Santy Claus tucked a Sony Reader in mah stockin' (along wif raspberry dark chocolates)
Fer them of y'all who is also techno-challenged, this gadget is a mini screen that displays a book page, an' wif' a swipe of yore finger it "turns" the page. This thang can hold about 350 digitized "E-books" but it weighs jes' about 10 ounces an' is about the size of a paperback, only thinner.
Books an' newspapers can be grabbed off a library account (like an ITunes account) fer a download fee, or ya can graze at the free E-book pastures like
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page
or
http://manybooks.net/
I has wanted one fer years..well, two years, since readin' here about how easy it was to travel/ work wif'out totin' a tote of books AND luggage. Sure, I knowed ya can git Ebooks on yore computer, but thas' bulky, an ya can git the books in PDA format fer smartphones--but I'se too ole fer that itty bitty page bidness.
But it wuz still early evolution days fer E-Readers so I passed until the right features wuz featured.
Thar's a lot of jazzy features now.
Some Euro schools even load textbooks on these readers so kids ain't bent over wif a backpack what weighs 107.3 pounds. It has an on board dictionary fer us illiterates, so all one need do is tap the word an' the definition comes up. Handy. TO make it even more indispensible fer a bibliophile I can make notes or highlifght text an the Reader saves mah margin notes, an iffin' I has need of it, it can search the whole dern book fer a word or phrase. It stores PDF files or audio or even picture files that ya might want on hand too. Want more books? No problem--it has SD slots. Need I mention how handy this contraption will be fer all manner of research?
SO what is the "not to Reader" I mention in this post's title?
Ah.... does y'all recall hearin' how Amazon's entry in the Reader bidness-- the Kindle--can be wiped clean of whatever Amazon wishes to wipe from it WIF'OUT yore say-so or even yore knowledge?
Yep. Seems folks who bought Orwell's 1984 awoke one mornin' to find the novel had vanished in the night, phiff! gone. Zapped, vaporized, MIA. Yeah, it would be THAT title too. Heh. Too rich.
Anyhoo, it seemed that Amazon sucked the story out of folk's machines cause of the wee matter of ownership--the Orwellians (the family of Orwell) had not given permission to Amazon to use the book, much less sell it. Rather than face ruinous copyright infringement fines, Amazon simply wiped the book off the face of every Kindle that had downloaded it.
Well, Y'ain't gotta tell that to me twic't. I declined to wait fer the NEW IMPROVED 3 G Sony Reader due out late spring complete wif' WiFi capability, or the Daily Edition version. The idea is the ease of book ownership--wif WiFi a body can sit in an airport after learnin' they's snowed in, an heck, fer 9.95 jes download the newest breathless bodice ripper or vampira chronicle straight to yore Reader. Or, iffin' youse a literary sort, jes' go online wif yore Reader to any number of libraries fer a digitized loan of Turgnev. Convenient huh?
Uh..no. No no NO. Nyet. N E V E R.
I is paranoid. I doan want no eye in the sky wipin' out mah library or "seeing" what is on mah reader. Or seein' the notes or highlights on the margins of mah reader pages. I mean, dang it! Iffin' even the margins of yore book ain't personal, what is?
Does any of y'all use these Readers? What kind? Why?
What techno toys and whizgadgets did any of y'all find under the tree? Wish't ya'd found under the tree?
*
**Footnote: Mah physical books ain't goin' Nowhere, an in fact, I'se still consumin' mah share of trees each year.
Wait--this post bored ya'? Heh...I coulda posted this Painfully Honest and Epic Moblie Home commercial
