Can you believe all the hype about the Sony Reader? I have read several articles on it and I'm not sure it's going to be a lasting thing. What I was wondering is, why would I get that instead of a pocket PC or other digital book reading devise that has the capacity to do more than just store things?

First of all, if you don't know already, the Sony Reader is a hand held devise that is about the size of of an average paperback book. It weighs 9oz (without it's cover flap) and is 1/2 and inch thick. According to the stats it can hold up to 160 ebooks of average length, or 200 megabytes, and more capacity can be added with memory cards. To get you started Sony Reader is preloaded with excerpts from newish books and comes with a CD-ROM of 100 classic titles. There is no keyboard and so you are not given the option to write in notes for yourself - an obviously you can't just stick in a detailed Post-it for later use. For an added bonus, this little "book" can store and play back pictures and music files (can play unencrypted MP3 and AAC audio files) as well as store and display personal and business documents, though there are catches to this. It requires Windows XP or later, an 800MHz Processor, 128Mb of RAM, and 20Mb of Hard disk space. Sony Connect software does not work on Windows Vista 64-bit and it is NOT supported on Mac OS X or Linux based systems. I have read that "unofficially" there are programs that may help to convert and make it compadable, but I can't really say what they really can do as I don't understand it. I also wont directly support Microsoft Word DOC format and must use converting software. Also Adobe Acrobat Professional must be use on it, not the Adobe Reader software, to adjust the screen size for typefaces in PDF files formatted for 8.5 x 11 inch pages (as they may be too small to read comfortably) converting these files for the Reader screen size. It is selling for an average price of £199 or around $299. It has been available in the United States since September 2006. (Why did it take so long to get here then? And why would anyone pay so much for it here when you can get it there a lot cheaper?)

The only REAL pro that I noticed was that the battery pack has energy saving fetchers called electronic ink or "e-ink". With this technology it uses power only when you "turn" the pages. Wikipeadia says that it requires no power to maintain the image, so even if you were a slow reader like me your battery life wouldn't be cut in half. Yay! The battery life had been quoted by the Scotsman as being "enough for 1,680 page turns", while Waterstones, wikipedia, and the US Sony website state that it is enough to "turn up to 7,500 continuous pages on a single charge". This is quite a big difference! I don't know where the Scotsman News website have they gotten this number from.

So is the long lasting battery life enough to make me ditch a pocket PC, and if so then what about the Cybook Gen3 wich has an even longer battery life? Or any of these perhaps (link below to wikki list of e-readers)?:
http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E-bo...
I'm just not sure. I see the appeal. I see the pros and cons. I don't really see what makes this any better than other readers that have been on the market previously.

The other big question, of course, with all the news articles is "Will this replace our real books?" What I say to this is "Have any of the other devices that have been on the market replaced them yet?" Don't get me wrong, I love my technology! BBC reported just the other day that 54% of Britons surveyed have said that the internet is more important to them than a religion/ their religion. I wouldn't go that far, but it is really nice to have. I will probably read ebooks from time to time. I do, however, love the feel of a book in my hand, being able to smell the fragrance of it, and (actually -not virtually) hear the sound of turning pages. Call me old fashioned, but that's what I think.

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