Need for Read: Part 2

First, they came for our video game manuals. Now they have come for our books.

Well, maybe it’s the other way around. Whatever the deal is, everything in print is now going electronic to be read on a computer or another electronic device.

In my last Need for Read article, I talked about my heavy heart as it pertained to the extinction of the video game manuals. Here in Part Two, I will talk about the “evolution” of books to the digital readers and some of the other cool things these readers do.

So, I succumbed this week and bought an electronic book reader, or  “eReader” as they are also know. And this article is part commentary and part review.

Why did I give in to the digital revolution and buy this? Well, I was listening to a radio show and the host had an author on talking about her latest book. It sounded like something I’d like to read. After going to two major book stores and not finding the book, I went home and was going to order it online and have it shipped. Then I started to look at the electronic book readers. I could download the book immediately, and not have to drive to another store or wait a few days for it to be shipped to me.

At first I tried my iPod Touch. Though it worked fine, I found it was a bit too small to read an actual book.

The Kindle then caught my eye, but they were “out of stock” at Amazon as they prepared for the new version to come out in a month or so. If I was going to buy, it was now, not in a month, so I kept looking. Next was the Barnes & Noble Nook. It looked nice for $149, but it didn’t do much for me. My friend had the iPad, and as much as that would allow me to read books, surf the web and play games, I couldn’t justify the $500 price tag for the entry-level model.

After more searching I found the PanDigital Novel, a 7-inch mulitmedia eReader. It was a full color eReader that had some other features that rivaled the iPad (The Kindle and Nook were, more or less, black and white). The Novel synched with Barnes & Noble’s website nicely, allowing for fast downloads of books, magazines, and newspapers. This device also had a web browser, Facebook app, alarm clock, and calendar, and it has the ability to view photos and videos and even listen to music and play a couple of games. In essence, I called it the iPad Lite or the Poor Man’s iPad.

This is the one I purchased. It was $169 at Bed, Bath & Beyond (yeah, I know), I used my 20-percent-off coupon and there was also a $20 mail-in rebate. Final amount paid was $115. It runs on the Android software used in some cell phones. This was something I wanted to check out and another reason for buying this particular model. I’m hoping it will have some downloadable apps soon, as it’s a brand new device.

To be honest, the graphics are not as sharp as the iPad, it’s not as smooth, and it’s a little buggy when doing things like web surfing or anything else besides reading a book. I kept trying to compare it to the iPad, but I had to keep reminding myself it was only $115, not $500, and definitely not an iPad.

The first thing I did was to go to BN.com and check out the ebooks. They had a whole slew of free ebooks to download, and that’s what I tried first. Some were just a few pages of short stories, others were regular-sized books. I also had the ability to preview many of the paid books, which I thought was pretty cool. This particlar eReader lets you shrink and enlarge the fonts for reading the ebooks, and it has a night-read mode which puts the text in white on a black background. This is my favorite feature, and I find myself using this setting to read most of the time.

It comes with 1 GB of memory and the ability to insert an SD card up expand up to 32 GB. I picked up an 8 GB card at Radio Shack for $20, and that’s where I put all my pictures and even four full-length movies that I had on my iPod Touch. The pictures and movies all worked fine, though again, it wasn’t HD quality. The battery life is only about six hours, much less than other readers, but honestly, I’m not going to be using it for that long. The docking station was a bit wobbly, but you can take the cord out and have it charge flat on the table if you like.

All in all, I’m liking this little ebook reader. It’s fun to surf around the web on this tablet and play solitaire, and I’ll probably find myself reading more books than I usually do. New gadgets are always fun like that. I even downloaded the latest edition of the Gamehounds Podcast and was listening over the built in speakers. I did read that the first firmware edition had a lot of issues, but since, PanDigital has released an update that’s fixed some of the problems.

While nothing will ever replace an actual book or magazine, with my new eReader, I guess in my own way and on my own terms, I’m accepting the digital revolution.