This weekend, in my sicky state, I spent a lot of time online getting ready for my holiday shopping. Yes, I do all of my shopping for the holidays online. I hate Christmas shopping season. You won’t catch me in any retail shop if I can do anything to help it. Anyways, while browsing Amazon I saw the Amazon Kindle.

The Kindle is an ebook reader from Amazon. Ebooks are not a new technology, but releasing the Kindle is an interesting move on Amazon’s behalf. They are venturing into the device market in an area where they are clearly dominating physical sales. But given that people are more accustomed to downloading media now than ever before means that ebooks could finally take off. Yipee!

I’ve always been a big fan of the idea of e-books. To be able to have access to an entire library of books that you could download intrigues me. However, with saying that, there is also the actual physical aspects of books that I truly love. There is something completely fulfilling to me about spending an afternoon in a bookstore perusing the shelves, pulling down books, looking at covers, just exploring… I guess it is a comforting feeling for me. It reminds me of when I was young and one of my favourite things was to go to the bookstore with my father.

But then again, I do like surfing the web for books, but there is still that element of being able to flip through the pages that is slightly lost (even with Amazon’s preview features).

I guess I am still undecided on the technology. Maybe you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. But I’m sure that this gadget girl can make a go at it…

So now the question is. Do I buy a Kindle or not…?

The coolest part about Kindle is that you can download books wirelessly. The uncoolest part about Kindle is that you can’t download books wirelessly outside the US of A. Therefore, the wow factor is lost on me and I would be stuck downloading on my PC and transferring with USB. Which is fine. But if I’m going to do that then I might as well buy the Sony Reader Digital Book and save $100.

The only thing I worry about with the Sony is the number of available titles and continuing support for the product. As with all Sony (and every other DRM using bastard company), the Reader uses DRM’d content that is locked to the Sony site. Same with Kindle. I just want to go with the one with the most content and continuing support. Hmmm… Oh the problems I face every day.

Anyone have any thoughts on the pros and cons of either of these - or even ebooks in general? Please share with me and help me decide!!!

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Found a bitchfight on engadget with a vs image… now tell me what you think.