by Elton Gahr

Created on: September 05, 2010

For years ebooks have been interesting but generally not very important. Reading a book sitting at your deck, or even off a laptop was not all that pleasant of an experience when compared to curling up with a good book but in the last years a number of ebook readers have appeared which have changed that. There are many different ways to read ebooks, but there are only four devices which can be considered challengers for the best choice for a device to read ebooks on. The Kindle, the Nook, the Sony ebook reader and the iPad. Each of these devices has pros and cons.

The least expensive of devices at the current moment is the Kindle, and with the Kindle 3 out it is a pretty solid decision. You can now get a device that uses only wifi, or one that has 3G for a bit more. These have access to the Amazon electronic book library which is one of the better collections of ebooks, if not the best. They can also use other types of electronic books though it generally is not as easy as it should be to do so.

The Nook is made for use with Barnes and Noble and has a few interesting features. The first obvious difference between the Nook and the others is that it has a touch screen at the bottom of the device rather than a physical interface. This gives it some interesting possibilities but in general is more minor than you might expect. Another good feature, if you like going to Barnes and Nobles stores is that it has the option of reading books while in the store giving you some interesting deals. The other advantage is that the nook has less DRM issues than the Kindle.

The Sony Ebook is a well made device from a company that certainly knows hardware and there is an option to buy a touch screen version which in at interesting idea but not one all that well utilized. The library is the place where the Sony device is questionable but in general unless you want something obscure they should have access to what you want.

The final choice is the iPad. Without eink this will not have the same quality of reading experience as the others, but this device can do considerably more than read books. It is also the more expensive of these choices so unless you really want to do other things and do not read a lot this is not the best of choices. On the other hand the apps allow you to read books from the Amazon kindle library as well as the Nook and others as well.

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