Help me, oh wise flist

[ishtar79]

So I've been dowloading e-books like crazy for my MBA final project thing because duh, academic books are expensive. And this post should in no way be considered related to the current "to download illegally or not" clusterfuck, because-duh. Anyone who knows me even a little bit can guess my views on file sharing.

I'm thinking of getting an e-reader, but don't know what a good option is. Obviously I covet the allmighty iPad, but it's a liiiitle bit over my budget right now. Can anyone recommend me a decent e-reader somewhat in the lower price range?

Comments

[elf]

Mobileread's Which one should I buy? forum is great for helping people sort out the pros & cons of various ebook readers.

The good news: they're all great for casual reading. And while they have their differences, the general rule is "people are happy with the one they got."

The bad news: nothing is great for PDFs, because PDFs are designed with *pages* in mind, and any screen that isn't the same size as the page is going to have problems. Especially scanned PDFs, if you're working with those; they can't easily convert to anything else, because they're images, not text.

If you mostly need to read letter-sized PDFs, look for something with a larger screen: the Kindle DX, or Hanlin A9, or Pocketbook 903. (Ereader chart of doooom may be useful. Or may just be overwhelming; that's a lot of data.) If you need *color* PDFs, there's really nothing good in the dedicated-ereader market right now; you'd be better off with a netbook. (Or an iPad. Which, as you've noted, is pricey as hell.)

[ishtar79]

Oh, thanks for the link!

See, the PDF issues is why I'd rather wait, because most of the books I d/l are in that format. I also really, REALLY want to read comic books on it, for which I probably need an iPad. The prices are bound to drop eventually, right?

[elf]

The prices will drop, and there'll be a market for used iPads as soon as people figure out that they're not, in fact, laptop replacements, and other tablets will show up.

I'm annoyed that I can't read comics on my Sony Reader, but on the other hand, I don't know that I'd ever get any *work* done if I could put *everything* I wanted to read on one device.