Thursday 12th November 2009

Consumer Technology Review - E-BOOKS

What are e-Books and why is there a battle beginning?

We wanted to have a look at the growing market of "e-Books", I've been using the Sony eReader Touch Edition for the past couple of weeks, and partly because from next week their big rival in this area Amazon is to start shipping their very successful "Kindle" reader

eBook readers generally are the size of a paperback book, but a lot thinner, only about 5-10 mm thick.

The Sony eReader Touch comes in a few different colours - black, red and silver.

The Amazon Kindle only comes in a white colour.

According to the Association of American Publishers, US consumers spent $63m on ebooks in the first half of this year alone.

Ebook readers are expected to be one of the biggest-selling gifts this Christmas. In the United States around 900,000 ebook readers will be sold in the run-up to the festive period, according to Forrester Research, with Amazon's devices taking a 60pc share of the market, followed by Sony's Reader range, which will account for 35pc of sales.

Oprah is a big fan of the Kindle, and almost anything that Oprah says is great, turns to gold!

Are eBooks cheaper than a "real life" book?

You do tend to get discounts - they want to encourage the eBook market.

How many books can you carry on an eBook?

SONY eREADER Touch has a 512mb memory - about 350 books, but if that's not enough, you can expand it, as it has a slot for a standard SD card, or a Sony ProDuo card.

It also works much like a MP4 device and can store music and photos - it has a headphone socket, but the photos will only be viewed in two tone LCD, but does actually store them in full colour.

Slim and weighing a mere 250g, the Reader boasts a 160-book capacity and battery life lasting 7,000 page turns - that's 'War and Peace' five times over

How do you buy a book?

From online, and this is where there is a significant difference between the Kindle and the Sony eReader. The Kindle comes with WiFi and allows you to connect to the net and download from the website, whereas with the Sony eReader, at the moment it does not have WiFi and you have to connect to your laptop and download the book to that first - a bit like an iTunes system, and then download it to your Reader.

How many books are available in the online format?

Amazon say there are about 280,000 books available for their Kindle, while Sony say 10s of thousands of books available from their Sony eBook Store

Can you get free books on line?

www.Feedbooks.com www.Gutenberg.org: free electronic books, around 30,000 and growing, including novels, poetry, short stories, cookbooks, reference works and periodicals. www.ManyBooks.net Choose from over 24,000 eBooks to download for free.

Plus, a nice development is that Irish libraries are already involved with eBooks and eReaders.

*****eBooks for the Sony Reader are now available from South Dublin County Council Libraries and from Dun Laoghaire Rathdown Library.

Browse the titles, choose, put into digital basket and proceed to checkout.

Then download titles.

Limit of 10 per card and user defined borrowing periods of 7, 14 and 21 days.

Nintendo 100 classic book collection

What are the prices?

Estimated Selling Price for Reader Pocket Edition is €199 and for Reader Touch Edition is €289. Retailers are free to set their own prices.

Amazon Kindle $279 - 186.705 EUR (plus shipping and import costs of €44) so more like €230

Who might use them?

Besides from antype of reader, students or academics might like using them, as you can contain hundreds of books on one, and also you can make and keep notes in the margins on the screen using a stylus (Sony) or the keyboard that comes on the Kindle

Downsides?

Downside of the Kindle is that it has its own text format, whereas the Sony eBook can handle popular formats such as PDF, text and ePub, which are much more widely available.

How long does the battery last for?

The Pocket Edition device can store approximately 350 standard eBooks and provides up to two weeks of reading on a single battery charge.

6,800 page turns or 7,500 for a Reader Touch EditionT

Other alternatives?

Google Editions - allows you to buy and read the book online, but you don't actually download it to your eReader

Cool-er E Book

Elonex eReader

Bookeen Cybook

Bebook E-reader

iPhone Stanza app or you can get the Kindle app as a free download apparently.

iPhone Comic Zeal app