Apr
05
Posted by Hollyann
It went something like this: There are no pink readers at Target. Or Walmart. Todd: So let’s go to Best Buy.
Me: I can’t go to Best Buy, there are iPads there, my hype shield hasn’t been tested for Best Buy integrity.
Todd: I won’t let you get one.
Me: OK.
10 minutes later….
Me: oooh.
Todd: Walk away.
Me: Did you touch it? You didn’t touch it is the issue.
Todd: Let’s go do our other stuff and then… damn. This thing is cool.
Me: Other stuff, let’s do the other stuff.
Todd: Yea. Other stuff.
45 minutes later, other stuff accomplished:
Me: We should totally go back to Best Buy.
Todd: Right?
10 minutes later:
Cam the Best Buy Dude: Did you need a case and whatnot with that?
Me: Duh.
Now I am waiting patiently for Charlie to get home so he can make my unboxing video. He’s very fond of the unboxing videos. 
Apr
05
Posted by Hollyann
I need a new e-reader. I’ve needed one for some time. The one I have is, as far as I can remember, somewhere between 17 and 22 years old. Yes, there were e-readers long before Kindle. And yes, I was an early adopter. At any rate, this thing has a deal in the side where you plug in a phone line, so as to dial a 1-800 number and download your books over that new-fangled internet. A PHONE LINE. Not DSL, or ethernet, and certainly not USB. In fact, there is a nice serial port on there too, to hook it to your computer, which is what you did when your reader got so full of books you had to stick some on your fancy new 1 gigabyte hard drive, like you would ever really need that much space. 
For holding more books, there is a Compact Flash card. I’m pretty sure those don’t actually get made by anyone anymore. So, I need a new reader. I started looking about at the different options some time ago, and here is what I found.
For a while I was stuck on the ebookwise, only available on eBay, because it’s pretty much exactly what I have, only slightly updated, with a USB port. It can be hacked to read just about any file type, but not the files I can get from my library e-shelf. It’s pretty cheap, running between $90 and $120 after shipping, and it’s backlit, but the screen is still outdated, and reading on the one I have sorta gives me a headache after a couple hours.
I looked at the Kindle, but I don’t like that it won’t do the files that I can get on the ‘e-shelf’ from my library, nor am I a huge fan of being so completely restricted to getting my stuff on Amazon, not that I don’t love Amazon, but I like to keep my options open, not only have one option. At least one version has a keyboard, not sure what the point is there, I guess to take notes? I plan to use my reader for my own personal reading, I don’t often take notes in the margins of the latest Stephen King novel or anything, so I don’t need that. The other pertinent info – the smaller one, the one I would choose, holds 1500 books, has a 6 inch screen and something called global wireless, which I don’t need either, and costs $259. The Kindle store says over 450,000 books are available.
I then looked at the Sony reader, comes in three versions, I like the pocket one, since I don’t need to take notes, nor am I away from the desktop so much that I have a burning desire to download books from a Wi-FI Hotspot or whatever. Works with my library, has a partnership of some sort with Google, reads a lot of different file types and comes with conversion software for even more. Store says over a million books available, 5 inch screen, regular price $199, was on sale last time I was in Borders for $179, ALWAYS $179 at the Sony student store. I’m a student. Also comes in pink, which the Kindle does not. Nor does the iPad.
Of course, the iPad is supposed to be the bee’s knees when it comes to e-readers. And I love love love apple gadgets. Not so much the computers themselves, but as most of you know, I have a long-standing love affair going on with my pods (plural, yes, plural) and my phone. But I just don’t actually *get* the iPad. I really don’t. It seems to be my netbook that I already own, with no keyboard, no Flash compatibility, no USB ports, and a hard drive half the size (at best) at more than twice the price (again, at best). At the moment, there are not a lot of iPad specific apps, and the iPhone/iTouch apps are completely pixelly and icky on the bigger screen (oh, which, btw, smaller than my netbook’s screen, by 2 diagonal inches.) I guess for people who don’t have a netbook OR an iTouch OR an iPhone and always really wanted at least two of the three, it’s… still not as good as my netbook combined with just the iTouch, and anyone could go and buy all three for less than the largest capacity iPad is costing. And have all three in hand today, as well, no waiting for more stock, or for the one that works on 3g (is there a point to that? does the thing make phone calls?) or any of that nonsense. Smallest iPad capacity is 16G, which of course far outstrips the 512M capacity on the Sony reader and the 2G on the Kindle, but all the other stuff is going to use up a bit of that too. 16G price: $499. About 20,000 books in the iBookstore, but I expect that will explode exponentially as the sales numbers trickle out and publishers realize they need to be on there to make some money.
At any rate, here is what I did, because like any Apple fan, the hype gets to me. I slowly start deciding, as I read reviews, that maybe the benefits outweigh the problems, and I NEED the latest Apple gadget. This is a pretty expensive Apple gadget, though, so I needed to be logical in my approach to the hype. Enter the HYPE SHIELD. This is where I try my best to forget that said gadget says Apple on it anywhere. Not easy to do when it looks like a giant iTouch, but I have a decent imagination. Once I do that, and therefore ignore that it seems EVERYONE is buying one, I can break it down. I need a reader. And I would maybe like to expand my options for playing games on the go. What are the benefits to this particular reader? It’s in color. And I can play games on it. And surf the internet. Blah blah blah, do the things I do on my netbook. As long as I don’t want Flash, meaning as long as I am ok accessing many sites through the site designed to be accessed by a phone, not a computer. But wait, I can play games on my PSP, my phone, my iTouch, and my netbook. So that doesn’t count. I can surf the internet on the same devices. So that doesn’t count. So, it’s in color. That’s not a bad benefit, really. We’ll call that worth $50 over the price of any given black and white reader. I want to expand my game playing on the go, and we will say the game portion is worth about $75 over the price of a reader with no game options. I’d make it worth more, but even with the option, you gotta pay for the games themselves.
Since I do want to do something more with mobile gaming, though, and the iPad does do games, we better toss in a game system for comparison as well. I already have a clunky old PSP, and the kids have DS Lite (Charlie) and DSi (Kayla) but I don’t use their stuff, it’s part of an agreement we have, where they don’t touch my toys either. If I was going to go for a new mobile game system, I would go for a DSi, or a DSi XL, which is the same but bigger for us old people who can’t read tiny type on bitty screens. I’d probably prefer the XL, not getting any younger, after all, but I’ll put the specs for both the DSi and the XL. DSi is $170 at Gamestop, comes in pink, has a 3.25 inch screen and a bitty stylus. XL is $190, has a 4.25 inch screen (ish) and comes with both a bitty stylus and a stylus the size of a regular pen. Comes with 3 games installed, which the regular DSi doesn’t, but they are pretty meh games. Both go online, play all the same games, etc. The XL doesn’t come in pink, but it does come in an interesting bronze color.
So here is the conclusion to all my research. The Kindle is not for me. To get a Sony Reader AND a DSi XL would cost me $370. To get an iPad would cost me at least $499. Not much to think about there, I am off to Borders and Gamestop. I’ll have at least $130 to spend on books and games before I hit the price of the iPad! Holly’s hype shield proves effective, for the first time ever.