In which she asks for advice

[zeborah]

At the moment, I can't deal well with unsolicited advice however kindly meant (and I know it's meant kindly). I think it infringes on my desperate attempts to pretend I remain competent and independent and in control. I'm proud of my ability to adapt and survive: it's one of the few things an earthquake can't take away.

Plus, I've spent six weeks reading official advice about both the practical things and the emotional things - no, make that six months - and working out how this applies to myself (and I know myself pretty well) so it's fairly unlikely that someone outside what's going on will be able to offer any good and appropriate advice that I don't already know.

And I find it hard at the best of times and particularly stressful at present to have to find ways to say "Yes, already doing that, thanks," or "No, that'd be utterly useless for me," without sounding terse and ungrateful and otherwise disappointing people who only wanted to help. I don't want anyone to think I don't appreciate the motivating sentiment, because I do, I just can't cope with the external manifestation of it.

Also at the moment I am, quite frankly, in a state of controlled falling apart. (A lot of people are really struggling right now, six weeks on. My own recent symptoms - other than weepiness brought on by going to work, choir, the bus, or the shops, or by thinking about any of these, or by thinking about almost anything at all really - include leaving my bag with wallet, cellphone and (expired) passport on a bus last night (tracked it down late this morning, Deo gratias, just before admitting defeating and reporting it lost to all and sundry; relief is a powerful drug) and using the wrong toilet this morning (oh well, I'll "let it mellow" and get some more uses out of my mistake).

I don't need advice or help or even sympathy; I just need a really good rest, which I'm communicating with my manager at work about arranging so that's all under control.

However. I do need advice on one thing, which is: Which e-reader should I buy?

I'm not fussy about features.

• I basically want to read books on it, synced from my (Mac) laptop.
• I rarely if ever read anything that requires colour.
• It must have native ePub capability (I'm not buying a Kindle); ideally I'd like it to support a range of basic formats like pdf, txt, rtf, html, but can survive if some of these have inexplicably not been implemented.
• I like the idea of e-ink but am comfortable with LCD screens too.
• Storage space and battery life are important though not to the exclusion of other considerations (including price).
• Something RSI-friendly would be nice - lightweight, comfortable, with left-hand/right-hand redundancy

I think I'm probably looking at a Nook or a Kobo and of the two I think I like the Nook better, but this is based entirely on looking at websites and feature comparison charts. All the charts say you should try them out yourself, but last time I saw anything one could try out was in a bookstore just before Christmas, and as near as I could tell approximately a gazillion other customers had already tested them and broken them. As for now... half the bookstores in town are destroyed or inaccessible and the other half are on the verge of bankruptcy (okay, I admit it, I can name two exceptions, but neither has e-readers) and I'm tired of travelling around anyway.

Bonus features I'd like but aren't necessary since I don't know if they really exist:

• Full Unicode support (including Māori macrons). You wouldn't think this would be so hard, and yet... Seriously, let me know if you know of anyone doing this.
• Note-taking functionality - but not if to get that I have to also get a thousand other features and pay through the nose for the combo. An iPad, for example, would be ridiculously overpowered for my purposes.

Experiences, (dis)recommendations?

Comments

[errolwi.livejournal.com]

Have you considered an iPod Touch (AKA iTouch)? I use Stanza as my reader app on my iPhone, which uses epub (I use Calibre to convert if required). I don't know how the native iBooks handles things other than DRM'd stuff from iTunes.

The iTouch has the benefit/disadvantage of being small and fairly light (somewhat less than an iPhone). Not sure what battery life is like when reading, I can ask people if you are interested.

Are you planning on limiting yourself to free and made-available-by-publishers-to-NZ works, or are you prepared to by-pass geographic restrictions?

[keieeeye]

I find, incidentally, that anything with the i-prefix is horrifically expensive. I've mostly found this checking into things like mp3 players where you could get something with basically the same features for sometimes as little as half the price as long as you didn't desperately want an Apple product. (Apple computers are also on the expensive side, but in that case I find it worth it.)

[zeborah]

To be fair, when I lost my first iPod and got an mp3 player instead, it was so clunky it was impossible to use. Granted I'd got the cheapest available which isn't a fair comparison. But... it only had a couple of features, how could they possibly have made it so difficult to understand? There's features and then there's interface, and Apple does make nice and usable interfaces.

[keieeeye]

haha this is true. I think the big advantage of buying Apple products is that you do know what you're getting; if you get an off-brand you have to really research pretty hard, otherwise it can be hit or miss.

[zeborah]

Yes, this exactly.

Plus the shiny.

[jennygadget.livejournal.com]

I'm taking an interface design class this semester and we've gotten into this conversation several times and the general opinions seem to be

1) People are taken in by the shiny - do not be taken in by the shiny!

2) Apple consistently makes interfaces that (aside from a few obvious problems/out of stepness with the rest of the world) are really easy for people to understand out of the box. This makes them very appealing when something is new (home computers, mp3 players, netbooks, ereaders, etc) - or new to the buyer.

3) Apple deliberately aims to be moderately expensive and usable but not meant to be tinkered with. This makes them unaffordable to the lower end of the market and hated by the experts and tinkerers, but appealing to a lot of other people.

As I am always taken in by the shiny, I tend to go with 2 and 3. (Also, I argue that shiny tends to improve usability of interfaces, as harmonious design is easier to read than discordant design. Pretty is not a substitute for clear meaning and logic, but it can enhance it.)

[zeborah]

The iTouch comes a bit close to "too many additional features pushing up the price" for me. And... while I still like iThings, I'm getting a bit disenchanted with their locked-in nature.

Knowing myself, I'll probably be tempted to bypass geographic restrictions if it's fairly easy to, but mostly I'll take what I can get. :-) Just being able to carry Gutenberg books will be a huge step up.

[ex_heleninwales860]

I am a total convert to ebooks now and I'm just reading them on an iPod Touch. I bought a slightly older model on ebay, so that made it a bit cheaper. The most significant change in the latest model was the camera and I already have plenty of cameras! :)

For me, rather than "too many additional features pushing up the price" it was a case of "This thing does so many useful jobs that I can justify the price whereas I don't know that I can justify paying that much for something that will only display books."

The iTouch will read epub using the Stanza app (I've been reading lots of classics from Gutenberg) and also Kindle books (It's possible to buy from Amazon.com via a workaround that involves paying a "virtual visit" to the US). I've also successfully converted MS Word docs to epub in order to read them on the iTouch for critiquing purposes.

The downside is that you have to manage files via iTunes, which is a bit clunky, but doable, and you have to have access to WiFi to get Kindle books onto it. I also haven't tried to do any sort of note taking whilst reading. It may be possible, but if that's an important feature for you, then something with a keyboard might be better.

[ex_heleninwales860]

PS Re the Kindle books, of course I can buy from Amazon.co.uk and normally do, but when things are only published in the US, like Jo's latest, it is possible to buy them for Kindle. I couldn't, however, find any way around the geographic restrictions on the Barnes and Noble site.