So. I had been saving up my loonies and toonies (that would be Canadian $1 and $2 coins for those of you not in the know) in a sealed can for a while now. I just really wanted to see how much the can would hold before it got full. The other day I couldn't jam anymore coins into it so I took a can opener to the sucker and proceeded to roll up all the coins. Much to my surprise and delight the damn can holds just over $700 in loonies and toonies. I was tickled pink that I'd managed to do that just by tossing my change into a can.
Anyway, I took all the rolls to the bank today and walked out with crisp new bills instead and then proceeded to Best Buy to have a gawk around. Picked up Brutal Legend for the PS3 because it was on for $20 and I enjoyed the demo like mad. Then I found their ebook reader section. Not a whole lot of stuff there to gawk at.. just the two Sony devices and the Aluratek Libre, which I had been eyeballing (it's pretty much an exact duplicate of the Ectaco Jetbook). Still fence sitting on if I'd even like reading on a device vs good old books, I decided to take the cheaper route and picked up the Libre.
It is currently sitting in the kitchen charging up, but the man and I tinkered with it a bit in the van (he's got a usb charger thingy in the van for his blackberry) and I'm actually really impressed by the little thing. The screen is so so so much crisper than the Sony ones and, because of the tech this device uses, there is no annoying black flash on page turns. It came loaded with 100 classic books on it already, so I don't even have to spend any coin unless I want to grab new releases. It has decent file support (PDF, TXT, FB2, ePub, MOBI, PRC, and RTF) and will even play mp3s/audiobooks if you want it to (I doubt I'll be using that function at all).
For a first step into e-reading it really is a nice deal. It cost me $159.00 at Best Buy and, for a simple basic ebook reader, it comes with all those books, a carrying case, wrist strap, earphones, usb cable and usb wall charger. It may have a small internal memory, but you can slap a 32GB SD card into it if memory/storage is an issue.
I'll post more after I've actually sat down and played with it/read something on it, but at first look for a device to read on it really was a nice deal for the price. Annnnnd if it turns out that I hate reading on a machine, I didn't just toss $300 out the window. I can see if my kid will read on it or toss it onto ebay or something.
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