愛｜這裡。全天候勸敗。

Go “e”, Save some Trees.

If you are an avid reader who reads a lot like me, who would spend over a thousand ringgit buying books and magazines every month; you’d probably been carrying some form of reading materials with you in your bag all the time and that will take a toll on your back.

It was 1998, some eleven years ago when I went to New York to attend MacWorld New York, my second Steve Jobs keynote experience that the idea of having a device that holds all my reading material struck me as a good idea.

Back then, my idea of convenience was to keep books in PDF formats and store them on my PowerBook. But the PowerBook’s battery doesn’t last longer than 3 hours, and it isn’t my idea of fun to lug around a 2kg mobile oven.

So in New York, I searched for the featherweight 22 ounce Nuvomedia Rocket eBook, the first viable eBook reader to hit the market, it was a great idea for those who love to read.

But as I dug deeper into the marketing material, I realised the problem of the lack of readily available books both online and offline – the only way to get a book into the darn thing is to do it yourself, mostly.

So that I changed my mind about the Rocket.

Nevertheless, I paid close attention to the development of the new line of e-books throughout the years, and came a new technology called “e-ink”, it consumes close to no energy, and reads like paper.

Taking the lead, Sony made one A4 size reader with the technology in 2001 but was a little too big for my taste. But it was a really promising start. Fast-forward to 2009 and we have entered the era of convenient online shopping and RSS subscription models of the Web 2.0 Internet, AND the e-ink technology is finally matured enough to be mass-produced in China.

Without going too much into the technology, e-ink is basically a display technology that uses very little power as the display is not active; it is activated only when you turned a page.

So in 2006 Sony released a fairly successful paperback sized device called a Portable Reader System that has 64MB built-in memory, a 250g device that comes with a nice 6 in display.

The Sony Reader PRS 500 was then superseded by the PRS 505. The tiny devices allows you to finally bring reading materials on the road.

And if you have the right software, you can subscribe newspapers and magazines such as New York Times and Time Magazine for free.

This is a god-sent if you are into current affairs and news.

Last year, Amazon.com launched an ebook reader called Kindle to compliment their online book sales, very much like Apple’s iTunes with their iPods, and Sony/Google alliance to sell ebooks to the PRS platform, Amazon.com hopes to make reading on the Kindle as hip as listening to music on the iPod.

Well, if you ask me, I think Amazon may just do it.

OUT of the BOX
The Kindle is sleek, sexy and highly desirable.

When in US, it sits on a wireless system that allows Amazon direct access to the Kindle and lets you purchase books and have them sent to you wirelessly.

Unfortunately, this system is not available in Malaysia (in fact, the Kindle is not available in Malaysia too), but if you have a good friend in States-side, you can still get him/her to buy you one. At USD349, this white-coloured baby can be addictive.

While outside US, you can sync/upload books into the system via a USB connection. So, it is possible for you to download books off the Internet and have them synced up with the Kindle.

FEATURES and FUNCTIONS
The Kindle’s built-in keypad allows you to enter notes and bookmark your pages. If you are in school and want to reduce the weight of your bag, this is going to be your solution.

Also, it has a built-in voice synthesis system that reads back to you. This means you can ask the Kindle to read whatever text that is on the page through the pair of built-in speakers.

I find it useful when I want to “read” articles when I drive, very convenient indeed.

In the “NOT a bug but a FEATURE” department, the Kindle supports a DRM’ed format and makes it hard to make your own books. Fortunately, you can download free and open source applications to manage your media, including subscribing to RSS feeds of your favourite blogs and have them uploaded to the Kindle automatically.

In short, I love this system.
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If in the highly unfavourable case of not having a friend in the US of A, you may want to consider the Sony PRS-505 or the Hanlin V3 reader.

All there are made in China, but only the Hanlin supports all readable formats including TXT, HTML, PDF, JPG, PNG, BMP and MP3.

I have acquired all three systems and compared them. Of all three, the Hanlin is most convenient, and is the lightest. True to it’s Chinese heritage, the Hanlin runs on standard mobile phone batteries, uses standard SD memory cards, and… wait for this…

Runs LINUX.

It is basically an ebook computer system that displays everything you throw at it.

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If you are like me, you will get all three. Because all of them are different, these are great study tools as you now have a reader platform that doesn’t use an active display system which makes it a joy to read.

In fact, since it is not a computer, you are no longer distracted by online messaging systems, emails and temptations of the Web.

The Kindle literally rekindled my love to read.