Juggling a latte, briefcase, and boarding pass makes lugging a bulky hardcover even more daunting when you just want to get on your flight and immerse yourself in a book for a couple of hours. Abt has a solution—the highly portable digital reader. Both Sony and Amazon have slim, smaller than notebook computer-sized offerings that make taking them anywhere effortless.
Digital readers are an easy way to keep hundreds of books in a device slightly larger than a DVD case. When you buy a reader you must consider how much memory the device has, screen resolution, what you can download to your device and how do you get the material you want to download, battery life, how to use the device; is it a touch screen, and possibly most important—size.

What to Remember When Comparing Memory
Memory is described in Megabytes or Gigabytes.  This is important to you because you want to know how many books your device will hold. You will get more books stored on a reader with a higher MB number. If the reader’s memory is described in GB you may have to compare MB and GB. One GB is about 1000 MB. If you have a reader with 10 MB or 10 GB—go for the reader with 10 GB! Its memory is bigger. Some readers offer slots available for memory cards. That means you can add more memory and therefore get more stored on your device.

Ease of Reading
Screen resolution should be considered. Anyone who has tried to read the screen on a cell phone on a sunny day knows that sometimes it’s hard to see what is on that screen. Some digital screens are easier to read in sunlight and have better pixilation. Pixels are the tiny little dots that make up the words and images that you will see on your device. The higher the number of pixels the device has, the better the screen resolution will be.  Some readers use E Ink. E Ink is a technology that makes reading books on digital readers easier, especially in sun-light.

Wireless or Computer Download?
How will you get the books you want to read to the reader you are going to buy? Very important question. You will need to download the eBooks somehow. Sometimes you will need to download software for the free books. For some models you will need to pay for the books. You should determine which method will work best for you before you make your purchase.  Some readers will require you to use your home computer; some will be able to download wirelessly—no computer necessary.

Charge!
When it comes to readers, battery life is usually described by how many “page-turns” you can get out of the device before you will need to charge it again. You will find that the more “page-turns” you get out of each charge, the better.

Buttons?
Some digital readers are touch screen and some have buttons—there are some that have both. Whether or not you want a touch screen or to push buttons is entirely personal preference. Sony and Amazon both have buttons and touch screen technology.

Size Matters
Size is hugely important when considering which reader is the right fit for you. For those of us who are on the go, smaller could be better—but, if you are going to look at the smaller models, you must remember that the words and pages will be smaller too. The larger the device, the larger the words and pages—so, you will have an easier time reading the book. Weight is something to be considered too. When your reader weighs less it will be easier to carry around with you. Pay attention to ounces here. Just because one reader may be taller or wider than the other, it could still weigh less.