I bought the Sony Reader (PRS-500) a couple of years ago while on a business trip. I had no idea the product existed at the time, neither was I in the market for an eBook reader at all.

I played around with a display unit in the store, and the real sucker punch came when I found one of the books that came preloaded was a Star Trek eBook (what a nerd). I had already read the book, but the idea of downloading eBooks came rushing back to me.

Yes, I had some previous eBook experience on a couple of PDAs (first a Sony Clie SJ22, then a Palm Treo 650). I had great experiences with the Palm OS eReader Pro software. Simon and Schuster, the publisher of all books Star Trek, happened to be a great, early supporter of commercial eBooks.

I could blaze through a book so fast on a Palm, with those tiny pages. I must have gone through 40-50 books over the span of owning those two Palm units. But I digress...

My first experience with e-ink technology came at the Sony Store in San Francisco (Metreon). My first impressions were favorable and still hold true today:

• Nice semi-matte finish and high-resolution makes for paper-like text display
• Medium level of contrast to prevent eye strain
• Appropriate line length for ease of reading*
• Fast page refresh
• Light weight and slim
• Keep hundreds of books on hand at once

There are some draw-backs to be sure:

• At $300, that's a lot of paperbacks.
• Not backlit, which I didn't realize until after I had bought it.
• Not resistant to water (so no beach reads), but neither is a paper book.
• Will eventually run out of batteries.
• Four shades of grey makes for cruddy looking images. Can't really use this to read black and white manga, let alone full color pictures.
• The built in MP3 functionality was not a selling point for me. Any smaller, cheaper MP3players would perform that task much better.

I think the other detractors are small enough to overlook.

The battery issue is hardly worth mentioning. The brilliance of e-ink is, it only expends energy when refreshing the screen (flipping pages). From personal experience, you will go through ten books before needing to recharge. One thing I did notice: power will drain from the device if you don't use it for a length of time, say a month or two.

I eventually got over the lack of backlight issue. I like reading in bed so a backlight would make this something I could use any time of the day. It's particularly annoying that if your light source is not in the right position, you will get a slight glare. But I see that a backlight would reduce the battery life a great deal, probably increase the size and weight of the unit.

Yes the device costs between $200-300. Factoring in the reduced cost of ebooks, instant gratification (no need to drive/walk to buy a book), no out-of-stock issues, and the lack of added physical media (1 book or 100 is the same weight/size), I think the cost is reasonable. I'm not saying it isn't expensive, you'll have to use the device for years to break "even", but it's not about saving money or that digital is better than analog. It's about convenience. If you're a computer user already, and are comfortable with an MP3 player or GPS device, this reader will easily fit into your life.

One major fault that the PRS-500 shares with the PRS-505 and he Amazon Kindle: the Official eBook store only supports residents of the USA. Where's the love for Canada and other nations Sony/Amazon? We don't read or buy book too?

One amazing thing about the Reader is, I can't think of any device I've owned that I haven't wanted to upgrade in a year. This ebook reader has a great balance of design and engineering, and it says something about the ebook reader compared to a PMP or Laptop as a device in general:

• Smaller isn't Better: you wouldn't want a smaller reading surface than the PRS-500
• Text Files are Tiny: increases in storage and processing speed is not a major concern
• Lack of Color: c'mon, it's for novels, not magazines or textbooks. Although greater contrast would make it a viable manga reader

Sony has released an updated version, the PRS505), and of course there's the much-hyped Kindle, but I still use and love my reader 3 years later. I don't see myself going back to paper or another reader device soon.

Some PRS500 specs:

• Size: 175.6 x 123.6 x 13.8mm (6.9" x 4.9" x 0.5")
• Weight: 250 g (9 oz)
• Display:
• size: 15.5 cm (6 in) diagonal (approx 1/4 area of letter-sized page)
• resolution: 170 dpi, 4-level gray scale
• portrait: 90.6 x 122.4 mm (3.57" x 4.82"), 600 x 800 pixels | effective 115.4 x 88.2 mm (4.54 x 3.47 in), 754 x 584 pixels
• minimum font size: 6 pt legible, 7 pt recommended
• Memory: 64 MB standard, Memory Stick (Pro Duo High Speed not supported. Normal memory sticks are only supported up to 4GB, despite Sony compatibility claims 1) or SD card expansion up to 2 GB (some non-SDHC 4GB cards may work)
• Lithium-ion battery, up to 7500 "page turns" per charge
• PC interface: USB port

* The Sony Reader can be toggled to display in landscape or portrait format. Also, the text in plain text files (TXT, RTF, HTML etc.) can be set to three different sizes. So if you're vision is going, and you need the largest size of text, you're gonna have to set this baby to landscape mode, or those lines will be mighty short.