was an easy day.

Scott Hanselman’s Computer Zen - Hands On - Sony e-ink Reader PRS-500 Reviewed

I’ve got a folder on my desktop called “Stuff to Read” where I put all the PDFs that I always mean to get to. I usually read them on long plane flights, except reading on the laptop on a plane is so unsatisfying and lasts only a few hours until the laptop battery dies.

.. plus the LCD (or LED) backlighting isn’t too kind on the eyes. I’ve got literally hundreds of PDfs waiting to be read but I just shudder at the thought of spending those hours at the screen again. I need to go down to a Sony showroom and check out their eReaders maybe it’s worth the splurge investment. From what I’ve seen online the latest model the PRS 700 allows reading both in daylight AND dark conditions which would be neat. Too bad it doesn’t have wifi.

I’ve been on Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 Pre-release (a nightly build) for a couple of days now. Yes I like living on the edge ;-)

I thought it’ll go all ‘babak - firefox 3 sucks‘ on me but it’s been as stable as FF 3, i.e. zero issues on my system. All my extensions work fine as well (some were force-installed just like on v3). I can see some small speed improvements, mainly on pages with heavy javascript like gmail. The release notes show a few minor features were added which I’m not using so it’s mainly just snappier websites for me.

Newer Chrome, Firefox show speed improvements | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone - CNET

Ah yes, forgot to mention to see the real speed improvements turn on TraceMonkey JavaScript optimization by going into the about:config and setting to true these two preferences: javascript.options.jit.chrome and javascript.options.jit.content.