The latest gadget in the all-in-one techno craze. Ereaders with stores, ereaders with bluetooth, wireless, 3G. Ereaders that find your keys, walk your dog and sync with your coffee machine so your cuppa is timed perfectly for the end of the chapter*. 80% of people** are under the impression that there are only two "real" ereaders on the market - the Kindle and the iPad. 20% tentatively ventured "wasn't there that one that let you share things?", which I believe referred to the Nook - interesting, as this is Australia, and the next most easily available reader would be the iLiad, being sold in Dymocks. But the general consensus was that the reader market was pretty much a two-party system. Hah.

I was thinking of doing a comparison of readers, hoping to bring to light some of the nifty options in the E-readers-that-aren't-kindles-or-iPads category, because there are some (like the iLiad and the Adam) that show a lot of promise for some of their features, like open-source goodness, but don't have the marketing machine behind them to get their names out there. However, preliminary research (read: the Wikipedia page on ereaders) showed a far better comparison than I was planning to do for a morning blog post (and a whole lot of readers I'd never heard of, either). So instead, I thought I'd talk about some of the key differences, and what they mean in 'real' terms.

*That last one's made up. But it's only a matter of time.

**Statistic taken from the five people I surveyed on the train this morning.

E-ink

E-ink was the big selling point for a lot of e-readers. It uses a very low power consumption, is capable of pretty high resolutions, and (anecdotally) easier on the eyes than regular screens.

It looks a lot like newspaper print, and works in a similar way - with tiny dots of "ink": A whole lot of tiny balls are suspended in a fluid against the screen. Each ball is painted half white, and half black, and will turn black-or-white side up when a current is passed through the fluid. Pass the right complex series of currents, and voila - a page is displayed.

Once turned, the balls don't need a current to maintain their position, so power is only used when actually turning a page - that's why the kindle batteries can last a week, compared to the iPad's which may last half a day. And because there's no backlight or constantly-refreshing screen, the book reads as easily in sunlight as a regular book does, and (supposedly) doesn't cause the headaches that prolonged reader from a backlit screen can. Though it also means you need a regular torch to read it under the covers.

However, the 'refresh rate' of e-ink - that is, how fast it can change an image - is extremely slow. Up to about two seconds to change a page. Which means anything that requires a higher refresh rate - an on-screen operating system, video, games - is right out. It also means those speed-readers among us will find the lag disruptive. (This is the main reason I haven't picked up an ereader yet - it still takes too long to turn a page!)

It's perfectly compatable with touch screens, however - and there are ereaders like the iLiad that allow you to take notes all over your ebook using a stylus.

Colour e-ink is ridiculously expensive - so expensive that for most e-reader companies, it's not even in production. Instead of black and white dots, you have black, white, cyan, yellow and magenta dots, and a much, much more complex current system - and it still wouldn't be able to produce anything more than a static image.

There is, however, a new development by a company called Liquavista. They're claiming to use electrowetting, suspending tiny coloured drops of oil and manipulating them with current. Apparently the oil responds much, much faster than traditional e-ink - fast enough to run video. We've only seen press releases and carefully staged video demonstrations, though, so save your excitement for when it actually hits the streets.

Go for e-ink if:

• you don't actually enjoy reading from your computer screen
• you want to be able to read a lot of books without recharging your battery
• you like to read outdoors
• you don't care for browsing, video, colour displays, or games (for the moment. That'll change soon.)

Go for a backlit screen (eg iPad, tablet etc) if:

• you actually like reading from a computer screen
• you want to be able to read in the dark
• you rarely go far from a power outlet
• you want other features on your device (games, video, browsing, etc)

Format

Format's a bit contentious at the moment. Like any new electronic medium, the format wars are underway for ebooks, too. Amazon has its own proprietry format (of course), then there are all the 'open' formats, and the other formats with various levels of DRM. It's important to know what your reader supports, because this will determine what books you can put on there, and where you can get them from.

Not all formats are created equal, though most aren't all that different. For most, the only real difference is the levels of DRM and device compatability - whether that book can be read on your laptop, smartphone and backup ereader. EPub is fast becoming the industry standard for everyone but Amazon, who have their feet planted firmly in their proprietry .azw kindle format. PDF is a favourite for those who want to read their own notes and documents. The important thing is what formats your ereader supports - this, perhaps more than anything else, will dictate what you can do with it.

 The key thing to note really is the Kindle's format policy. It uses a format that can't be read by anything else - so if you change readers, you can't take your library with you - and it can't read the most common format today.

Openness

This one's a little more difficult to dscover if you're not someone who regularly trawls the 'net for tech news. But there are two schools of thought:

• Users paid for the product, they should get to do whatever they want with it
• Users want things kept simple so they know how to do stuff, and they can't break their device.

The two concepts are not, as yet, compatable with each other, and eReaders are falling in a clear divide on each side. Some, like the iLiad, are completely open source, and even offer developer software kits so users can write their own software for the device. Others, like the Kindle and iPad, try to make it as easy as possible to get books onto your device and read them - and they do this by limiting what you can do.

For example, if you want an application on your ipad (or soon, your Kindle - their app store is on its way), can't just browse the internet and find an app you like from a random site and install it. Apple limits you to the apps they've approved on their App store. Without jailbreaking your device, you can't have apps from anywhere else. On the one hand, it makes it simple - everything's in one place, only one company has your creditcard details, it's always the same process to install something - simple. But it also means you have less options. You can't do whatever you want. You can't connect up your eReader and use it as a portable harddrive, for example. (Well, there's probably An App For That, or there will be soon, but that's not the point).

Personally, I advocate against a closed system like that. Not only because I subscribe heavily to the first notion up above, but because I believe dumbing down systems is ultimately not helpful to society, and locking them down is not in consumer's interests. We want a society that is, as a whole, more educated, more confident in their ability to work something out, more willing to try new ideas, not one that's frightened of installing a printer. And we want an economy that rewards companies who give consumers benefits, who give value to technological and social development, who use competition as a driving force of progress, not companies that lock down their products to dole out improvements they've already developed and sit pretty on the money tree of a false monopoly.

But that's just a personal opinion - if what you want in a reader is super ease of use, and you're not too fussed about what happens to your library when you upgrade, or what else you can do with the device, then the simplicity of a locked-down product might be exactly what you're after.

But if you're in the market for an eReader, shop around. There's so much more than just two products in town. Or, even better, wait. Give it about twelve months. Let the iPad explosion die down (let them come out with the next generation), let the Liquavista's colour e-ink eventuate (I hope), let the format war die down and the print publishers figure out what they're doing. Then figure out what you actually want to do with this new toy, and which one will let you do what you want.

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