A couple of months ago, while tidying up my bookshelf, the sight of yellow and spotty pages on some of my precious books really caused me some distress 🙁 . Well, I suppose this an unavoidable consequence of living inSingapore’s humid weather?

With the release of ebook readers such as Amazon’s Kindle 2 (all thanks to the e-Ink technology), my desire in getting a dedicated ebook reader is “re-kindled”, so to speak 😉 . In fact, I am already familiar with a few candidates on the market:

  1. Amazon’s Kindle. Cons: does not support many formats natively. Can’t expand memory by adding external memory card. The EVDO mobile wireless is useless outside of US.
  2. Sony ebook reader PRS-505. Cons: kind of expensive and apparently slow to turn.
  3. Hanlin V3. Cons: poor software as far as I can tell, but best supported by the open-source OpenInkPot which I intend to use) and one of the most rebranded product in this space.
  4. Irex. Cons: pricey European product and, according to some reviews, slow response time.

Here is a more comprehensive list of recent products, in case you are in the same situation.

Final hurdle? The cost (except for the European product, the 6″ and black-and-white models are approximately SG$450-700) and readily (un)availability in Singapore. After all, it will be necessary to test-drive these things first, no?

Another option is that perhaps I need to stick with my iPhone as a default reader (which seems to have problems with any pdf files larger than 20MB or so) and Stanza?? Furthermore the latest rumour is that Apple is likely to release its own tablet-like device in near future. Well, as it is likely to be expensive in the short term, I won’t be holding my breath for it…

I am currently testing the Sony PRS-700 so maybe a Christmas present for myself!? 🙂