Sony’s E-Reader Finally Goes Wireless
By Harry McCracken | Tuesday, August 25, 2009 at 9:23 am
Until now, discussions of the e-book rivalry between Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s Reader have had to point out that Sony’s gadget lacked the wireless connectivity that was probably the Kindle’s best feature. No longer: At a press event at the New York Public Library, Sony announced the Reader Daily Edition, its first e-reader that lets you buy books via wireless broadband. The carrier in this case is AT&T (the Kindle uses Sprint) and the Daily Edition will ship in December for $399. (Two cheaper Sony e-reader models, sans wireless, are available now.)
The Daily Edition will be $100 more than the comparable Kindle; without trying it, it’s hard to gauge whether it’s worth the extra bucks. (It does have a touch-screen interface rather than the Kindle’s somewhat clunky buttons and tiny joystick.) And over the long haul, Sony’s support for the open EPub e-book standard could be a major advantage over Amazon’s use of its proprietary format.
In any event, it’s nice to see that Sony is responding to the Kindle’s dominance of a market it pioneered by redoubling its efforts. Next year should bring lots of e-book developments–such as the release of the Plastic Logic reader–but for now, it’s an Amazon-vs.-Sony war, and they’re both going great guns.
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Do You Want Your Books in Digital Form…or on Dead Trees? | Technologizer Says:
August 27th, 2009 at 4:09 pm[…] The news about devices for reading books just doesn’t stop these days, from the good (Sony’s Reader is going wireless and is supporting the ePub format) to the bizarre and troubling (Amazon yanking back books people […]
August 25th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
This was a great article that did an excellent job of comparing two great products. It was exactly what I was looking for concerning these two items in particular. It helped me decide very quickly which product I will buy. I was looking for the one that is more versatile with regard to downloading. Also the fact that Amazon removed a book a few weeks back from people’s Kindles after they paid for the download. I do not want to be in that kind of powerless position because of some corporate misunderstanding about certain copyrights. That did not enhance their image in my mind because I feel once you buy something in good faith then it is yours permanently and should no longer be used to correct corporate mistakes. So I will be waiting for the availability of the Sony because of its more expansive choices for downloading. I am hoping that when the Sony is available you will do an evaluation of its merits to see if the extra $100.00 is worth it.