Kindle or Sony Ereader&questions about them

[-KarumA-]

For my birthday I've decided to buy myself a kind of ereader since I read a lot of books that are limited in print or out of print

Well I first want to know which is better a Kindle or an Ereader from Sony, I'm thinking off the Sony Reader Touch

Second question I have has to do with something I found out while doing some price researching. I was very shocked to find that on the Dutch sites where the product is for sale they didn't recalculate the price and merely put a Euro in front of it
So on the Sony site you pay $299,99 and on a Dutch ordering site you pay €299,99
Why it is rip off? Cause $299.99 is actually €201,77 and it makes a difference of more than €90,- which is a lot
Converter the Sony reader touch costs $446,03 if you order it here or buy it in stores in my country

So I am thinking of buying it from the Sony website and now I wanted to know if there's a chance that I can encounter problems when I hook it up to my computer, since I live in Europe and that thing comes from America (don't know if there are any changes like with movie DVD's)

Also if anyone knows a better brand than kindle or Sony please put it up for discussion, I've seen others like: Cool-ER, Bookeen, iRex, Foxit and iRiver
There's so many you hardly know what is good and what is not
But I trust Sony and I've always been happy with their products but I wanted to hear from you guys first

[synaesthetic]

I've used the Sony Reader Touch and it's vastly superior to the Kindle. Build quality is stellar (as usual for a high-end Sony product) and the e-ink screen is a joy to read off of.

What really made it awesome for me is that the internal audio hardware is just as good as what you'd find in one of the Sony A Series media players--some of the best sound quality you can get. I still use a 2 year old Sony NWZ-A728 because I just haven't found anything better-sounding at least until the A840 series hits the States.

[-KarumA-]

Originally Posted by synaesthetic

I've used the Sony Reader Touch and it's vastly superior to the Kindle. Build quality is stellar (as usual for a high-end Sony product) and the e-ink screen is a joy to read off of.

What really made it awesome for me is that the internal audio hardware is just as good as what you'd find in one of the Sony A Series media players--some of the best sound quality you can get. I still use a 2 year old Sony NWZ-A728 because I just haven't found anything better-sounding at least until the A840 series hits the States.

Do you think that as a European after ordering the US version you might encounter problems if you hook it up to your pc?
I don't think so but I just wanted to be sure
edit: Just realised that I'll have to buy a charger here since we use different sockets, does anyone know if that might be a problem (using European charger on American Ereader??)


And yes Sony rules, I still use a Discman build from around 1999, I had another old one which was even older but it lasted 8 years before the lens reader started giving out I had tried other discmans but nowadays you could only get cheap Chinese import devices from companies that you hardly hear from their sound sucked so badly that I traded it in and hunted down another old Sony model, found one that was on display in an electronic store but the thing sounds as good an an Ipod does, no skips no noise nothing
Heck my old one even fell off my bike while I was going home, hit the pavement and broke up into pieces.. after some glue and fit work it sounded just like normal XD

[synaesthetic]

You'll have to buy a charger regardless. Sony and Apple are both bad at not including AC adapters with their gadgets these days. My A728 only came with a USB cable, which is annoying because I can't charge it unless I leave my netbook on, no USB/eSATA port sadly.

The charger available through Sony is probably a switching PSU @ 100-240VAC like most, you may have to buy an adapter to change it from the Japan/US plug to the UK plug.

If you have a desktop computer (that you leave on all the time) you could probably just charge it via USB.

[-KarumA-]

Ebay-link

So it wouldn't be a problem with the charger then, I'm ordering my ereader here ^
And I am ordering my my charger from a Dutch site, might be 45% more expensive but the charger alone is not THAT much

But anyway we don't use the UK/Japan plug here either XD we use this one

[synaesthetic]

I know, what I meant is that most AC adapters these days are switching "world voltage" devices that can accept 100-240VAC. You'd just have to find an adapter to change it to that sort of plug (because the Sony adapters are undoubtedly going to be the same plugs used in the US and Japan).

[chill.]

if you can wait a month then you should check out the nook, an e-reader that barnes & noble is releasing on Dec. 18ish.

www.nook.com

they are pricing it the same as the kindle 2, and it has a lot of cool features like a 2nd LCD touchscreen. people are saying it will be a "kindle killer". i'm not sure if it'll kill the kindle, but i've been pretty impressed by the features and video demos.

i'm not sure if they have an international policy though. something i have noticed is that the amazon kindle store and B&N e-bookstore will have same pricing on the newest books about $9.99, but kindle store will usually be 10-20% cheaper on older books like $6.30 instead of $6.99. these small savings could add up

also i would not really post such a tech question on animesuki. for my tech news i frequent engadget.com. i would do some searches on these products and you can see a lot of comments and articles on them

[-KarumA-]

I'm passing on the nook for various reasons:
- I hate Itunes and it seems it uses it
- I can't order it cause right now it is still US only, so I'll have to wait for more than a month for it.. don't even know the exact time I will have to wait
- Ordering books is still only available for US only, they still don't know how to fix that cause of copyright problems D:

[Fahd]

Originally Posted by -KarumA-

So on the Sony site you pay $299,99 and on a Dutch ordering site you pay €299,99
Why it is rip off? Cause $299.99 is actually €201,77 and it makes a difference of more than €90,- which is a lot
Converter the Sony reader touch costs $446,03 if you order it here or buy it in stores in my country

You have taken into account international shipping costs + any import duties you might have to pay, right? Because otherwise the final cost is not going to be $299.

[-KarumA-]

Originally Posted by Fahd

You have taken into account international shipping costs + any import duties you might have to pay, right? Because otherwise the final cost is not going to be $299.

no but that total will not get near $446,03 so it would still be cheaper
However I mailed with Sony and they also said their store doesn't ship to Europe >.<
So I'm stuck with an Ereader for $446,03..
Only good thing is that I got half of it all together cause my mom broke her leg and needed someone to fill her in while she was resting

[synaesthetic]

Order it from another retailer besides Sony Style, then.