I want an e-reader

The amount of reading that I do has dropped significantly lately.  At least the number of novels that I read has dropped.  I still read a ton of websites, blogs, rss feeds, and car magazines but I don't get around to my novels.  I've been working on reading The Atlantis Code for over a month now.

I think there are several reasons why my recreational reading has dropped off.  First, I read a ton of material on the web all day long.  Second, I'm busy working and taking care of things at home.  When I finally get some down time I either veg in front of the television or sleep.  The best chance for me to read a novel is in bed just before sleep.

I wonder if I would read more if I had an e-reader.  Would making reading more convenient lead to more reading?  I’d hate to go out and buy an e-book reader and then find out that I don’t read any more than I did with paperbacks but I am a tech hound and am dying to buy one.

There are several e-readers currently available, what differentiates them tends to be the size of the screen and the web access they provide.  Here is a list of the e-readers I’m currently looking at:

name	cost	screen size	screen resolution	color screen	wireless access	browser	size	weight in oz.
Amazon Kindle	$259	6"	600 X 800	16 shades of grey	3G	yes	8" x 5.3" x 0.36"	10.2
Amazon Kindle DX	$489	9.7"	1200 X 824	16 shades of grey	3G	yes	10.4" x 7.2" x 0.38"	18.9
Barnes & Noble Nook	$259	6"		16 shades of grey with color touchscreen	3G and Wi-Fi	??	7.7"4.9"X.5"	11.2
Sony Daily Edition	$399.99	7"	600 X 1024	16 shades of grey	3G	??	5"X8.2"X.6"	12.75
Sony Touch Edition	$299.99	6"	800 X 600	8 shades of grey	??	??	6.9"X4.8"X.4"	10.1
Sony Pocket Edition	$199.99	5"	800 X 600	8 shades of grey	??	??	6.25"x4.25" x.4"	7.76
ECTACO jetBook	$179	5"					6.02" x 4.33" x 0.51"	7.5

My dream e-reader would be a tablet computer with instant on, wi-fi and/or 3G internet access, a full color screen and a full qwerty keyboard like the Kindle has.  All of this for $259 would be ideal.  Perhaps the next Kindle will have a color screen.

If I can’t get my dream system then I want a basic e-reader.  Basic means it opens and reads many types of files, works great.  It would have no wireless access at all and no keyboard.  Just a basic reader and I want to pay about $100 for it.

If I had my choice of any of these e-readers, cost not being an issue I’d go with the Sony Daily Edition.  I like the size and format of the screen and the device looks great.  That being said I’ve hinted heavily that I’d like a Kindle, we’ll see if I get one for x-mas, I doubt it and kind of don’t want it as I’d like to wait and see what is coming next.  If I do get one I’ll write up my experience with it and whether I am reading more or not.

I hate losing pictures

I hate losing pictures, I've been taking digital pictures for almost as long as you have and I hate losing them. I can't readily locate the pictures from my honeymoon ten years ago. It would be a terrible loss if I never find those pictures again.  To help ensure that I never lose another picture I employ a variety of backup systems.

Systems and services that I am going to discuss in this post:

Jungledisk from jungledisk.com

Amazon S3 from aws.amazon.com/s3/

Windows Home Server from microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/windowshomeserver

Disclaimer:

I do not work for or own any of the companies that I am discussing today.  I use the products but that is the only relationship I have with these companies.

To backup my pictures I bought the jungledisk program, it cost a one time fee of $15.  This program is used to access Amazon S3 to use as a storage system.  Jungledisk maps a local drive letter to Amazon S3 on each computer that I have it loaded.  Amazon S3 stores my data.

I have Jungledisk configured to nightly backup my pictures folder on my main computer to Amazon S3.  I don't backup all of my data, just the pictures folder.  Only changed or new files are moved up to Amazon S3 so the upload is usually small and fast.

I get billed by Amazon for my S3 useage monthly, most of my bills are between $.17 and $.27 for the month.  I played around and moved several gigabytes of data through S3 last month and my bill was an eye watering $1. something.  Not too bad for storing all of my pictures.

I also use Amazon S3 to help me move files and data between work and home.  If there is something I don't want to forget I'll upload (drag and drop into the jungledisk drive) the files to S3 and then download them at home.  Speeds are as fast as your network connection and the storage is resonably price.

In the past couple of months I've added a Windows Home Server (WHS) to my network.  I use the WHS to backup all of my PCs in my home and sometimes to share files between systems.  Microsoft offers a six month free trial of WHS and so far that's what I've been using.

I took an old PC that I wasn't going to use again, added some hard drives and loaded WHS on it.  Over the period of the last couple of months I've migrated the data off of the old smaller hard drives I'd initially set it up with onto two new terabyte sized drives.  The migration of drives is handled by WHS and was very easy to do.

Most of the time I leave my WHS server off, I tend to turn it on over the weekends to let it get a current backup of my workstations.  I'd leave it on all of the time but I don't want to burn the electricity for the server when I'm not using it.

WHS supports add-ins to help with the administration of the server and to add capabilities.  One of the add-ins that I've installed is the Jungledisk add-in.  Because I am already a Jungledisk user this add-in was free.  I have Jungledisk scheduled to backup my WHS server to my Amazon S3 storage on a weekly basis.

So, to recap my backups:

1) Jungledisk backs up the pictures on my main PC

2) WHS backs up all of my PCs to it's drives

3) Jungledisk backs up WHS

I'm getting multiple backups of my data, 1 on my WHS and 2 copies on Amazon S3.  Eventually I'll clean this up so that I am only getting two backups, the local WHS and the remote Amazon S3, but for the mean time Amazon S3 storage is cheap so I don't mind the duplication.