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e-Book mobile devices get the Andrew Marr try-out

You can't ask for much more endorsement for a new device than high-profile political comentator Andrew Marr of the BBC: and the Guardian has given him two e-book readers to try out. He seems to like them!

His first approach was sceptical:

Most ebook readers simply aren't good enough, whether they're dedicated devices or the multi-purpose palmtop computers made by the likes of Palm and Hewlett-Packard. They're fine to use for an hour or two when you are sitting upright in even indoor light, but they're pretty useless when you are travelling, sitting in the garden or slumped in the bath. The ebook reader that is as easy on the eye as a real book, and as quick to flick through, and as portable, hasn't arrived.

And then, he gets to Sony and iRex:

Perhaps it has. Enter Sony's Reader and iRex's Iliad, which are being touted as the first really useable, easy-to-read products.
I've had an Iliad for a month to try out. It costs £449 plus VAT, or slightly more with a handsome leather case that makes it look like a slightly larger, thinner Filofax. I have not been offered one for free, nor would accept that. So it has been a fair, straightforward trial: bibliophile, or perhaps bibliomaniac, meets book-killer.

Read all about it! And if you want to know what the experts think, check out AFAICS Research