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Overall – money well spent, but it is not perfect.
Firstly the good points:
1. I have had no eye strain problems. However the text quality is not as good as a normal book.
2. I now have easy access to wide range of fantastic books that cost nothing. You can download out of copyright books in the format that suits your reader at www.mobileread.com. I recognised loads of old favourites and an equal number of books that I have always wanted to read, but have never done so. It took 40 minutes or so of browsing, downloading and uploading to get 30 of them on the Cybook.
3. It is great to have lots of books in one (very small) place. I like to read a few books alternately, which on the e-reader I am doing with “The Pickwick Papers” and the “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”. It would be completely impractical to lug both of these around in paper form and even one of them would be a struggle. Megabytes of computer memory have a marginal weight of zero so on the Cybook this is no problem.
4. The battery lasts a long time. I did a reasonable amount of reading on my two week holiday to Turkey and the battery was still 40% full when I got back.
But...
1. I worry about it breaking when I am carrying it around. I have heard of screens shattering when squashed, so I am often nervous doing this myself. By contrast you can chuck a paperback around without doing it any damage and if you do accidentally set it on fire, it is no big deal to get another copy. I have ordered a hard case (a DVD tin) to help resolve this issue.
2. The screen is not quite big enough when the font size is set at non eye-watering levels. I found it unexpectedly disorientating to read a paragraph that is longer than a page – I didn’t know when I was going to be able to draw breath or pause for thought. You can see your percentage progress through an e-book but it is not as easy to appreciate this as with a p-book.
In summary then:
I would prefer to get my books in paper form from a library, rather than reading them on the Cybook. However for fat books or for books otherwise only available on Amazon, the e-reader is first choice – and there are enough of these books to make me glad I spent £150 to buy one.
Firstly the good points:
1. I have had no eye strain problems. However the text quality is not as good as a normal book.
2. I now have easy access to wide range of fantastic books that cost nothing. You can download out of copyright books in the format that suits your reader at www.mobileread.com. I recognised loads of old favourites and an equal number of books that I have always wanted to read, but have never done so. It took 40 minutes or so of browsing, downloading and uploading to get 30 of them on the Cybook.
3. It is great to have lots of books in one (very small) place. I like to read a few books alternately, which on the e-reader I am doing with “The Pickwick Papers” and the “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”. It would be completely impractical to lug both of these around in paper form and even one of them would be a struggle. Megabytes of computer memory have a marginal weight of zero so on the Cybook this is no problem.
4. The battery lasts a long time. I did a reasonable amount of reading on my two week holiday to Turkey and the battery was still 40% full when I got back.
But...
1. I worry about it breaking when I am carrying it around. I have heard of screens shattering when squashed, so I am often nervous doing this myself. By contrast you can chuck a paperback around without doing it any damage and if you do accidentally set it on fire, it is no big deal to get another copy. I have ordered a hard case (a DVD tin) to help resolve this issue.
2. The screen is not quite big enough when the font size is set at non eye-watering levels. I found it unexpectedly disorientating to read a paragraph that is longer than a page – I didn’t know when I was going to be able to draw breath or pause for thought. You can see your percentage progress through an e-book but it is not as easy to appreciate this as with a p-book.
In summary then:
I would prefer to get my books in paper form from a library, rather than reading them on the Cybook. However for fat books or for books otherwise only available on Amazon, the e-reader is first choice – and there are enough of these books to make me glad I spent £150 to buy one.
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