TelePoll> How important is a stylus in an e-book gizmo?

I love styluses, but if the bookmarking feature were excellent and easy to use, I could live with it. I want to mark certain paragraphs from start to finish, and I want to retrieve these marked passages easily. I can’t remember if Sony Reader actually does this.

I would have to agree that a stylus is much preferred. Having recently purchased a refurbished Tablet PC, I will admit that the best ebook experience I have had so far has been with MS Reader (tablet version). With the stylus, I can highlight, bookmark, lookup words, draw and annotate an ebook. As much I dislike MS for some of the things they do, their tablet version of Reader is the best I have seen yet. It is even very nice for just reading. Of course, I still have to deal with other formats, which require that I have several ebook readers installed on my tablet.

I would say it depends on the functionality of the reader. If it’s *just* reading e-books, then a stylus is unnecessary if the ergonomics of the controls are good enough; think of an iPod (in the sense of its control schema) for eBooks, as it were.

If, on the other hand, it’s a more powerful device, then the stylus becomes necessary; I don’t think there’s sufficient precision in a finger-oriented touch-screen, and an add-on keyboard (or slide-out, or whatever) is bulky. I have a slate form-factor tablet PC that is great for e-books and other things (when it works — side issue irrelevant here); the stylus is an essential part of the interface.

–John N.