One of the quiet debates of the Online Age centers around ebooks - digital versions of the world's oldest form of stored communication. Proponents of ebooks love them because they're much easier to carry around than the original and much easier to produce. Detractors hate them because they're a big change in how people read (you can't really curl up with a computer) and frankly, it's really difficult to read things off of a monitor - in fact, people are more likely to skim when reading something online because dealing with the glow is so difficult.

However, this war doesn't stop people from trying to make ebooks gadgets that will satisfy both worlds, including Sony's latest and greatest, simply entitled "Reader." As Walt Mossberg reports in his review of the device and the online ebook purchasing system that goes with it, the Reader is far Superior to the first ebook devices that came out back in the late 90's, but there's still some work to do on the online half of the system.