e-Reader versus iPad

iPad launched just a few short months ago and has taken the world by storm selling over 3 million copies worldwide but are the hype and hyper sales really indicative of a superior product, or has iPad simply well marketed a glorified e-reader with a lesser book volume capacity? If you are a student in the U.S, then the iPad does have a few bells and whistles that other e-readers, like the Kindle, simply don’t offer. For those outside of the U.S., the iBookStore isn’t available which significantly reduces the ease and availability of necessary resources.  Even for those with access to the iBookStore, outside of the popular fiction genre, the availability of books appears to be severely limited and that is the greatest pitfall of the iPad over other readers, at this stage anyway. Its greatest virtue is of course that it is so much more than an e-reader. Other features of the iPad include mail, photos, video, YouTube, iTunes, maps, calendars, contacts and the App Store.

Similar searches in the Kindle online bookstore to those performed in the iBookStore (political science and history classics) present significantly more book options in the Kindle bookstore. That isn’t a big deal if you can download and read Kindle books on the iPad and you can! So although the latest Kindle book reader is greatly improved upon older versions, it’s lighter, slimmer and has a huge storage and battery capacity, the versatility of the iPad makes it a superior product in terms of options. The Kindle on the other hand is significantly cheaper than the iPad and if the sole purpose of the device is for book reading, research and storage, this device offers everything that iPad does at the better price. Tough choice!