I've been collecting books for the last five years and I've now got over a thousand of them  filling up the bookshelves of my crowded bedroom. I also don't read as much as I use to and I really miss it. I love physically holding a book while reading, but I hate having to carry a bunch of them around whenever I travel and I also hate not having the choice to choose what I want to read at a moments notice. My obsession with buying an E - Reader was sparked by two things. The first was when my copy of The Whisky Rebels (I recommend it) wouldn't fit into my man bag and so I had to walk around my school like an idiot with a book in my hand. The second involves the scarcity of manga in Melbourne, I really don't like pirating manga, but sometimes I have no choice when the best options I have is to pick up random volumes of Naruto or Fruits Basket from my not so local Borders bookstore, I'd much rather buy digital copies and subscribe to some sort of service. It also doesn't help that 'new' books/manga are becoming extremely overpriced in Melbourne and I've noticed that the digital copies sell for much less.

Here are my questions:

1) What's the best E - Reader on the market?

2) Can I get one with colour?

3) Can I read manga on them?

4) Are they comfortable to hold?

5) Does anyone prefer them to actual books?

6) How many books can one hold on average?

7) Am I better off waiting until the technology gets better?

8) Should I just get an I-Pad?

Thanks for the help.

1) The features offered by all of them are fairly balanced, though I prefer the Kindle, if only because that's the one I have.

2) SKYTEX is the only e-reader I can think of that does. It's more cheaply made than most of them, but it might be the only one in color.

3) No idea, but that would be sweet...

4) Yes! They're all pretty thin, so they don't feel awkward at all, really.

5) Not entirely, there's something about holding books that will always hold it above my Kindle for me, but it comes close. They do a good job of replicating the experience as closely as they can.

6) Depends on the model. The newer Kindles can hold about 3500 books. The Kobo (Border's e-reader) can hold about 1000, but you can use an sd card to expand the memory, I think. The Nook can hold about 1500, but it's memory can also be expanded.

7) Might not hurt, but it's already pretty impressive. Depends on what you're looking for, I suppose.

8) If it's just for the sake of reading, probably not. Honestly, an e-reader should (in theory, anyway) feel much better when reading upon, since it's built to mimic a book. No backlight helps there, and the screen itself is actually a bit grey to look like a book page (at least for the Kindle).

Hope this helps!

The (smart) choice is all about:

1) which formats are you in?

2) do you really recognize both benefits and limitations of e-Ink... or rather wanna multimedia-centric experience and teh COLOURS

3) which size and usage you're looking for

4) do you want to pay for some flavors: like dictionary, web access, sketches/memos/sidenotes (personally, I really love those sidenotes feature!)

5) would you stay calm and happy with DRM and/or central bookstore

For the starters, I'd recommend looking at the latest generation of Sony eReaders (350/650/950) though there are gossips that these Pearl screens are not very stable - but Sony (and the very recent Kindles) are the only devices with this type of screen and they are much better than old generation.

Or buy iPad and let you eyes burn xD at least it'll do you much more fun xD