Now that every company is beginning to develop its own eReader or tablet, you should stop and think about the features that will really be important to you rather than being swayed by the technology envy that leads to an unfulfilled life and short-sighted incrementalism. Let’s weigh the options.

1) Functionality

The iPad could be the future of board games, but not reading. Photo from Engadget.

The iPad has been heralded as the second coming. Indeed it can do almost anything (as long as it’s one thing at a time). However, don’t most people with an iPad already have a laptop? Why do you want another one? Who cares if it can play music or audiobooks? Don’t you already have an mp3 player or a phone for that? Maybe it will be handy as a big remote control or a new way to play board games. Perhaps it will work for textbooks, so you could watch a science experiment or test a mathematical formula. But it will not change the way that adults will read who do not need such bells and whistles.

2) Usability

Eventually screens will be both flexible and interactive. Photo from SlashGear.

CrunchGear reviewer Matt Burns is desperate to keep his terrible keypad on the Kindle. I still appreciate tactile feedback on phones, game controllers, and keyboards but is it really necessary on a book? You can swipe to a new page very easily, and only need a few buttons. Plus, eInk screens smudge a lot less than glass.

3) Legibility

The Notion Ink ADAM, Amazon Kindle, and Pandigital Novel compared in direct sunlight. Photo from Good eReader.

This was the feature that drove me to wait over a year for a tiny independent startup called Notion Ink to release my namesake, the ADAM. It is almost impossible to read LCD tablets like the iPad in bright sunlight. It is even harder to see eReaders in the dark because eInk does not light up. The ADAM combines both technologies into one screen so you can (kind of) read in any lighting. Then I started thinking… I never read in the dark, so what’s the point of that?

4) Portability

A Crackberry fan tries to fit a Playbook in his back pocket. Photo from Kevin Michaluk.

I did not end up ordering an ADAM, but I’m glad I waited, because I finally realized the truly killer feature for eReaders after seeing my friend trying to fit a Kindle in his jeans. If you are really looking for a device that can change your life, there is no app for being able to carry a tablet in your pocket. I mean really in your pocket. Not falling out of it. Or having your device breaking when you sit down.

Isn’t that why mp3 players grew to such success? I remember trying to squeeze a Discman in my coat and it wasn’t easy. That is also (barely) possible with certain paperbacks, but I certainly don’t want my reading material to be constrained by a mass market format. Girls, you all have purses so this argument is moot. But I know there are guys who are getting wary of lugging — or losing — their iPad or Kindle.

Tech reporters again ask the wrong question of Apple and other manufacturers. There is no real difference between a 7” and 10” screen because they both realistically have to be carried in a bag. One of the reasons for reading eBooks in the first place should be so you don’t have to worry about them. So a 5” screen is closer to the ideal, and there is no problem holding it with one hand at that size. Yet even that does not answer the critical question. The most important feature of an eReader to me is the physical dimensions of the entire device, because that is what you have to carry around.

The best eReader is smaller than a paperback. Photo by Adam Edwards.

The only one I have found to be small enough is the Sony Reader PRS-350. And with a name like that, it’s no wonder that you’ve never heard of it. Sony is on its way to becoming the next Amiga or Palm by nailing the most important features while failing utterly on advertising.

Take a stand, Sir Howard Stringer. Tell everyone that Steve Jobs got it wrong. Sony should be advertising this unit as strongly as Apple pushed the iPod. Instead, it’s on clearance.

P.S. Thanks to Lela Davidson for the link to the NY Times article on an unfulfilled life and the shallowness of technology, even if the author ends up defeating his own argument by focusing on a different kind of unrequited love.