Ignore What I Said - I Bought an eReader!

In a previous blog entry I wrote about the features I want in an eReader so that it could replace a printed book.  None of the products currently on the market give me everything I want, though a few are close.  Something changed.  Click read more to find out what.

With a nearby Border's retail store closing, I dropped by to see if any bargains were to be had.  I didn't find a great discount on printed books.  The best prices I saw was about 40% off the list price.  That's not significant compared to the price I typical pay at Amazon.com, especially when including my affiliate commission.

What I did find that was available at a deep discount was the Kobo eReader.  This is a basic reader pre-loaded with a large number of public domain books.  It has a decent amount of memory for storage, good battery life for an electronic device and an ePaper display one generation old.  I bought it for about $50.  It has Wi-Fi that links it to the Border's online bookstore which is not going out of business.

It supports two freely available ebook formats: PDF and epub.

The common PDF is nearly worthless in my opinion.  Each page is rendered accurately, as far as I can tell.  Full pages appear exactly the same as appears on my computer screen when displaying a PDF file.  Unfortunately the small format of the Kobo reader makes reading the display near impossible.  The resolution combined with the small size are not sufficient for reading with my eyes.  The display can zoom but it is not useable to move the display around the page to read it, especially if the page is of wide format.

The less common epub format is very nice for reading text in the Kobo ereader.  It is not good for displaying graphics.  When reading a novel, this is pleasant experience.  I've read two 800 page books so far and I'm surprised at the experience.