e-book readers

[Supergoal]

Sorry if this has been asked and posted before.

I'm looking to buy an e-book reader since I'll be studying again in uni.
One of the main reasons of getting one of these is to save money on shipping and storage space of books in my place.

Do these things actually work well in place of the real thing? As well as being good for students?

Any help appreciated.

[abigsmurf]

I had a Sony PRS-505 and thought it was great.

They really are far easier on the eye than reading off of an LCD. Also great for manga (read 8,000 pages of One Piece on it). How good they are for students depends on if your books are available in ebook form. For technical books a bigger screen one, with a higher resolution is a better option than the 5-6" ones.

I'm currently tempted by the new Kindles. Bit frustrating that they're still stuck at 800*600 for the small ones (not an issue for text but it is for manga). 16 levels of grey help make up for that though.

[kryss]

Having read a few textbooks on my PRS-600, I would say that you should get the real books. Textbooks are more about searching through for what you need, which e-readers can do but very slowly.

If it's more for study at home then just use your PC.

[Supergoal]

Having read a few textbooks on my PRS-600, I would say that you should get the real books. Textbooks are more about searching through for what you need, which e-readers can do but very slowly.

If it's more for study at home then just use your PC.

Thanks for the quick replies.
I saw the Sony one and the Kindle DX which looks great. Price isn't so much of a concern since it's a long term investment.

I'll be studying English literature and need a stack load of books to read. I live in Japan and the shipping of these books would cost hundreds of pounds!!
Really wasn't sure what to do until I discovered such things like e-readers existed.
Stuff like annotations might be a problem though if I can't do it on one of these devices. I'm just curious as to how any fellow students get along using one if at all.

[abigsmurf]

you can do annotations on ones with touchscreens

[kryss]

I was thinking about science textbooks >.>
I'm sure it would be fine for English Lit. and the Sony Reader Touch (PRS-600) is great for making annotations.
Sad thing is that Japan actually seemed to be the worse place to get an E-reader when I was living there.

Silly question perhaps, but can't you still get most books from Amazon Japan? Obviously I don't know how many books you'll be needing, but even shipping from Amazon UK won't cost you "hundreds of pounds". A textbook I was looking at getting was $200+ on Amazon.com and .ca but "only" 50quid on the UK site. Shipping to Canada was 7quid on top. For a 1.3kg book.