My Sony eReader

So, in the middle of last summer I decided that it would be a good idea to purchase a digital eReader.  Because I’m a Sony snob (dammit, SNE! Will you PLEASE stop sucking!), I refused to look seriously at any other type of readers and shelled out over three hundred dollars for the Daily Edition.

I’ve loved this thing since I got it.

Amazing? Why, yes I am, thank you very much. The reader's not bad either.

You might say I overpaid…and I’d agree.  Especially with the Kindle at, what is it now?, $140?  Yeah, there’s no question that I overpaid for the device itself, but this thing is turning itself worthwhile far quicker than I thought it would.

You see, I keep a little spreadsheet of all the books I’ve read on it with all the paperback prices of everything I read for free in the public domain.  I’ve kept this little log with diligence for months now, and do you know what I’ve found?

After about nine months, I’ve already almost read half of the eReader back.

That’s a beautiful thing.

My girlfriend has that cheap Kindle, and I like it too, but there are differences that keep me a steady fan of my little guy.

Firstly, the screen on mine is much bigger while the lines are kind of dictated on the Kindle.  What does that mean?  That means that I can read significantly more per page.  Why is that important?  Because with electronic book readers, the battery is only used when a page is turned.  So with more words per page means that I have more pages per battery charge and longer in between.  The glare on the touch screen doesn’t really bother me, because I can hold the thing at an angle and get rid of it.

I mean, seriously, people.  There are those on Amazon who damn Sony into a fiery oblivion because they have to do this.  The device ain’t perfect, but it’s also not suddenly worthless because I need to occasionally hold the thing at a ten degree angle.

Anyway…this whole thing has suddenly turned me onto the actual possibilities of the Internet.  I’ve always known that it was a great communication tool, but I always scoffed when someone put it on the list of Modern World Wonders.  Aren’t all of those supposed to be buildings?

But, when I discovered Gutenberg, I figured it out.  Suddenly, I could just download a plethora of ideas, but not just ideas on the next Metal Gear Solid or ideas on how racist someone can be in anonymity under a video featuring a cute cat doing cute cat things.  No!  I could have de Tocqueville, Adam Smith, Shakespeare, Twain, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Joyce (minus Finnegan’s Wake for more reasons than one),   and Jane Austen without ever rising from my chair.  I had sort of known that this type of activity was possible in the past, but who wants to read five hundred page novels on a computer screen?  It was my eReader that showed me that possibility.  I had complete access to, and a proper forum to read, all of those authors I had been avoiding, whether on purpose or not, throughout the course of my life.

No...he IS happy that we can read him digitally, but M Bastiat is French...remember that.

I find it weird to thank Sony for helping to open me up to all of those authors that had been hidden in one way or another to me, but that heartless corporation (which refuses to turn everything around and make me some damn money on the stock market!), in conjunction with those bleeding hearties at Gutenberg, have done it.

Thank you little inanimate object.

Thank you.

Advertisement