Sony Reader v. Amazon Kindle: the next round
By Marjorie Kehe | 03.20.09
The e-book market is still up for grabs. And in a sign that Sony is far from ready to let Amazon get a lock on the market, yesterday it announced a deal with Google to include in its eBook Store over 500,000 public domain books scanned by the search company.
That means that while the Amazon Kindle allows readers to select for purchase from among 245,000-plus books (in addition to assorted newspapers, magazines, and blog content), the Sony Reader will now offer more than 600,000 book titles.
The big difference, however, is that many of the Sony Reader titles will be those books in the public domain and not more recent releases. In that area the Kindle will still have the edge.
But perhaps the point most significantly made by Sony’s announcement is the one spelled out by Information Week: “E-books and the publishing industry may actually have a future.”
Comments
2. Dr. Sessions | 03.20.09
…but having hundreds of books, and ability to download hundreds of thousands of books - taking up the same space as 1 book is a huge step forward…
3. Renee F | 03.20.09
I absolutely love my digital reader. I admit, I was originally opposed to the idea, but after trying one, I fell in love instantly. I love the fact that I can have several books at my disposal simultaniously. I recently read a paperback (not digitally) and found the book to be a bulkier alternative.
4. Rick Saxton | 03.20.09
I have a lot of e-books on my computer, which I would like to read. But I don’t like reading them on a computer. I like to relax while reading. So an e-book reader is definitely in my future when the price comes down and it can handle several document types. Especially including PDF. Another benefit of e-book readers, besides comfort, is that you can carry several “books” with you at one time. So if you get bored with one book, you can read another.
5. Dave Hoyman | 03.20.09
In response to Rick Saxton, the Sony ready does read multiple formats, including txt, Word, ePub and native PDF and more, and you can even zoom in on them and turn the reader sideways and use landscape mode. And without any conversion needed. And with the two memory card slots you can take your PDFs and hundreds and hundreds of books with you and the reader still on weighs ten ounces. Try one, you’ll fall in love immediately, as i did.
6. Melinda_W | 03.20.09
I’m not sure that I understand what difference this makes in relation to the desirability of one e-book reader over the other. The same public domain electronic books are available from manybooks.net formatted for the Amazon Kindle. It’s hard to search the website from the Kindle, so I generally just download them to my computer and transfer them via USB to my Kindle. However, that’s the same process that the Sony uses.
I think this is pretty much a non-event.
9. Francoism | 03.22.09
I never was a book lover. I don’t care for their smell, look and feel. I live in a small flat and can’t accumulate “things” like CDs and books. eBooks are perfect for me. Love them. Amazon’s product is not available in my country so I went for the Sony Reader. Loving it. Try it out, you’ll be surprised.
10. JD Fisher | 03.22.09
I’ve had a Kindle for almost a year now. My sister has the Sony. Here are two main differences:
1. The books and documents stored on the Kindle are searchable but not so on the Sony. This makes a huge difference if you use your Kindle as a portable reference library (articles, lectures, dictionaries, commentaries, etc.) and not just an eBook reader.
2. The Kindle connects to resources through both USB cable to a PC/Mac and a free wireless connection while the Sony only uses USB cable. This difference allows the Kindle to access resources from anywhere. From any Internet connected computer I can email documents, books, Web pages and more directly to the Kindle. And, from Amazon’s Web site I can send books and book samples electronically to the Kindle.
For the way I use the Kindle these are two significant factors.
Hope this helps.
11. weijiajun | 03.24.09
I love my sony reader and even more so then that of the kindle. Granted I don’t use it for work related things such as searching, nor do I find myself needing to download books on the fly so the kindle didn’t have much draw for me there. I also didn’t like the keyboard on the kindle as it made it feel a little more lopsided and really wasn’t that good to type on. With my sony I have tons of space with the expansions and am so glad it supports native pdfs without needing an experimental conversion.
However, if I were to give a gift to my family I would probably go with a kindle as they are not tech savy at all, and the kindle is perfect for technophobes.
12. daffy4u | 03.25.09
“The big difference, however, is that many of the Sony Reader titles will be those books in the public domain and not more recent releases. In that area the Kindle will still have the edge.”
It’s not “many”, it’s “most” of the Sony Reader titles are public domain. Over 500,000 of the 600,000 are PD books (Sony had a number of PD books before Google joined them).
Also, some of the scanned books are very poorly done. You can see an example in the link below.
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showpost.php?p=406281&postcount=3
13. Pat O | 03.27.09
I was about to buy a Kindle, but the price difference between that and the Sony prompted me to look more deeply into both. I ended up going with the Sony device because the city I live in, Phoenix, offers free lending of ebooks through its website for library members. It’s called the Phoenix Digital Library and I can check-out ebooks for up to 21 days at a time for free. They use the Adobe Digital Editions format, which does not work with the Kindle but works perfectly with my Sony ereader.
14. Sunshine | 03.27.09
In my city I have been downloading books to my pda for free from my local library for some time now. Therefore, I would chose the Sony reader over the Kindle. Also, the card slot on the Sony reader could really come in handy.
15. Matthew | 05.06.09
I’m getting to the end of my undergraduate degree (philosophy & politics) and one of these e-readers would have been incredibly useful. We use a large number of journal articles in .pdf format, which I either have to read on a computer screen (not easy on the eyes) or print out - which is expensive.
People love books and are dismissive of e-readers, but once you actually see one for real, you realise just how good the screens on them are.
Trackbacks/Pingbacks
Leave a Comment
We do not publish all comments, and we do not publish comments immediately. The comments feature is a forum to discuss the ideas in our stories. Constructive debate - even pointed disagreement - is welcome, but personal attacks on other commenters are not, and will not be published.
Tip: Do not write a novel. Keep it short. We will not publish lengthy comments. Come up with your own statements. This is not a place to cut and paste an email you received. If we recognize it as such, we won't post it.
Please do not post any comments that are commercial in nature or that violate copyrights.
Finally, we will not publish any comments that we regard as obscene, defamatory, or intended to incite violence.
1. Burney Huff | 03.20.09
Ebooks may work for some people. They won’t work for me. If I need to carry something in my hand or in my luggage so that I can read a book, it will be the book.
Just because something can be done because technology allows it doesn’t mean that it should be done.