There has been a lot of controversy about the New E-book reader gadgets launched by Sony and Amazon. These leading manufacturers are producing even more advanced e-book readers and their popularity is on the rise. The Amazon Kindle2 is dominating the market while the Sony PRS Is very close behind.
Here is a comparative of these two most popular e-book gadgets based on 5 important features and facts that e-readers should take in consideration before choosing which one to buy.
First and most important: The Price
One of the main differences between the Kindle and the Sony PRS is their Price. There's a cry out 20 dollar difference with the PRS Priced at 280 USD and the Kindle Having a price of 260 USD. The Sony reader offers a host of freebie features like free viewing of PDF files with no internet connection needed, a memory card included and RSS feeds.
On the other hand, the Kindle is not far behind with the capacity to have more than 200 titles saved and an SD memory card slot that is also included. However, there is a charge of 1 USD for every blog or RSS feed that you Subscribe to which is in my opinion a bit expensive.
Second: The Format
The Sony PRS offer native PDF support which users have reported a slightly difficult when first starting to use and the requirement to have a computer with an Internet connection makes the experience a bit harder than with the Kindle.
While the Sony PRS allows you to view PDF files for free, the Kindle Charges a 10 cent fee for every PDF file that you load into the device and the conversion required to view it is far from perfect. The conversion often makes these files unreadable because of alignment difficulties. Many teachers, students and business professionals should think about that considering that most academic work, books researches and reports are mostly available in the PDF format.
Third: E-ink technology
Both the Kindle and the Sony PRS come with a 6" LCD screen which displays the E-ink technology using Vizplex film on the surface. The Good side about this technology is that 40% of the received light gets deflected and uses reflected light instead of transmitted which makes it easy on both devices to read on the eyes.
Fourth: Printability
The Kindle e-reader offers portability in taking along all personal documents at anytime and place eliminating the need for printing. However there is a 10 cent fee for wireless transfer of word documents but free transfers can be leveraged if the user does not want to cover the fee. The user would need to sent the attachment to his Kindle Email address adding the word free to his Id user for example
UserID@free.kindle.com and the document gets converted and emailed to the user's Amazon account. The Sony PRS lets you transfer documents to your computer which allows you to print any document you want.
Fifth: Battery life
The Kindle is by far the best Choice when it comes to battery life. You can go four days straight without recharging. Besides, it has a great network coverage in almost any area that allows portability. The Kindle turns pages as easy as to click a button which means that even if you read on your bed, the use of the kindle is much easier than the Sony PRS that comes with a touch screen.
In conclusion both e-readers The Kindle and the Sony PRS are top technology when it comes to readers innovation and simplicity, but we can all agree that for now the Amazon Kindle is slightly better than the Sony PRS.
Here's some places where you can find them at special prices:
The Kindle 2 eBook
The Kindle 2 eBook Reader
The Sony PRS-600 eBook
The Sony PRS-600 eBook Reader
