You can listen to music on the sony ebook reader FYI

@Jason Chen:

"... but Sony's doesn't let you jam out to The Hives while enjoying Dumbledore's latest wand adventure."

That was a heavy blow! You're a bad bad doggy ;)

I have the sony reader, and you can definitely listen to MP3's while reading. Not something I do, or would want to do, but the capacity is there.

The sony eReader most certainly DOES play mp3's while you read books. I like listening to classical, and have almost all the Cisco reference guides on one card when I need them.

No DRM, and easy to copy the music onto the SD cards. It also allows you to view standard JPEG/GIF/PNG files in monochrome.

Thanks dudes.

@Jason Chen: actually I referred to the wand adventure.
But,... nevermind.

The 8,000 pages is really a theoretical number. This assumes all 8,000 page turns happen within a very short time. These ebook readers constantly siphon power whether "on" or "off." In reality, they are never off as the "power" switch just block access to the buttons to maintain a blank screen. If you leave your reader unattended for a month, the battery will be completely drained.

Just an FYI...

@berribrand: Which is exactly why they'll never replace the cheap and the wonderful smelling books. Battery power will need to increase, and in short not be a problem ever again before ereaders kill off paper. Of course that also means the price needs to come down, jamming more features only makes it more expensive so enough already (I mean I've got a computer and a mp3 player if I want to listen to music at the same time and it'll sound better, lets not get ridiculous). Of course you don't have to look too far as the failed attempt at a do-all hand held device, the PDA and now the smart phone. Which just may be able to do everything, but again they haven't been able to move out of the niche market that is formed of primarily business users.

All I want is an e-reader that works, is durable, reasonably priced and again battery power isn't a problem. Problem is, we're not quiet there yet. Meh, just as people made it rich with oil in the early 20th century, whoever solves our energy problems is going to make a killing.

Doesn't support PRC or LIT files, the two most common formats of DRM-protected books. What's the point?

@bbfreak:
I agree, I want my ebook reader to do books and images. Period. I don't care for mp3s. But frankly, I do like my Sony Reader because I tend to read several books at the same time and carrying them around is a pain since I have a preference for hard cover books. There is also the issue of being able to make short notes on whatever it is you are reading. With paper, this is easy to do. I would like for ebook readers to address this issue, rather than mp3s.

It does support encrypted Mobipocket format. It doesn't support LIT because Microsoft won't license that to anyone who doesn't run WinCE.

I'm thinking of getting one. I've invested quite a lot in MobiPocket PRC and eReader PDB. Apparently, it will work with older versions of PDB (back when it was PalmDigitalMedia versions), but not with the new eReader.

I'm a certified bookworm (have thousands of book, literally), and I certainly won't stop buying real books after this. However, I don't think of ebooks as a rival, more a complement.

Certain reading needs are simply better served with ebooks, reference books in particular. Fancy carrying several dictionaries or encyclopedia around? Or technical books, manuals and guidebooks.

Anywho, it still ship from France when I checked out the site. Which would add another 30-40 dollars for shipping. Steep. Anybody knows whether they ship from US?

A group of SciFi readers banded together to make a buyers club group purchase of 1000 Cybook Gen3. They will ship from NY. Last I heard, they had about 200 still available. It is a special deal, including the cover and a 1 GB SD card, for $375. More detials at [naebllc.com]