Palm Reader
The amazing thing about the Sony Reader is that the screen looks like paper.
books/technology
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As if we needed another digital gadget tied to our hips, here comes Sony with a new e-book reader. Electronic books, you say? Bah! Long live print! Who wants to read on book on a screen, anyway?
Actually, the amazing thing about the Sony Reader is that the screen looks like paper — seriously. It uses technology that's easy on the eyes with no backlighting; you can even read it outside on a sunny day without squinting. Unfortunately, it also means no color, so you won't be reading any graphic novels on it anytime soon. It's light at 8.8 ounces, is about the size of a paperback and holds up to 80 books or so at a time.
And what of the books? Well, many publishers are offering books electronically, often at prices lower than the print version. On Sony's own e-book site you can buy Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Infidel for $13.59 instead of the $26 list price. While many available titles are of the best-selling variety, there are about 18,000 titles on hand, and there are some pretty good deals. You can get the entire His Dark Materials Trilogy by Philip Pullman for $7.19.
Don't think about swapping them with your book-loving friends, though. They're digital rights management (DRM) protected, meaning the files you buy and transfer to the Reader can't be shared. But there's nothing stopping you from loading up a bunch of free, out-of-copyright books from www.gutenberg.org, and the device will read any PDF, TXT, DOC or RTF file. It'll play music and display pictures, too — though on a black and white screen, it's hard to imagine why you would want to.
Even so, why splurge on such a thing? Personal library builders may not like it, because you can't show off your collection, but you pulp fiction readers and hardcore library-goers who take a love-'em-and-leave-'em approach to reading may've found a new best friend, as long as you can afford the $349.99 price tag.
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