The 2009 – 2010 academic year will be the year of the e-reader.  At the beginning of the year you will see a handful of students carrying around an e-reader.  They will show their friends their new toy and express how wonderful it is to carry 1,000’s of books and documents around.  Then another large handful of students will be asking for e-readers during the holiday season.  From that point on e-readers will become a “requirement” for college, just like having a laptop and ipod.

But are e-readers ready for college students? Should you jump the gun and be one of the first to really use an e-reader?  We will exam this by comparing features students and professors need in an e-reader, with what features e-readers currently have.

Things Academics and Students Need

• Large screen comparable to the size of a textbook page.
• Long battery life.
• Ability to quickly flip through pages.
• Ability to annotate documents.
• Support for a large variety of documents: word documents, PDF’s, images, power points, excel spreadsheets, and many more.
• Document management; Easy syncing between computer and e-reader.
• Search - be able to search through any type of document.

Current E-Readers

Currently there are about two dozen e-readers out there, most of which are 5″ – 6″ devices.  While such sizes would be great for leisure reading, they won’t cut it for reading textbooks and PDF’s.  So for now we must look at the Kindle DX, which has a 9.7 inch display.

Kindle DX

The Kindle 1 & 2 are out of the question for college students (unless one wants to use it for leisure only). They do not have native PDF support, but the Kindle DX does support native PDF’s.  For me an e-reader without PDF support is useless. I get many PDF documents from my professors, and I can skim through dozens/hundreds of PDF’s for a research project.

Price

Unfortunately, the Kindle DX has a big price tag of $489.  Just like all technology this price will eventually go down; however, if you are looking to buy one for this fall semester, expect to be paying a lot.

Document Organization

The Kindle DX can hold up to 3,500 books, but that may be a risky thing to do on the Kindle.  The Kindle software is not well designed to organize your PDF’s, because you can not make folders like you can on a computer.  I’ve heard of people doing naming methods to organize the documents.  (For example naming a document School/Econ200/Project/Great Depression/Causes of the Great Depression.) But that would require one to rename every document you have, which can be a tedious task.  However, managing 20-100 books and documents at a single time is probably manageable.

This issue can easily be fixed with a software update, if Amazon is smart enough to do it.

Amazon Books

A good thing about the Kindle is that you have access to over 300,000 books in the amazon store. And a bad thing about the Kindle is that you have access to over 300,000 books in the amazon store that you can only use on a Kindle device. So don’t think that you can buy all these ebooks on amazon and then transfer them to a different e-reader in the future.

This is just a theory, but I bet in the future amazon will open up their ebook format, so that other e-readers can support Kindle books.  It’s just a theory though, I have no proof of this other than it would make business sense, once more and more e-readers come out.

Plastic Logic

From now through 2010 there will be many e-readers announced and released.  One of the most exciting and probably the one for students and professors will be Plastic Logic. It is said to be released early 2010.  This device is a great step forward (if the company isn’t lying).  It will be about 1/4 of an inch think and weigh the same as a periodical.

It will support all kinds of document formats such as excel files, PDF’s, word documents, and many more.  It will also have a store similar to amazon.  (But remember my theory about the Amazon format?)

This is the device that I am looking forward to. It is being designed with the business person in mind, and the type of features a business person and an academic need in an e-reader are very similar.

Watch a presentation of the device below.

If you noticed, they are not saying much about the price.  I got the feeling it is going to be expensive.

Apple Tablet

Or perhaps the whole e-reader and e-ink won’t be that big of deal if Apple releases the rumored Apple Tablet.

The rumors have been around for quite some time now.  If rumors are true this will be a reality someday soon.  It is theorized that the tablet will just be a large iPod touch, 9-10 inch screen.  The benefit of such a device is that it can be used for more than just reading books.  The downside would be it doesn’t have the e-ink technology that makes e-readers easy on the eyes.

If the device uses the same or similar OS that the iPhone and iPod touch, then the device will probably use Kindle books, as Amazon has already released a Kindle reader for the iPhone and iPod touch.

Availability of e-Textbooks

In the Kindle Store there are very few textbooks.  Amazon does not even have an e-textbook section of the website.  So it would be dangerous to assume that you will be able to get all your textbooks on any e-reader.

There are many other ebook stores and ebook formats out there; However, being able to transfer those books to the Kindle may be a challenge for a non-techie.

Buy a Kindle DX Now?

As of right now the Kindle DX is the only e-reader out there that is suitable for a combination of academic and leisure use.  If you buy a Kindle DX you may be wanting to buy a new e-reader by the end of 2010.  But if you are like me and like being on the edge of technology, you will highly consider it. (Amazon does give you 30 days to return the device if you do not want it.)   However, I believe most students will want to wait till next year before purchasing an e-reader.

The Future

The e-reader market is just taking off, and who knows where it will go.  There are many questions about how content will be distributed, and how to deal with internet piracy and intellectual property.  But there are a few things that are certain.  Companies are already working on e-ink technology that will not be black and white only, but color! Once we have color e-readers, they will then work on moving images and video.  Then we will have the magical high-tech newspapers from Harry Potter.