So the Sony Reader is finally out and getting generally favorable reviews, though also with a lot of reservations. I really hoped Sony would get things right with the Reader, and they appear to have gotten a lot of things right.
The thing is, I’m not so much a reader as an annotator. When I read books, I am constantly underlining passages and making comments/asking questions in the margins. The Sony Reader has no ability at all to do any sort of annotating of texts.
If that weren’t bad enough, the device can’t even do a basic text search. That’s pretty much unforgivable, as searching through texts is something that e-books are far and away superior to paper books.
So the display may be revolutionary, but feature-wise my $125 eBookwise (which is a rebranded Rocketbook) is more functional than Sony’s $350 Reader.
That makes choosing whether to be an early adopter on the Sony Reader a fairly easy decision. Hopefully the Reader will sell well enough to warrant a second version that will include annotation and searching. Until then, I’m sticking with my eBookwise.