e-ink ebook readers sound fantastic

I am seriously thinking about buying myself an e-ink ebook reader for my birthday (in August). I love gadgets and I love books–and I have read ebooks on various devices over the years. eBooks got me to read a lot of classics and older fiction the past few years, including most of Edna Ferber’s books–and I enjoyed them. Books I wouldn’t have picked up as paper books.

e-Ink technology makes the new e-ink ebook readers very appealing to me, in a way that other ebook readers haven’t been; e-ink makes the print appear close to that of the printed page, so that it’s easy on your eyes. You can read them in direct sunlight, unlike ebooks on an iPod, PDA, or laptop (which is how I currently read my ebooks, and which creates eye strain). Most of the new e-ink readers also have an incredibly long battery life, allowing you to read for hundreds of hours (often 5000-8000 pages) before the reader needs a charge (unlike, again, a PDA or iPod). And most of the readers themselves are light.

The e-Ink ebook readers also have great storage; you can carry a ton of books with you at once and not add to muscle/back ache. I’d probably always carry the reader around in my backpack, and then always have a variety of books available for me to chose from on public transit, depending on my mood.

Astak Mentor 5″ e-ink ebook reader

My current top favorite choice–the one I think I’ll be purchasing–is the Astak Mentor (the 6″, because it’ll have the optional touchscreen and Wi-Fi. It’s not the cheapest, but it’s not the most expensive). (I’m also considering the Netronix ebook reader, and the Readius eReader–but the Readius is too expensive for me and lacks a touchscreen.) None of those readers are available yet, but the 5″ Astak Mentor should be available late August. It will be about $229-$249, still significantly cheaper than other e-ink ebook readers. (The Kindle is priced at $350, and many others go up to $599. That seems just crazy to me for an ebook reader–though I love books.) The Astak Mentor’s lower price is what first drew me to it, but it’s features also sound fantastic.

The 6″ and 9.5″ Astak Mentors have a touchscreen, which I love. I use my iPod Touch a lot, and I love the screen, though it’s not ideal for reading ebooks because of the backlight and power consumption. The Astak Mentor reads open formats (it’s not proprietary): text, pdf, rtf, and html, and it can display images that are BMP, JPG, and GIF (though all in greyscale). This makes it far more appealing than a reader like the Kindle. I, like many readers, have ebooks already in some of those formats. It also means I can load my own notes or writing onto it, if I wanted to, or even, I think, scanned comic strips. There is also the option of adding on Wi-Fi support, which means you could easily purchase and download ebooks. Or you can use a usb connection to upload the ebooks from your computer to the Mentor.

It has a pretty fast processor, good resolution, and comes with 32MB, with the ability to expand storage capabilities up to 4 GB using a SD card. That’s a lot of books! The Astak Mentor can also play MP3s–so I’m thinking that it could play audiobooks, if you have an open audiobook format (not DRM protected). And Astak will ship to both Canada and the US (I emailed them to find out) which is a good thing for Canadians.

I’m looking forward to the Astak Mentor’s release–I wish it was now!

I can’t see ebooks ever replacing paper books for me–I love my paper books too much. Holding them, turning the pages, being able to put post-it notes in the margins with my handwritten notes. Smelling the paper, holding the weight of the book, seeing at a glance how much of the book I have left. And ebooks are just too expensive, when, at least for me, they’re second purchases–books I want to read multiple times. I’ll almost always buy a paper book first. (Hey, ebook publishers–significantly lower the cost of ebooks, and you’ll find more people purchasing them.) Still, to have multiple book choices while on public transport, or waiting in line, or on vacation, is bliss. And being able to instantly purchase a book (if you have wi-fi support) satisfies that “gotta have it” when you find a new book you’re really excited about.

There’s a few other ebook readers out there that use e-ink, though most of them I consider to be out of the running for me, for various reasons. The Kindle’s wifi doesn’t work in Canada, you have to pay $0.10 each time you email yourself a converted .pdf or other ebook (I have many) to load onto the reader, and it’s not aesthetically pleasing (that really does affect me, though it probably shouldn’t, but hey, I love my gadgets.) And it doesn’t have a touch screen.

The Sony e-ink reader is really slow to initially load an ebook, has a slow-ish refresh rate between pages, often shows a ghost of the previous page, has too many buttons which get in the way, has a non-intuitive software interface, and doesn’t have a touch screen.

Others are way way out of my price range. And, there’s only one other reader that I’ve found with a touch screen. I really do like touchscreens. I think they’re intuitive, easy to use–especially with reading.

So the Astak Mentor is on the top of my list, and I can’t help being excited about it.

Do you read ebooks? What do you read them on? Do you have an e-ink reader?

July 6th, 2008