Over the past couple of months we have tested two e-book readers: The Amazon Kindle 2 and the iLiad by iRex Technologies. The Amazon Kindle 2 was released in 2009, and the iLiad by iRex Technologies is an older e-book reader that was released in 2006. Both readers use a relatively new technology called ‘electronic ink’ for their displays which is very easy to read, either in daylight or artificial light.

The iLiad (left) and Amazon Kindle 2 e-book readers

Overall we found the Amazon Kindle very easy to use as it is light and small, the user-interface is intuitive, and it is easy to purchase books via the Kindle store using the ‘Whispernet’ (a wireless internet connection). You can also easily connect the Kindle to your computer via a USB cable or email content to it. The Kindle is well designed, with buttons ‘next-page’, ‘back’, ‘home’ and ‘menu’ appropriately placed for convenient use. It has a small, thumb-operated keyboard, and you can add typed notes to books, as if you were texting, and highlight text. Viewing options are simple to modify (e.g. screen rotation and text size), and text-to-speech is available for some e-books.

Browsing the Kindle store via Whispernet

There are several problems with the Kindle though. The screen is a little small and there is no zoom feature, so it is very difficult to view large diagrams or PDF files and PDF files cannot be annotated or highlighted. You can highlight text in books, but the screen is greyscale, so you can only highlight in one colour: grey.  Additionally, the range of e-books available from Kindle Store is not extensive at this time, so getting less popular or academic titles could be difficult. The worst feature of the Amazon Kindle is the lack of a touch screen. In order to navigate through text or click links you have to use a little thumb-operated controller called a 5-ways controller, which is not very user-friendly.

The Kindle 5-ways controller

In some respects the iLiad is easier to use than the Kindle. It has a larger screen and lets you zoom and pan around PDF documents. It also has a stylus and touch-screen, so it is much easier to navigate than the Kindle.

Using the stylus on the iLiad

Overall, we found the iLiad bulkier, slower and less intuitive to use than the Kindle. The iLiad uses a series of icons, instead of a menu-style interface, so we found it is essential to read the iLiad user manual to learn what the different icons mean.

Icons on the iLiad

While the stylus allows you to add drawings or notes into documents, the page refreshes slowly and so it is difficult to write neatly or underline particular parts of the text. It is also tricky to connect the iLiad to your computer (although you can insert a USB stick into it instead) and I found it harder to find academic books to purchase.

Using a USB stick in the iLiad

We do not think it would be practical to lend the iLiad to library patrons, as it is too difficult to use, but I think that it would be a good idea to trial a lending program of the Amazon Kindle. Other university libraries, such as Texas A&M University, have run successful Kindle lending programs (see: ‘Lending Kindle E-Book Readers: First Results from the Texas A&M University Project’, Clark, Dennis T., Collection Building, vol. 28, no. 4, pp. 146-149, 2009).