I've been digitised

I've taken the leap and gone and got myself one of those new fangled e-book readers. I was going to go for the new UK version of The Kindle but it's up in the air as of when it will actually go on sale. And so I've opted for the Elonex which is exclusive to Borders.

It's also the cheapest on the market and comes preloaded with 100 books - all for £189.99. Can't be bad. Though if you get the accessory pack with is basically a nice looking, though expensive, leather case for your reader and a 4GB SD card which allows you to store upto a 1000 e-books it pushes the price up another £29.99. In comparison to other machines on the market the reader is excellent value but the accessories are a bit much if you ask me.



First impressions - the initial set up is easy. Simply download the free Adobe Digital Editions and via USB authorise your reader to your computer. Then it's just a matter of dragging items from you computer into digital editions and from there into the reader library. To delete you simply select the file and click delete.

Reading on the thing is amazing - the electronic ink system used gives the same feeling to the eye as reading conventional text. The machine boasts no screen flicker and no glare when used in full sunlight. Living in Wales, I couldn't find any sunlight to test this but ( it works fine in the rain, though) there is no screen glare when held under a strong light.

All of the free books pre-loaded into the memory are classic already in the public domain - Sherlock Holmes is on there, Mark Twain, Dickens, Shakespeare, H G Wells and so on. You've got Dracula, Tarzan, Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer. But the first thing I did is downloaded the free Edge continuation e-books and slapped those on it. I've never read these as I can't handle long works on the PC screen so I've now got six new Edge books. Things are looking up already.

I'll review the machine fully when I've had a couple of weeks using it but upon first impressions I'm delighted