Crowdsourced Shopping

[ase]

Captain Vorpatril's Alliance is available in electronic format, and I want something to read on the train, so I'm looking at ereaders. Are there overwhelming reasons to go with a Kindle Touch over a Nook Simple Touch? Available free / cheap books, breadth / depth of compatible file formats, convenience of downloading internet content, marginal non-reading bonus features? I'm leaning toward the Nook. I'm also eying the Sony ereader in reflexive anti-crowd attitude, but I'm not buying without trying.

Comments

[cahn]

Wow, yeah, ancient ;)

I believe OverDrive is available for Android? I've only used the iOS version, but I've used that succsesfully for library loans... I think Android in general has been a little less accepting of the DRM-book thing.

(My library does have a fairly limited electronic selection, although I've been able to get a couple of things I wanted to read... YMMV.)

[ase]

There will probably some freeware evaluation. I've got Aldiko and FBReader loaded so far... ultimately, I need an app that handles the SFPL's DRM. For now there is the Bujold that got this started and all of Project Gutenberg. (And a few books that may, ahem, already live on my laptop.) SFPL will probably be hit and miss on ebooks, but some beats none, especially during the borrowing-old-phone evaluation period. :-)

Also, it has been pointed out I missed a major smartphone function in my reading rush: plan or no plan, I can access wifi. There may be some coffee shop lunch breaks in my future.

[cahn]

Ha, right -- somehow I neglected to mention that my chief use of my smart"phone" is reading my RSS feed :) (There are also apps for caching RSS feeds offline; if I'm not going to be around wifi for a while I usually do that.)

My vague impression -- either from Lifehacker or my own library? -- is that the OverDrive app (which I think is free?) is the only thing that handles the Adobe DRM (which is what my library uses, and I assume what the SF library uses) right now on Android -- but since my family has successfully indoctrinated me into iOS, I haven't done in-depth research on this.