With the announcement of Barnes & Noble's nook, I have finally jumped on the ereader bandwagon. I dislike the Kindle very much, more so, I dislike Amazon's DRM structure and machine limitations. Barnes & Noble has created a method that I myself was a proponent of at my former place of employment and is a middle finger to Amazon's medieval protection methods. Sure some people will be upset that they don't just send you a complete file, clinging to perceptions of ownership that are falling away in this new age, but piracy is a genuine threat that gets dismissed too flippantly. I've seen its ravaging effects on a book first hand. So good on ya, B&N.

Now, the general logic is that this is a passing trend. Single-purpose machines aren't worth their money. Multi-purpose machines are the future, which is why the iPod became the iPhone. Granted, I don't have an iPhone (and won't until it plays Flash--which will be never because Apple is stupid), but I have a Blackberry. I was so enthusiastic about nook that I downloaded B&N's ereader to my Blackberry (yes, you don't need to buy a nook, they have ereaders available for smart phones and computers that will play any of the ebooks they sell, ebooks from Google, PDFs, etc. I bought An Echo in the Bone, Diana Gabaldon's seventh book in her Outlander series. I didn't buy it in hardback because I have the mass paperbacks of the rest of the series and I don't want to break the series format (yes, I'm like that). I'd been checking it out from the library, but could only get the one-week, no renewal copy so I hadn't made a lot of progress.

So, what I've learned, is that I'm a single-function machine type of guy. I still use my 3rd generation iPod and I'll get an ereader with a larger screen than my Blackberry and I will be happy. Perhaps if my smart phone had a screen as large as an iPhone, but even then an ereader has a larger screen.