After July 4 short-lived promotion of Sony Reader for $99, now Sony is offering Sony reader for $49 if you sign up for their credit card. This tells me several things:
- Sony is getting ready to offer their second generation device in weeks (maybe even next week!)
- suddenly ebook devices have become really affordable. That means everybody will be buying one!
- This will exert downward price pressure on future reading devices.
While looking through the Sony Connect inventory, I was disappointed; most of the ebooks just don’t seem that interesting from a format/layout point of view. No reference guides or graphic-intense guides. this underscores my guess that the most attractive ebooks will be the ones self-published by DIY authors like myself. On the other hand, when .epub file becomes standard, I predict it will be a lot easier to find and buy richly designed ebooks.
Here’s a techie’s blog about using the Sony Reader. Great stuff, including before-and-after pictures of using the RasterFarian utility (that improves contrast and font).
Update: According to teleread, there are some strings attached, nothing out of the ordinary. A detailed dissection of the deal here. A long-winded discussion is here.
Warning: only available to people living inside the U.S.
Thank you so much for posting this! I *knew* it paid to wait awhile.
note: only eligible to people inside the US.