Interead Cool-er e-reader two weeks on

A couple of weeks ago I bought myself an e-book reader - an Interead Cool-er - and since then I've been using it on and off - mostly to read texts downloaded from project Gutenberg. Here's my list of dot points frm the past two weeks

• the filesystem doesn't supress ._ files if you download via a mac
• books in epub format are definitely better than using pdf
• it's not an ipod moment but it is good, and is better than reading from a computer
  
• reading quickly becomes natural -even allowing for the 'shazam' page changes
  
• bright sunlight makes reading out of doors impossible
• battery life is good
• download and loading of texts is straight forward

all in all it's more like one of the early non-ipod mp3 players to use rather than an ipod - good but missing that hooked in ecology - which I guess is what Amazon is trying to create with the Kindle.

The real revelation is just how much easier epub formatted documents are to work with than pdf's - certainly epub is something I'll have to investigate.

Am I glad I bought one - the answer's yes - I've found it invaluable for reading stuff without having to print it out. Was it the best $300 I've spent? - possibly not, but certainly the money wasn't wasted - I've probably saved some of that in paper and in buying reprints of translations of classical texts from DoDo. Incidentally I've used it for some recreational reading as well, and that flows pretty well as well even if you do feel yourself to be a bit of gink at first sat in bed reading from it.

I'm certainly not done with buying conventional printed books but e-readers offer a decent alternative and certainly have a role as an adjunct to print on demand as a distribution model.