Yes, I want a decent e-book reader that has a large e-paper display. It will save me a lot of money if I read a lot of books, which I do. I have been buying regular paper books at Amazon.com and having them shipped to me here in Cambodia. Each typical paper book ultimately costs me about $35 to reach my hand. This is insanely more expensive than an e-book which will cost me about $10 each, not to mention that there are tons and tons of free e-books on the web. A quick calculation reveals that such device will pay for itself in no-time. Plus, it is not only money that is saved but also trees and the environment. As you know, an e-book is just a digital computer file which could be transferred electronically through the internet in bulk for less than a cent. Thousands of e-books can fit into a small flash memory. On the other hand, if you dissect the actual costs of a paper book, you will see that it costs a lot of harms. Making the papers will need trees cut down for use as raw materials. The machines used for manufacturing, printing and transporting paper books will burn fuel, emit CO2 into the atmosphere, and accelerate the global warming. Now, storing books at home will waste the precious space that you pay in square meters/feet. In all, it is really unnecessary to spend $25 more just to do more harm.

E-book enjoys much of its advantages over paper books. It costs a lot less to own one, but it does have its down-sides. If you use your PC to read e-books, be prepared to pay for electricity per hour as you read. Twenty hours of reading on my desktop could cost me one full dollar! How many hours you need to complete a typical e-book? God knows how many hours you will need, and that could result in a lot of money flying to the utility company. To make it worse, you could get eye-strain and headache by staring for long-hour at the computer screen. Even if you read e-books on a low-powered laptop with decent LCD screen, you will still end up paying more than that of a typical paper book. Fortunately though, e-book reader is here to rescue!

There are several e-book readers on the market. Most will have an electronic-ink display that looks close to a real paper and ink, and the whole device weights less than a typical book. You can read outdoor and indoor for hours without having eye-strain or headache. An e-paper display consumes power only refreshing the page during page turning. Besides that, it does not consume any power at all to keep the text and graphics on the display. Therefore, some readers allow e-book reading for days before the battery gets too low and needs recharge. After doing a lot of research, reading articles, specs, reviews, discussions and watching demo vidoes, I'm now down to four devices: Amazon Kindle 2, Sony PRS-505, iRex iLiad and iRex 1000S. All devices have pros and cons, and now I'm in dilemma. Which one is good for me? If I have a lot of money, I will get all of those! But now, I can afford only one. Crying... :P

Amazon Kindle 2

This device, $360, is designed for use in the US and is currently available for Americans only. Amazon will ship Kindle only to a US address and will further require a US credit card to purchase Kindle books. It comes with free mobile-phone-based Whispernet connection, and users in US can buy and download from over 240,000+ Kindle books for $10 each almost anywhere anytime. Isn't that convenient? It is! I love the huge collection of book availability. Now there is a slight problem for me: I am not an American and I live in Cambodia. However, through connection and some hassles I can get one of this shipped to me here, and I have a US plastic to buy Kindle books and download them through my internet-connected PC. Everything is cool, until I know its screen size is only 6" which is a bit smaller than a novel, and it has no MMC slot to carry extra files. Moreover, it doesn't even support PDF and DOC files. In the end, Kindle seems to be not right for me, as I need to read large PDF e-books and possibly download the whole Wikipedia offline into a 16GB SDMC card to read.

Other Devices

Sony PRS-505, $270, is indeed very cool. It is about $90 cheaper and supports PDF and DOC files. What's more is that it has MMC slot to extend the storage, and it can play MP3s. I can order it without any problem. But it has the same problem with its 6" screen size, since I'm going to read many large technical e-books. Anything besides the size, this is one cool device for reading small paperbacks and novels and will make great exotic gifts for friends. What gift is better than a library of books small enough to fit in a bag? This is more valuable than a diamond ring! Ok, let's go back to the screen size problem. I need to find a bigger e-book reader that supports PDF and DOC. That would be iRex iLiad v2 which costs $600. Yes, it costs a lot more; however, it has a touch-screen e-Ink display, 8.1" in diameter. You can write notes on the e-book using the e-stylus that comes with it, damn cool! To my surprise, it can connect through WiFi to download e-books, surf the web and even install games! Whoever made this thing is a genius. After surfing a bit more, I found out a bigger iRex model, the iRex DR1000S, which has 10.2" touch-eInk-screen big enough to read the whole A4 or Letter-sized PDF. But it has a price-tag of $850! That's the price of a high-end office PC. It gets more uncool as all iRex models can sustain only about 4 to 5 hours of reading. That is too short compared to Kindle or Sony PRS-505 which can go for 2 weeks without recharging. Now my head is spinning with the pros and cons of each device... I am dying for the 10.2" screen but I'm kinda reluctant to shell out $850 on a power-hungry device. What should I do? 

Why an E-Book Reader Not a Netbook

While a netbook laptop with 10" true-color display costs about $330 and it can do a million more tasks much faster, it is not designed for economical long-term text reading. A dedicated e-book reader like Sony RPS-505 should allow two weeks of reading before it needs a recharge. It should be much lighter and easier to hold in hands. And most important of all, it uses an e-paper display so that reading the text should be much more enjoyable. I think the most expensive component in a today's e-book reader is the e-paper display itself. The display is the most valuable asset that I'm longing for.