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PaperlessUndergrad: The Blog!

Waving goodbye to paper!

Waterstones lethargic about their pre-launch marketing of Sony Reader?August 31 2008

So with only 4 days remaining until Waterstones unleash the Sony Reader PRS-505 into the UK market, you’d expect their ‘wheels of marketing’ to be in full motion, chipping away at their customers, convincing them that they REALLY NEED to invest £199 in some ‘new-fangled’ book/reading technology.

Sadly, not so. Any notion of Waterstones’ wheels of marketing ‘chipping away’ seems not to have materialised.  The stores I visited in the past week may have had one or two ‘pre-order online’ posters on display, but from what I saw that’s about as far as Waterstones’ marketing wheels seemed to have turned on this.

If that’s not bad enough, the sales staff I questioned seemed bewildered about the impending launch of the Sony Reader (other than knowing the launch date), and showed little to no enthusiasm for its arrival. I did manage to speak with one member of staff (nice guy), who was tasked with setting up an in-store Reader display ‘in the next few days’, but again he was foggy (perhaps purposely) on any detail.

All of this lethargy makes me really disappointed in Waterstones.

Sony PRS-505 set to increase my paperless arsenalAugust 16 2008

Well I’ve spoken about it often enough lately and I’ve decided that I can’t wait any longer. The pros outweigh the cons, the price is absolutely right, and most importantly, I’ve convinced my wife that I need one :o). So it’s with great pleasure, and no little excitement, that I announce the latest addition coming to my paperless arsenal - the soon to be UK launched Sony PRS-505 Reader.

Since beginning my quest to operate as paperless as I can, I’ve yearned for a dedicated ereader. As many of you know, my Tablet PC has filled my ebook reading needs admirably, but the advantages of a dedicated reader, especially with regards to battery life and weight, can’t be ignored. I’ve lamented the lack of ereaders in the UK and now that Sony are stepping up and doing something about it, which probably has more to do with Sony pre-empting Amazon’s UK introduction of the Kindle than anything else, I should be putting my money w

Bookeen's Cybook Gen3 enters the UK ereader scuffleAugust 6 2008

There's me thinking the ereader market in the UK was shaping up to be only a '3 horse race' between the Sony PRS-505, the iRex iLiad and the Amazon Kindle (when it finally arrives..sigh!), but today I've discovered another 'player' joining the 'fray' in the shape of the sleek looking Cybook Gen3, from French company Bookeen.

With my ereader interest at this time peaking towards the Sony PRS-505 (the iLiad is well out of my price range at this time, and the Kindle is nowhere in sight), I spent some time comparing the specs of the PRS-505 with those of the Cybook Gen3 to see how they measured up against one another. Not surprisingly, given they're built

E-reader choice in the UK still woefully inadequateJuly 21 2008

So I was watching The Gadget Show earlier tonight (the UK’s premier show about, you guessed it - gadgets), and for the first time on British television (as far as I know), there was a feature on e-readers. Great I thought! About time I thought! The Gadget Show is pretty good at getting their mitts on the latest gadgets, so we should be in for a bit of a paperless reading treat here I thought; heck maybe we’ll even get a glimpse of the Amazon Kindle ‘in the flesh’, on British soil, for the first time. Sadly however my initial euphoria was quickly dampened, and not even the presence of ‘we’re not worthy’ Nigel Havers as guest ‘reviewer’ could raise it again :o).

Sure we got to see the BeBook in action; which looks to be an ok e-reader (and reasonably priced). We got a ‘hands-on’ demo of Irex’s iLiad Book Edition e-

AlphaSmart Neo - wooed by its zen-like simplicityFebruary 22 2008

Every once in a while you discover something that absolutely blows you away. From the moment you first see it you know it's going to fill a purpose in your life so perfectly, that you must own it there and then. I last had that feeling when I first saw a Tablet PC. I knew instantly  that it was exactly what I needed to make my paperless operation complete, and I wasn't wrong. Today, after reading an Unclutterer post I've discovered a new absolute 'must have', a minimalist portable word processor called the AlphaSmart Neo (full specs on the machine are available via this link).  

The Neo seems remarkable for both the features it does have, and the features it doesn't. Quite a strange statement to make but bear with me. Massively in its favour, the Neo is light, robust, features a full sized keyboard and most pleasing of all, has a battery life of around 700 hours. Of course in order to give you that amount of 'juice', something has to be left out and the most obvious is the lack of a large display. H