Black Friday, 2010 is just a few days away and the after Thanksgiving, sales are perfect opportunities to stock up on Christmas gifts. If you are thinking about buying an ereader for a child, November 26, 2010 is a good time to get a child-friendly ereader for under $100.
Sony Reader PRS-300: Best Non-Internet eReader Deal
Walmart will sell the Sony PRS-300 for $99 on Black Friday, and you can shop in your pajamas because according to the Walmart.com ad, the Sony Reader price will be available online and in stores. Right now the Sony is $129, and it is a good ereader for kids. It is user-friendly, small, and it can handle a lot of different file formats. The Sony Reader store is a solid ebook store with good prices and a lot of choices, and the Sony Reader works with the EPUB files from Kobobooks. I wrote a review of the impressive Sony PRS-600, after Sony sent me a sample to play with for a few weeks and I thought they would be a wonderful addition to my classroom.
The Sony Reader PRS-300 does not have internet access, and that might be a selling point for some parents. The way the internet access works on the B&N Nook and the Amazon Kindle, users can buy books from the store, directly from the ereader itself. That is great for someone who has budgeting skills, but parents might not want to give kids unlimited accesses to an ebook store that requires a credit card. Also, the Kindle 3G and the Nook 3G have anywhere internet access, which means that students can have basic web access. There probably isn't anything nefarious that someone can do with such basic web browsers, but some states have laws requiring that schools have internet filters in place to get E-rate discounts. An ereader with internet access may not be allowed in some classrooms because of the inability to filter the web browsing.
Barnes and Noble Nook: Best Wi-Fi eReader Bargain
Best Buy will have the Barnes and Noble Nook wi-fi for $99 on Black Friday. This is another excellent choice for an ereader for kids. The Nook is easy to use, and there are a lot of free book and classics readily available in the Nook store. If you want your child to have an eReader that has internet connectivity, the Nook wi-fi is the best ereader to buy on Black Friday.
Before you decide to camp out at Barnes and Noble to buy the Nook doorbuster, take a look at some of the Nookbooks in the Barnes and Noble Nook store. Not only will your child have the ability to download any book and add that purchase to your credit card bill, but there are a lot of Nook books that are geared for adult readers, and only for adults. If you get your children ereaders will internet access, you might want to show them how to find books for kids and teens at the Barnes and Noble ebook store.
Although I prefer the Kindle to the Nook for ereading, kids might be better off with a Nook because it shows page numbers. For people who are still at the age where they are writing book reports and participating in class discussions, knowing what page you are looking at is an important feature. For kids who want to share book passages on Facebook or Twitter, the Kindle is an excellent choice, and Amazon now has an ebook gifting option which would make it easy to send books to a child's Kindle. If you are interested in getting your child a Kindle, follow Amazon.com's Twitter feed to be sure to catch any last minute Black Friday or Cyber Monday deals.
Sources:
Information about schools and internet access comes from "State Internet Filtering Laws" by the National Conference of State Legislatures. The article was published on the NCSL websites on December 28, 2009.
The Best Buy Black Friday 2010 ad scan is from bfads.net, which was accessed November 20, 2010.
The Walmart Black Friday 2010 ad is from Walmart.com, which was accessed on November 20, 2010.
TLE101
Alex Sharp - Alex Sharp is a teacher who has been keeping Suite101 readers up to date with the latest in audio- and e-book gadgetry since 2008.
