Okay, I’m going to preface this blog post with some background information.  I follow a local guy here in town on twitter, Jason.  He was looking for a new eReader.

eReader?  I thought to myself, why would anyone want a eReader.  The cold plastic book that holds books.  Doesn’t a laptop (or net-book for that matter) do the same time?  Why would anyone want to look at a screen for the amount of time that you would read a book.

These are all things that many people would say.  Let me tell you though, once I saw the Sony Reader (PRS-505) in Target one day, I fell in love with the thing.  The screen was dark gray text on light gray background, it looks almost exactly like a book would.  The text was sharp, rich and clear.  Seems, also, that it would not contain any eyestrain.

eBooks Side by Side

Seems that these LCD’s we have now have a back-light, that after a good amount of time, start to strain your eyes.  LCD’s have, granted, a faster refresh rate than CRT’s, but they do still flicker.  Granted the flicker is almost not noticeable to the human eye, but if you ever video record a Flat Panel or a CRT monitor you will see it.  This flash causes eye strain as your brain still sees the flash and tries to adjust your vision to match.  This, of course, is highly debated.

PDF and eBook, side by side

So in my quest to find the true “The One” eReader, I found a plethora of readers.  Some of which haven’t been finished yet (Plastic eReader) and some that compare to the big boys (JetBook).  I quickly found, the two most popular readers are the Sony Reader (PRS 505 and PRS 700 currently) and the Kindle.

I’m sure many of you have heard of the Kindle (or seen one somewhere) as Amazon has sure put a advertising blitz out there.  Many blogs also talk about the Kindle.  The Kindle, in my findings, seems to be the cadillac of the eReaders (some have called it the iPod of eReaders).  The sony is the nicely priced mid-sized car of the eReader line.

PDF on 700

Now, what I want to do with the eReader is be able to view books (Stephen King, Dean Koontz) and view PDF’s I’ve bought, as well as reading work documents on the go.  This would greatly reduce what I have to carry in a normal day.  Needles to say, PDF support is a must.  I also would like to be able to add notes to pages.  I’m a notorious note take in my books, be it with post it’s or writing, this is very important to me.

Now the Kindle doesn’t native support PDF’s and from what I heard their conversions aren’t the best.  (Except for the Kindle DX, releasing on June 10).  Every other eReader seems to support PDF.  So I thought I would try to find the Sony Reader that supports PDF nicely and allows notes.  The Kindle has always allowed notes and bookmarks, but has just now allowed PDF (Kindle DX).
I was able to see and touch the Sony Reader 505 at Target, which is where I fell in love with the idea of an eReader, but could NOT find a 700 anywhere.  Finally found that Borders has 700′s so I took a roadtrip to a local borders (about 1.25 hours away) to see the Reader.  The 700 honestly did not impress me at all.  The text was hard to read on a normal book, the contrast was horrid.  The PDF support was nice, it had zoom and annotation that I wanted, but reading it was hard with the glare from the touch screen.  I thought to myself, I should just try it.  So I ask Borders what thier return policy is, they only return Readers if they are defective.  The only Sony Store has a 14day return policy I believe, but after seeing the two side by side, I figure I won’t even bother.

The Kindle DX, I believe, will be my reader of choice.  The Amazon Store has an ample 30 day return policy (from delivery date) and PDF support.  Plus it has a bigger screen.  I found that while trying to read PDF’s on the Sony’s 6″ screen, it was hard to read at small “form”.. and when you expand the text the formatting kinda breaks.  The large 9.7″ screen of the Kindle DX I think will really help with that.

The only downside (besides price) of the Kindle DX, would be there is no SD Card support and the battery is in the form factor (ala the iPod).

Once I get my Kindle I will post a more functional review.