Ok, this will close out my three-part posts trying to convince you that ebooks are worth a try. This time I will concentrate on the hardware that makes all this possible.

eBooks can be read on just about any device that you can be hooked to the Internet. But there are distinct advantages to using devices that are specialized for ebook reading. On rare occasions, I have read a few pages of an ebook on my iPhone but it is a pain! You can also use iPads, Kindle Fire pads, laptop computer, and even large screen computers. For 95% of my ebook reading, I choose a Kindle Reader.

I have owned three different Kindle Readers over the last ten years or so. I will admit that the first ones were not up to my expectations. The backlighting had many hotspots and dark areas to be annoying and the storage capability was pretty limited. But, fast forward to those available today and I can’t find much to complain about. I just bought a 9th generation Kindle and I suspect this one will last me for quite a few years.

You can pretty well choose the price range you want to pay for an eBook reader. Kindles range from $60 to $270. The basic technology is the same but the higher price units have more memory and features. The price might put some people off but if you consider that you now pay $10 or more for paperback books the overall savings to going ebook is substantial, especially for those of us who read multiple books a month.

Now it is on to the eBook secret weapon, at least for those of us who are bloggers or just want to keep a record of the quotes from our reading. That weapon is Kindle Notes. Log on to your Kindle account and go to a custom page that shows you all the notes you have made on any book you purchased. If you click on the note it will go to the page where it is found. Really neat stuff for those of us who blog about what we read. It’s super easy to download a quote.

But the real magic happens because you can also quickly download all your notes into an Excel database for further sorting and to merge the same thoughts from different sources. This is my secret weapon for much of what I blog about.

Finally, I will tell you that at least for me, eBooks are not as good as paper ones in certain situations. One of those cases are books that have detailed drawings and illustrations. But for the vast majority of books ebooks are the best. With all the tools that are available today, it seems you are only limited by your ambition to know and compile info on almost any subject you want. I can’t even begin to imagine what the future will bring in this area.