What seems a long time ago I bought myself an e-reader, and I’ve used successfully over the last two or so years with books from Project Gutenberg and with books bought through Borders (when they existed) and BookDepository (when they sold e-books).

I’ve no complaints about the Cool-er, it works well, it’s reliable, and it’s a shame that the parent company went west a year or so ago. In fact I expect to continue to use it for some of my more technical reading due to its use of epub as a native format and one in which quite a few technical books are beginning to appear.

The Cool-er also gave me a chance to teach myself about epub, which definitely has been a valuable experience.

So why the Kindle?

I’ve simply just reached the point when it makes sense to buy ebooks over paperbacks when possible, and of all the retailers out there I’m afraid the only one left standing in Amazon – no one else has as easy to use, or as effective or comprehensive e-book distribution platform.

Technically, other that the fact that the Kindle has wi-fi for book download and the Cool-er had an SD card slot to let you download books to a computer and then transfer them to the Cool-er – an excellent solution for Project Gutenberg books, there’s almost no difference in the capability of the devices. Both have e-ink 6″ screens and 2GB internal storage, and similarly long  battery life.

It’s simply market share and market access. Amazon has it and the others don’t.

simple as that ….