I have been faced with a dilemma of late. I have stopped liking books I used to like.. Seems my tastes and perspective has changed. However a book in dubai generally costs upward of 80 AED onwards. So I can't go about picking up books at random trying to find out whats new and good. Most of the books on bestseller shelves don't seem to have much appeal and i'm seriously struggling. I have been consistantly making do with Non-Fiction since past few years.. but my joy and appreciation of reading did not emerge from Non-Fiction. I have been an avid, ASIMOV fan, a Dunes (Frank Herbert) enthusiast, beginning from Noddy and Famous Five, to Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew to legion of Marvel and DC comics and Archie/Richie Rich and others.. I've been facinated and inducted into the pleasures of reading by fiction. So it is sad and i feel a sense of loss that I can't find anything to read! I do pickup and read some novels now and again while at airport, in malls also in India etc from Aziz, but have been on the whole disappointed.
One way to overcome this issue was to download books online and read them. This way I could get access to books which otherwise I couldn't buy or didn't want to buy, and I could buy those that I really liked for my collection. However I suffer from dry eyes syndrom and sitting and reading on computer for any lenght of time is not easy for me. Epaper seemed like a good answer, and Kindle by Amazon a step in right direction. However Kindle has AMAZON DRM and can't accept any other books. Seemed like all the other ebook devices using epaper had same issue. I even have a project ongoing with a development house in Beijing after I convinced their CEO that developing a cheap ebook alternative that will not lock readers into particular drm format is a good option.
So imagine my delight when browsing through a sale with a friend in Sharaf DG I came accross iRiver's Story (Ebook Reader).. It has Absolutely no information on the packaging about what it was all about and what it could do. Strange, strange.. The sales guy told me, it was the first time he saw that device in their shelves (seems they must have recieved the shipment but due to lack of interest, shelved it and only now in the sale they had taken out the dead stock.) So I checked out the reviews on my BB. Surprisingly i saw that although a bit old device launched about end of 2009 (old by fast tech standards I'm sure there are many new ones better ones on the way or on a shelf somewhere), it did support open format pdf / doc! Also with a price tag of 1130 AED, it was expensive but would not make me cry if I saw tommorow a much better version at cheaper price ~ specially since it really is something I have wanted all along. So I made instant happy decision and bought the piece.
At home now, and inexplicably even the device after opening has no user manual or ny other info. Considering that i've always been irritated by tons of paper companies waste printing user manuals in 10 different languages I think, on the whole this is not such a bad thing specially since I generally never tend to read one. I have connected it now to the PC using USB and shows me its charging battery. I have no idea as to how long it will continue doing so etc etc... But one thing is for sure - It looks and feels awesome, the build quality and the design is very similar to kindle and I'm happy. Just waiting for it to finish charging ( I think it may give me some indication when it does) and to fire it up :)
World of reading .. I'm back !!!! :)
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