Shopping for E-Book Readers

I picked up the paper today.  I usually don't but I was curious about the Black Friday ads in the Thanksgiving Day paper.  If you really want my opinion, I'd call it Gray Friday since more stores aren't waiting for Friday.  Some already began some sales.  Wal-Mart started doorbuster sales Thanksgiving night at 10 pm.  But that's not the point. 

If I was going to hazard a guess, I'd have to say that retailers are looking at E-book readers as one of the big sellers this year since e-book readers were probably the most common thing on the front of the ads.  Examples?  Kohls selling Literati for $99, Best Buy selling Nooks  for $99, CVS Pharmacy had an e-book reader for $98.88.  Radio Shack had a PanDigital e-book reader for $149.99.  There were more, but these were just some examples on the first pages of some of the ads.

One of the other things that surprised me is the number of different e-book readers on the market.  While the Amazon Kindle is the best known, followed by the Barnes & Noble Nook, and Apple iPad.  There are quite a few others.  Just for a little perspective, I conducted a quick Internet search on e-book readers and found an article on C/Net rating 75 different models.  Of course there were many variations of the same brand.  It basically came down to the following list of 19.

Astak EZ Reader

Amazon Kindle

Barnes and Noble Nook

Sony Reader

Entourage Edge

Apple iPad

Alex eReader

Kobo eReader

Pandigital Novel

Cool-er e-book

Sony PRS-500 Portable Reader System

Franklin eBookman

RCA REB1100 eBook

Augen

Aluratek LIBRE

The Sharper Image Literati Digital Reader

ViewSonic VEB620

Ectaco jetBook

entourage eDGe

For additional research, I also found some information on Wikipedia comparing, but not rating e-book readers.  It does provide information based on features.

Enjoy your leftovers and

Write On