| I agree with some others here -- the iPad is great, but "great" needs to be prefaced with a descriptor of what it is great at. eBook reading is definitely one thing it is not especially good at in many cases. For the past 2 years I've been reading ebooks, and for the past 6 months I've been using an iPad for reading ebooks, and I've found it just too cumbersome in many cases -- you essentially need 2 hands to hold it, the screen size is unnecessarily large for 99% of books I read, and it's almost too large for using on-the-go. (Regardless of whether you read electronic books, the simple fact is that very many people prefer ebooks to physical books, myself included, and have many very reasonable reasons why. There are also many reasons why it would seem that reading eBooks is one very reasonable use for the iPad.) What about the alternatives? The iPhone screen I find too small for many books (ie. if they have diagrams/pictures/graphs especially). The Kindle (and other eInk eBook readers) I've found to be a pain to navigate to take notes/highlights on and are poor at displaying diagrams/pictures/graphs. So from my experiences, I think a 7-8 inch one could be the sweet spot as long as: 1. I can use it with one hand (e.g. it's not too large or heavy). 2. Can be used to easily take notes and highlight. 3. Performs great (can flip pages quickly). (The Kindle Fire is excluded because of this point) |