Florian's Blog

Sony eReader vs Amazon Kindle 2.

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Electronic books are not my cup of tea. I resisted as long as I could to move to digital content. Nothing can match the touch of a book, the smell of inked paper, the easy access to any page, sneaking preview of chapters and the legacy you leave to younger generations.

Anyway we have to live with our times and I decided to give ebook a try. My daughter has a Kindle and reads about 2 books per week. She takes it everywhere.

I personally find the Kindle ugly and lacking basic features making any attempt to try the device worthless. Choice was limited to Sony eReader or Kindle. Soon new devices will be released- obviously upcoming readers can only get better.

The #1 difference between Sony and Amazon is accessibility. Kindle is an online device with wireless capabilities (limited to US market and soon to be open to international) as the Sony eReader is an offline device where you need to connect to your desktop/laptop in order to download books.

I do not see the need to download a book wirelessly as a mandatory feature. It’s not a news or weather service. You can download hundreds of books on a Sony and be set for a long long time. The only thing you need to add a book to Sony eReader is a USB cable. You can even use memory cards. Sony supports all memory card formats adding more flexibility and more storage to the ebook.

Being wireless and connected to ONLY Amazon store is an extremely restrictive feature of the Kindle. Wireless doesn’t mean openness. You must buy your books from the 350,000 titles available. It’s a lot -I agree. But Sony eReader gives you access to Google’s library of 1million FREE books and tons of other libraries accessible online in all languages.

One of the top features Sony added is the touch-screen ability. I love flipping pages using my finger. Makes digital content user-friendlier for an old man like me.

At last my choice for the Sony eReader PRS-600 was final after someone showed me Calibre. Calibre is a magic piece of software that turns ANY digital content into a reading material on the Sony eReader. Magazines, word docs, books, tutorials…anything you can see on your computer can be readable on the Sony.

It gives also access to ebooks purchased by a friend who willingly lends you his book. One thing Kindle cannot handle. If you bought a book and your wife wants to read it on HER Kindle – she cannot transfer your purchase. Recently Amazon pulled OUT books that were purchased on the Kindle store directly from users device. This is inadmissible for me. When I buy a book – it’s mine and I can decide to lend it to my kids without violating any copyrights. There is no fear one will come to my place and take it off the shelf.

If books were not going from one hand to another – literature would have died long time ago. I do not encourage anyone to steal but I must admit it’s a killer feature.

Sony has learned from the ATRAC days that open file formats are more preferable than proprietary ones. By supporting the ePub format, Sony’s essentially guaranteeing that your digital library will always have a home. Stick with Kindle’s proprietary format, and you’re forever a slave to Amazon’s device.

Same feature that made iPod so popular. Take an mp3, drag it on iTunes and enjoy the music. No question asked.

Conclusion: my subjective review goes towards Sony eReader. Three good reasons: cheaper, better, richer. For a detailed review of Sony PRS-600 read Ilene Hoffman post on http://www.electronista.com/reviews/sony-prs-600-touch-ereader.html

Tags: amazon, ebook, epub, ereader, kindle, prs-600, Sony

This entry was posted on Friday, October 16th, 2009 at 6:16 pm and is filed under Apple, Content, Geek, Sony, Technology, google, itunes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.