I can imagine that many of you who are contemplating leaping into the world of ebooks are very confused by all the arguments and counter arguments out there as to the comparative virtues of ereaders or Tablets for reading ebooks with, and might appreciate a sort of comparison between the two gadgets for this specific purpose.  So I shall do my best here to give an unbiased look at the two systems.

The first thing you have to do though is to decide exactly what it is you wish to do with such a device.  As with any other tool, before deciding on which to buy you need to know what it is you want it for.

So to get us started, I shall give a quick rundown of what each type of device is good for:-

With a Tablet you can do the following, when you use it as an ereader.

• Read magazines which use a lot of colour.
• Read interactive ebooks.
• Read ebooks that use videos and sound.
• Read ebooks that have a lot of complex illustrations. Comics for example.
• Read Coffee Table ebooks.
• Read novels.
• Make notes and highlight parts of the text.
• Change the type and size of the letters on the page

With a dedicated ereader you may do the following.

• Read novels.
• Make notes and highlight the text.
• Change the type and size of the letters on the page.

You would be forgiven if you took from the above lists the inescapable conclusion that a Tablet is absolutely the better of the two types of device, but there is actually more to it when you really look at the two types of gadget.   As always there are other things to consider before making a decision.

I have listed the main benefits of a Tablet as an ereader, and happily ignored all their other abilities, since in reality a Tablet is actually nothing less than a highly portable computer, and is obviously capable of doing almost everything that you would normally do with a regular computer, and this of course is one of their main strengths.  As opposed to the humble – and much cheaper – dedicated ereader, which can really only be used to read novels and text based ebooks with, and not much more.  But it does do that relatively simple task perfectly.

An ereader is a device that is designed to do one thing only, and to do that one thing as well as the technology allows, whereas a tablet is a sort of universal tool, capable of doing many things very well, but perhaps slightly less well than a dedicated device can.

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I have been forced to contemplated the demise or at least the stagnation of dedicated ereaders (devices such as the Kobo, Kindle, Nook and similar) as more and more people move over to reading ebooks on Smart Phones and Tablets.

When the iPad first hit the market, and everyone was gleefully shouting that the iPad would “kill” the simple one function ereader, I said that I did not believe this would happen, as the real ereader offered a much better reading environment than any brightly coloured Tablet possibly could.   I was wrong.

With the advent of ebook reading apps that make every tablet or Smart Phone into a fully fledged ereader, and in one stroke remove the dreadful limitation that most ereaders suffer from – only being able to read ebooks in a particular format the writing (no pun intended) was on the wall for the ereader, the end was in sight.

Whilst each year the various makers of ereaders solemnly produce their latest all singing, all dancing ereader models, in fact the changes we now see are actually very small, and to a large degree are  nothing much more than simple tweaks of the various basic ereader functions.  Higher contrast, higher resolution, more font sizes, better front lighting and so on.  All very good, but scarcely revolutionary.  And none of these factors can be made much better than they now are.   I mean to say, how high is it sensible to push the resolution?   Shall we see 444555 x 33124?   why on earth would that be an advantage?  Personally I think the latest Kobo (Aura HD) has probably reached the final development of the basic ereader.

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Reader Rocket is a website that you may use to compare any ereader with any other ereader.  Simple statement, but extremely useful website for us all to use before deciding which ereader we should buy.

Actually this statement is only true if the you are concerned to choose between a relatively short list of makes and models.    Kobo, Kindle, Sony, Bookeen, and a couple of other makes are well represented here, but a large number of perfectly good ereaders are not listed, which is a pity, as the comparison tables for those ereaders they do have are very well laid out, very detailed and really do give you enough information to make an intelligent choice between ereaders to find the one that meets you specific criteria.

But I assume and hope that as they go along, they will add more and more ereader models to their lists, and ultimately all current ereaders will be there.

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I have noticed a new trend lately in ereader ownership – In an attempt to sort of beat the mutual incompatibility of different ereaders and thus different ebooks, more and more people seem to be taking the step of owning more than one ereader.   So what I am beginning to see is that people for example own a Kindle, a Sony and a Nook ereader and when travelling they cart all three of them around with them.   This way they can buy ebooks from pretty well any ebook seller with the assurance that without having to strip DRM, change formats or any such fiddly and annoying time wasters,they can simply read their ebooks on the appropriate ereader.

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Small is beautiful we are told, well this Trekstor has taken that to heart and have produced the smallest dedicated ereader in the world, the Pyrus Mini, which with its 4.3 inch screen has to be the smallest device for ebook reading there is.

With the proportions of a Smart Phone, this little baby is actually a fully functional ereader in every way except it has no wifi or 3G connectivity, but you cant have everything, and to balance that lack  it is a remarkably cheap gadget as well, costing as little as 49 Euros (depending on where you buy it).

Available in three colours (Black, blue and what they call pink) this ereader has every function one could wish for, 6 different font sizes, easy navigation around your ebook collection, a large enough internal memory for a huge number of ebooks, and of course it supports all the normal ebook formats, including those with Adobe DRM protection.

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With the publication of sales statistics and forecast for ereaders by iSuppli recently, from which it was obvious that the sales of ereaders will go down dramatically over the next year,  many bloggers are leaping to their keyboards and happily using phrases such as “Tablets Killing Ereaders” and similar.

Why is it always a matter of killing I often wonder?  Such a violent word for such a simple thing.

Anyhow, it seems to me that perhaps the demise of the ereader is being announced rather too early, as there are a number of factors missing from that analysis as far as I can tell from reading the report itself.  As ever, it is USA- centric, and seems to ignore the fact that in Asia, China, India, Malaysia and also in the old USSR ereader ownership is actually growing rapidly – as is ebook ownership.

Another point that is overlooked in that report is that ereader owners do not automatically buy the latest device as soon as it comes on the market, as is very much the case with tablet owners, who apparently need to be seen to own the latest version of their preferred make of tablet.  Ereader owners quite happily carry on for a number of years with their ereaders and see no great point in changing them every year to the latest model.

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