I have owned an e-book reader for a year or more: first, the BeBook, which got very slow and unreliable (kept having to reset it) and more recently the Sony Reader Touch Edition. Well, I am now on my third e-reader having got totally pissed off at the Sony; there are just too many things that aren't right. Granted it is nicely made, but it is just a bit too heavy and a bit too large for me to hold comfortably in one hand. The screen has far too much glare, making the reading angle very critical. The operation of the touch-screen is inconsistent: the reader does not always respond to page-turning gestures even though there seemed to be little variation in what I did. Battery life is quite variable: sometimes the device would run quite happily for days, but every now and then it would seem to lose the charge very quickly. This happened without warning as the indicator registered what appeared to be a good charge, but the reader just locked up without warning.

Battery life brings me to another stupidity of the Reader Touch: USB charging. The reader only charges when the PC is active. Not only does it not charge, if the computer goes to sleep, the battery is actually drained! What kind of freakin' stupid design decision is that?

The straw that broke the camel's back, however, was the library software. It was pretty obvious from the start that the software was crap and the new version that was released was even worse. I stopped using it in favour of Calibre, but was forced to reinstall to try, unsuccessfully as it turned out, to sort out a problem with the almost equally dreadful Adobe Digital Editions. The Reader Touch was retired!

I popped into my local Waterstone's and bought the Elonex 511EB. It has a smaller screen, but is much easier to read than the Sony, and being made out of plastic is much lighter — perhaps, about half the weight. Battery life is much better — it will even charge using the iPhone charger. One annoyance that I failed to notice in my hurry to replace the Sony: the device is not recognised on Mac OS X, though it will charge through the USB port. This adds an extra step as I use Calibre to save my portable library on a memory stick; I then plug the 511EB and the stick into my wife's laptop and copy files to the reader using Windows Explorer.

At only just over half the cost of the Reader Touch, the 511EB is much better value and much less annoying to use. Curiously, since I have bought it, I've had two people approach me and ask if it was an iPad. They must be psychic because I expect in a few weeks it will be. :) But I'll still be taking the 511EB on my travels because I don't fancy reading an iPad in the bath!

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