So I’ve never had an eReader, but they sound fantastic. I mean you can put dozens of books up on those things and stick ’em in your purse, and there you go, you have a whole bunch of books. That would make packing for long trips GLORIOUSLY EASY. Instead of hurling me into an agony of indecision.
I bring this up because the lovely people at Irex have partnered with Bongs & Noodles (Bongs & Noodles! hurrah!) so that they have access to loads and loads of titles in the B&N database. Wait, no, that’s not why I brought it up. (I love Bongs & Noodles though.) I brought it up because Irex is giving one away. And they want to know what the most important thing in an eReader is.
For me, non-proprietary file types. I am in love with Project Gutenberg – in high school my friend tim and I were constantly printing out books from Project Gutenberg in very small type and reading them during class. And it made me sad when I discovered you had to pay money to the Amazon Kindle in order to convert those files into a compatible format. I mean not much BUT STILL. I am in love with the idea that you could have an eReader , and you could put on it ZILLIONS of books from Project Gutenberg.
Possibly if I ever got an eReader, I would be worried about other things, like storage space or how the pages turn or what the screen is like. But I have nothing to compare to, so mostly right now I am interested in the possibility of being able to have any Project Gutenberg book at my fingertips, while also being able to buy books for B&N for cheap and read them forever. Damn.