eBook Readers- Kindle or Sony?

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Thanksgiving is over, Black Friday is behind us, so it is officially the start of the Christmas shopping season.  I did something yesterday that I rarely do on Black Friday.  I ventured out to the mall, but not for any of the early bird door buster specials.  None of those deals were on my shopping list. Plus I did not want to have to deal with the huge lines and stampedes of people.  As it was, I went in the early afternoon, with a set list of items in mind.  The mall was still very crowded, but I was in and out in about an hour.  Mission accomplished.

I think I am pretty much done with my shopping, but when you don't have a whole lot of extra money to spend, it is easy to be done early.  Now I can go about the business of avoiding the malls and trying to figure out what to tell my wife when she asks me what I want for Christmas.  I usually try to tell her not to bother getting me anything since I am pretty much the only person working for pay.  Besides, there is usually nothing that I particularly want other than maybe some books or iTunes gift cards.

I do enjoy reading, and part of me really would like to get one of those eBook readers.  With my job, I have to attend a couple trade shows each year.  I also have to occasionally visit some of our stores in different airports across the country.  Whenever I have to travel on those instances, I almost always carry at least two books with me.  The appeal to getting one of the eBook readers would be the ease of carrying only the one light device versus a couple of bulkier, heavier books.

The first question to be answered would be is the convenience worth the cost involved in purchasing one.  If the answer to the first question is yes, then the second question would be which one to get, the Amazon Kindle or the Sony eBook Reader.  Both have their advantages, I am sure.  With the Kindle, everything is wireless.  You can be on the road and just download a book directly without the need of a computer.  Plus I have seen some blogs advertising that you can read their blog on the Kindle.  The Sony reader is less expensive but it does require that you download the book to your computer and sync your reader to the computer to load the book on to the reader.  Although I did see that Sony is coming out with a wireless version.

I have only seen the Sony version and it looks pretty cool.  I am hoping that I have literate readers who have gone through the decision making process and have bought either the Kindle or the Sony.   If so, please comment here about how you decided on the model you bought and how happy you are with the performance.  What features do you have on your reader that you just can't live without?

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