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Samsung E60

The main menu is straightforward enough

Samsung E60

Scribble on your textbooks like you're back in High School

Samsung E60

Settings can be view en masse or in groups

Samsung E60

See the future in the past

Next page: Tome raider

Rip Off!

£300?? A Kindle is £109 with Wi-Fi, so you can't touch the screen, boo hoo, it's for reading, not scribbling on! And as several people have said, get a Sony if you want touch and lower price. I think Samsung are having an Apple moment - huge prices for mediocre products, their Galaxy Tab would be another example of an Apple moment.

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For £200...?

Each to their own, but is it *really* worth shelling out a couple of hundred quid for an e-reader?? OK, it may have other bells and whistles, but nothing most mobile phones won't do (other than screen size, I suppose). Like the review implies, 15 years ago it may be a goer, but I still would have plumbed for a Palm Pilot.

As a parting shot, my local bookshop sells paperbacks from less than a pound. I can stuff 'em in my bag without worry of damage, and they don't need batteries. Probably just me, but I can't see the attraction of e-readers.

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Agree most of the way...

I agree with you most of the way, but these things do have their uses.

As someone with a visual impairment, I have to use a hand magnifier to read paperbacks and newspapers. That's fine when I'm at home, but when I'm on the bus or train it's cumbersome and looks odd. I've always envied those who could read papers on the train or lounge around on the sofa with a paperback held at arm's length (or even use laptops, but that's another story!), for me reading can be something of a chore.

These devices are a great *compliment* to traditional books. In public I can use one to increase the print size so I don't have to have the thing up against my face and on that long journey I don't have to have loads of papers and books around. But at home I can goggle through my magnifier at my beloved 1950s paperback collection or chuckle at Private Eye.

One thing stopping me from going out and getting a Kindle or whatever tomorrow is the content. I haven't looked into it properly, but I'm guessing that alot of older, more obscure (or non-American!) material isn't available in ebook form.

Books will never die, but anything that lets me and millions of other blindies enjoy reading again can only be great news.

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Amundsen

..."is a wanker". That made this review worthwhile for me. Nice one!

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£200 buys a lot of books, even shiny new hardbacks.

£200 buys you about 20 hardback books from Amazon, even fewer from Waterstones. Try carrying them all onto a train, let alone trying to read such a heavy tome whilst standing next to irritable commuters on a packed train.

My only gripe with eBooks is the likes of Waterstones selling the file for more than the printed hardback and then selling you exactly the same file 3 months later for more than the paperback price. The publishing world just can't handle ebooks yet.

Even more amusing is my local library. You can now download eBooks, but they only have one copy (in some cases for the whole of London). So you have to reserve them. Worse still, you book it out for two weeks and there is no way to hand it back early.

Luckily there are loads of free books to keep me amused.

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