A sort of review, with a great deal of extraneous material.
I bought myself an eBook reader. It's a BeBook Mini, from a Dutch company called Endless Ideas. You can visit them at MyBeBook.com. It cost about $200, plus twenty-five bucks for a nice leather case. With an SD chip plugged in (the same kind used for digital cameras, available at any drug store) it will hold thousands of books. It's also an MP3 player, if you like music with your reading.
Like the Kindle, the Sony, the Nook and lots of others, it uses the e-Ink display that doesn't glow and does not have a backlight. In other words, it's a matte surface like a paper page (albeit a somewhat shiny paper page), rather than a bright screen like an iPhone or a computer monitor. It's a judgment call how much that means to you. I find it much easier to read for long periods with a light over my shoulder, such as in my reading chair. Trying to read a glowing screen is okay for work, but not good for relaxation. If you don't have that reaction, this may be a non-issue for you.
But I have to tell you that for the solace of my personal neuroses, e-Ink has a truly wonderful benefit over an active-matrix LCD with a backlight. The e-Ink technology retains an image without power, which means that the ebook reader does not use power except at the moment you turn a page, which means that it can sit for at least three days without depleting the battery, which means — here comes the punch line — you don't have to turn it off when you put it down, or turn it on when you pick it up.
Hah? Do I hear you going "ooooh" out there?
My friends, who know how neurotically protective I am about books, will appreciate how much I love Edward Hopper's painting "Pennsylvania Coal Town," when I tell you that I have a copy of this, clipped from a book, framed on the wall of my office. I wanted it so much that when I found a Hopper book on the remainder rack, I bought two copies so that I could cut the picture from one and still have a complete copy in the other. (Did I throw out the damaged copy of the book? Of course I didn't. It's on my shelf,next to the good copy!)
