Website design By BotEap.comA shootout between the Kindle 3G and its competitors in the market is inevitable, as consumers would like to get the real score by spending their hard-earned money, especially at this time of economic uncertainty. There are only a few brands with any share of the eBook reading market. You have the Nook from Amazon competitor Barnes and Noble, the Sony Reader, and the Apple iPad.

Website design By BotEap.comLet’s start with the iPad to say that it really is way above the market for mere e-book reading as it has richer features to make it a multimedia device other than a laptop. It’s a bona fide tablet computing device that does more than limit itself to the more focused functional practicality of the Kindle. People who would buy an iPad 3G wouldn’t buy it for its e-book reading capability, which is just another subset of its multimedia prowess.

Website design By BotEap.comNo, people will buy it more for its ability to watch movies, view pictures, and browse the Internet. While the Kindle3 now had 3G and WiFi models in the same way as the iPad, the latter does a more enjoyable job of browsing in full color on whatever site you’re visiting, along with reading PDFs of full-color pages that you will not get in the Amazon e-reader. If you like to read novels pure and simple, Apple’s e-book reader is over the top. As well as being more expensive, it’s also heavy to tire your wrist holding while reading and doesn’t really lend itself well to reading in direct sunlight. For pure reading fun, the Kindle3G is the best and most practical option.

Website design By BotEap.comSo what’s left in the shootout that’s really on the same keel is the Sony Reader and Barnes & Noble’s Nook. Let’s see this last. Launched nearly two years later and positioned as a direct rival to Amazon’s bestseller, the Android-based Nook3G has the same 6-inch e-paper display with a 3.5-inch color LCD touchscreen below for navigation and offers features that the second-generation Kindle didn’t have. It didn’t have 3G and WiFi connectivity in 2009. The current Kindle-3G is obviously a direct response to the growing popularity of the Nook with these wireless connectivity features.

Website design By BotEap.comJust don’t expect it to be text-to-speech capable or as fast to turn pages. But at a lower price of $149 and over 2 million books in B&N’s online store, it can’t be beat. The new Color Nook with a 7-inch full color multi-touch screen released in October has a larger internal storage of 8GB and supports a 32GB microSD slot. (But this is now a full-fledged tablet computer that’s more positioned against the iPad than the Kindles.)

Website design By BotEap.comThe Sony Reader comes in several models with the Sony Reader Touch Edition PRS600/650 being a direct rival with the same 6-inch e-paper screen. With a highly reflective touchscreen and no wireless data connectivity options, it’s no wonder it doesn’t sell as well as the others and suffers in feature-for-feature comparison. You can forget about this one for now and save your money for the Nook or Kindle 3.