mikepas.org

Some recent "events" have had me thinking very hard about finally breaking down and buying a dedicated ebook reader such as the Amazon Kindle or Barns and Nobel Nook.

As many around me already know one of the things I love about being a smartphone owner is the ability to carry along a lot of ebooks for casual reading every day.  Over the past two years I've also accumulated quite the collection of ebooks and on any given day there will be between 20 and 30 ebooks loaded up on my phone.  Some I enjoy reading more than once, others a one off read that is deleted after reading (not really deleted but just removed from my phone and still on my home computer).  My smartphone ebook reader of choice is Mobipocket Reader as it's multiplatform and has a dead easy interface.  I've used Mobipocket on all my smartphones:  Windows Mobile and Blackberry.  It's even loaded up on my Palm Pre via the Classic Application (emulated PalmOS).

On the Pre it's a bit of a cobbled together affair as it's not a "native" webOS application but runs via a virtual copy of PalmOS.  It's never been a perfect solution but it's getting the job done and I always figured I could hold off until Amazon released a version of their Kindle software for webOS or someone else released a decent ereader application.  It's worked fairly well until the recent release of the latest upgrade to the Pre, webOS v. 1.3.1.

Since the latest update to the phone operating system Classic has been crashing more than a discount airline!  I don't know what's broken in the latest update but after dealing with constant crashes for four days now I'm about fed up enough to start looking at two options, a new phone platform or buying a dedicated ebook reader.  As I pointed out in an earlier post I'm already putting the Pre on notice for various reasons, this is just the latest "issue" to crop up.  Getting a new phone is a drastic option so I'm looking at the new reader option.

I've had an off and on again lust for the Kindle since it was first released two years ago and the Nook is certainly an interesting new platform.  I'm just trying to wrap my brain around the concept of paying so much money for a single use device.  And one thing that has really kept me from pulling the trigger may sound rather trivial.  Neither device has back lighting!  That's kind of important to me as during the winter months my daily commute to and from work includes quite a bit of "dark" time.  There's also the fact that it would be one more device I'd have to schlep around with me and charge on a daily basis.

The Kindle already has an established base, wireless book ordering and downloading, it's a second generation device which means bugs have had a chance to be worked out, and it's from Amazon which is a company I trust.  However, a draw back is the ease of side loading third party content such as my existing ebook library.  It can be done, it just requires some hoops to be jumped through.  Finally, there really isn't a way for me to handle the device before I were to order it as there is no "brick and mortar" presence of the device.

The Nook is brand new, has a larger selection of ebooks via Barns and Nobel, is side load and multi-format friendly, wireless book downloads, and can be handled in the store before you buy it.  But it's a first generation device and hasn't really landed in the hands of new users yet for any decent reviews to be posted.

Of course there are also readers from Sony and others but really I think it's going to come down to being a competition between the Nook and Kindle if for no other reason than the resources that Amazon and B&N are going to be putting into both platforms.

If I do decide to buy a dedicated reader platform I'll probably wait until the Nook is in the local stores so I can play with it and get a feel for it.