In your opinion, is this brand better than the Kindle? I'm not understanding the 'won't work in Europe' thingy. Is it because of their type of wireless connections?
Won’t work in europe for buying books on the device.
The Kindle has a built in “wireless” connection that works in most places, using the Sprint 3G network.
The Iliad has “wifi” (802.11) so you can connect it to your own network.
I spent the better part of the last year researching the market and there are about a dozen e-readers available. Some are sold in Europe, China, and so forth. Kindle is the “big thing” in the states.
Sony has one available here in the states (you can buy one or play with them sometimes in the Borders stores since they have been typically selling them int he stores.. I didn’t get a Sony because they have been OUT OF STOCK for about 3 months!)
The Sony, you purchase books over your computer and connect the device to a USB port and download to your device.
You can do that with Kindle as well, but it’s vastly easier to set up an amazon account (they call it a 1-click account) and then you can purchase your book directly to the device. I did that recently on a trip to Detroit for a family reunion, and bought another book sitting in the airport :)
What I DO NOT LIKE about the Kindle.
1) Built in GPS tracking (they know where you are!)
2) Account is tied to your Kindle.
3) They can (and there was news about this recently) delete your book if they so desire.
4) proprietary mobi-pocket format (they use DRM as do most e-books)
Good things:
1) EASY to buy a book (TOO EASY! my wife is spending MORE money NOW than she did before. She used to buy 3-4 books a week. I think it is much more now. lol!)
2) Convenient to carry one device with 100 books (or more, mine will hold roughly 3000 books! Wife’s version about 1000 books)
3) I can’t copy ebooks I already have (non-DRMed of course) over and read them
4) My Kindle DX works with most PDF files (not all, it’s not perfect either!)
There’s a lot more pros and cons.