Ereader recommendation for a VERY PICKY newbie?

[k294721]

I'm in the market for an ebook reader, as I've grown very tired of the heavy, glaring iPad. This means I'm not looking for a tablet, but a dedicated ebook reader.



I have very certain requirements it must meet, and hopefully you can enlighten me as to which product would be best;

1. Must support Korean natively, without turning into gibberish at certain letters

2. Must be light! Thinking 6-9 oz. mark feels good

3. Must support EPUB, and TXT (which leads me to...)

4. Must support tethering to a computer to add books. I have a collection of Korean literature that you simply can't find in B&N, or other American ebook platforms of the like, and want to custom

5. Must support custom editing for titles, authors, and the info of the like.

6. Display must be even, smooth; I intend to read for prolonged periods, so I am looking for the most comfortable and readable display.

7. Must allow brightness adjustment

8. Must come with Wi-fi, not interested in 3G.





Here are all the features that would be preferable to have, but not necessities:

A. Support many more languages, hopefully. More asian languages, the better!

B. Different fonts and font sizes!

C. Ideally, have dictionaries in multiple languages.

D. and have access to many free books that can be downloaded directly from the built-in OS.

E. I love a sleek machine. Beautiful design -preferably white- wins some brownie points.

F. Larger the memory, the better.

G. Cheaper, the better. Naturally.





Yes, I am super picky, and this is why I still haven't bought a single one despite having craved one for many years. Any opinions would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!
Rose

[eschwartz]

Amazon Kindle supports Korean text (for models starting with the K3, which is all sold currently) and Amazon has an excellent reputation for rock-solid firmware stability. When it comes to Kindles, it "just works".

Paperwhite has WiFi (with a more expensive option that includes 3G), frontlit display, with adjustable brightness, and weighs 7.3 oz. so it's pretty light. The Kindle Store includes tons of free books automatically generated from Project Gutenberg. All models can be easily sideloaded.

It can read .txt, but not EPUB. However, the format it supports instead, AZW3, is just as good as EPUB, and all your EPUB's can be easily converted to AZW3, using calibre. You WILL want to use calibre anyway, as this is the only way to customize every aspect of the metadata of all your books, and in bulk. Fine-grained control can be done using plugboards to, say, derive a Title that includes at the end "(series_name, Book x)" on the device, based off of the title and series metadata fields.

A word of warning: You do NOT want the Nook SimpleTouch with Glowlight, unless you wish to have 3/4 of the internal memory walled off and accessible only for official B&N books downloaded from the store. They don't like sideloading, as apparently it cuts into sales even more than the hatred this engenders in would-be customers. And they removed the MicroSD slot for the same reason.

[susan_cassidy]

5. No ereader that I ever heard of supports editing the metadata. You have to do that on a pc, using Calibre, Mobi2mobiGUI, or another metadata-editing program.

7. If you want e-ink, there can be no brightness adjustment, per se, as e-ink is not lit. If you mean a model with the additional front-lighting, as far as I know, they all allow brightness adjustment of the light.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by susan_cassidy

5. No ereader that I ever heard of supports editing the metadata. You have to do that on a pc, using Calibre, Mobi2mobiGUI, or another metadata-editing program.

Yeah, calibre really is the way to go. Very important tool, and you can do virtually anything with it.