Eric Rice is getting all hot and bothered about one of his Christmas presents...

Yup. Got a Sony Reader for Christmas, and it is *bad ass*. It looks like a book, feels like a book, reads like a book. And it takes PDFs, JPGs, MP3s, AACs, and RSS feeds.

Don’t try and compare this to phones, laptops, or any other computer device.

Compare it to paper.

- via Eric Rice, "The Official Site"

Being a red-blooded geek myself, this got me all hot and bothered too. Of course I had to check into what the heck a "Sony Reader" is. I'd never heard of it until I did my annual check on Eric's blog (I only need to check him once a year - he's timeless :)

These things do look pretty sick. Great looking display, nice form factor and a touch of elegance that you don't usually get in handheld devices of this ilk.

I got a bit of a shock when I clicked the "buy direct" button though - $349. I'm used to devices like this being subsidized by the book sellers (you know the old "buy a subscription, get a cheap/free/discounted reader" trick?)

$349 is a lot of cake to spend on paper.

Even though they do have a couple of rebates and discounts available (in a flash page I can't link to), I think I'll be sticking to the real thing until I can find someone as nice as Eric' benefactor to give me one ;)