Electronic books are not a new thing. In fact they have been around for years but have never taken off in the US or UK. However, with the launch of the Sony Reader times might be changing.
In the past electronic books have not been popular because they were too different from a real book. The Sony Reader looks more like a book. It is the same size and you can ‘turn’ pages. It is slim and very compact- great for travelling. They have also made the backlighting better so you don’t get too much glare. It’s major features are:
- You can transfer ebooks from your PC to the Reader in the same way you would music to your mp3 player.
- Sony have teamed up with Waterstones to make sure there is a range of thousands of electronic books you can download.
- The Sony Reader can store up to 160 books. If this isn’t enough you can buy extra memory cards.
- The built-in Bookmark remembers where you finished reading which is pretty clever.
- You can magnify the text if needed.
- It is reported to have a battery life that allows you to read 7000 pages which is like reading War and Peace 5 times! That means that you can take it on holiday and not fear about running out of reading material.
So will Sony’s Reader electronic book take off? If it did it would cut down on the paper currently used by the Publishing Industry. However with people like Eco Libris offsetting this by planting a tree for every book you read is it the greenest option?
Ethical and Green are big fans of the Sony Reader and recommend checking it out if you love reading. With Sony having teamed up with Waterstones this is the first time that an electronic book has been launched with a catalogue of books ready for it. Sony have also invested in a huge marketing campaign. Only time will tell how popular it will be but in a society that is now used to music on an electronic format maybe this time we are ready. Not forgetting the environmental benefits!
The Sony Reader is available for £199 including 100 classic ebooks already installed. Ebooks retail at around the same price as a normal book and there are plenty of titles in lots of categories. Get yours here.
raz godelnik said,
September 30, 2008 @ 5:02 am
Thanks for the update on the Sony Reader.
Regarding the question if e-books are more eco-friendly than paper-made books – we don’t know yet for sure. Of course e-books don’t use paper and therefore no trees are cut down. They also don’t need transportation or physical storage and therefore no extra costs and extra footprint are required to transfer the book from the publisher to the reader. Yet, there are other factors to be considered, especially with regards to e-book readers like the Sony Reader or Amazon’s Kindle, such as their production, materials used, energy required for the reader’s use, and how recyclable they are.
We’re still lacking a full life-cycle assessment of reading e-books using kindle or Sony Reader. Until we have that, we can’t really say if and to what extent e-books are more environmentally-friendly in comparison to paper made books.
Raz Godelnik
Eco-Libris
digerati said,
September 30, 2008 @ 5:28 pm
As a correction to your review, the Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle do NOT have any backlighting whatsoever. It is an opaque e-Ink technology requiring you to use a book light or other light to read with. And yes, that’s the beauty of it. Backlighting causes eyestrain. e-Ink does NOT have backlighting.