shahine.com/omar/

I loves me some internets and hackers.

Looks like you can now get Internet Connection Sharing working on the Samsung Blackjack II. Wohoo. This removed one monster deal breaker on this device.

The instructions, and files can be found on this post at Howard Forums.

Basically:

1. Download the BJ.WM6.ICS.Enable.cab file
2. Download the secpolicies.cab file
3. Transfer both cab files to your My Documents folder
4. Install secpolicies.cab and reboot
5. Install BJ.WM6.ICS.Enable.cab and reboot
6. navigate to \My Documents and click on Certs.cab and reboot

I am now officially a happy camper. Both battery life and ICS now working.

It's important to note that ICS works over USB and via Bluetooth PAN. Super sweet.

note to self: next phone, wait 1 month before purchasing after release. not sure if this is possible.

Funny, last night I was messing with my HP MediaSmart server and my Watt Meter.

I was trying to figure out what kind of processor the MediaSmart has. You may not know but there are 2 different AMD Sempron 3400+ Manila processors.

Scott Hanselman confirmed my results. I see around 57W usage on my server with a peak of 73W at 100% CPU. I also have two 500GB drives in mine.

There is a big difference between a processor maxing at 62W and 35W. However, I think that the HP MediaSmart has the 62W processor.

update: According to this interview, the MediaSmart does in fact use the 35W Sempron.

Question: Does the HP MediaSmart Server have a power save mode or sleep type mode when I'm not using it? Is it quieter than a standard computer?

Answer: The MediaSmart Server was designed to be as quiet and power efficient as possible. Example: The processor we chose was a special 35W processor. This low power design helps keep noise levels down too. Since the server can be accessed by any network device at any time (locally or remotely) there is no "stand-by" mode.

So, given that the CPU is rated at 35W Peak, and I got my machine up to about 73W peak, that means that power consumption is about:

Frankly, I've been embarrassed for years that all my little freeware applications display a scary security warning when anyone installs them. This is because they are not authenticode signed.

I never bothered to go get a certificate to do so cause they cost about $200 a year. Well I have enough people downloading (and donating!) Send to SmugMug that I finally thought it was time to do something about this. The SmugMug folks have been kind enough to feature my downloader on their page for over a year now so I figured it was high time to stop scaring people.

Well Eric Lawrence (creator of Fiddler and SlickRun) clued me in to Tuows who offers Authenticode Digital Signatures for about $80 a year. So I bit the bullet. The process of getting a cert and signing your msi is pretty easy:

1. Create an account at Tucows
2. Buy a Cert
3. Email them your Drivers License
4. Download the Cert
5. Export your certificate from the machine and store in a safe place
6. Grab signtool.exe from the .NET 2.0 SDK
7. Sign your binary using the certificate from step 4

Voila.

The nice thing about a Certificate is now I can sign anything I distribute including Excel Spreadsheets with Macros to prevent them from working properly.

So if you are a freeware author, for $80 bucks a year you can save your users some grief.

I used the following tutorial to help out.

Windows Mobile 6 ships with a Windows Update feature we all know and love...

Anyway, Kris Kumar over at SmartphoneThoughts asks the question, is this feature going to see any action.

No.

I thought about ending just there.

It won't because the carriers won't allow it to, or they will but will take a year to test the updates (you know, by walking around the US with their phones saying "can you hear me now?").

There is a slight possibility that if there is ever a change to Daylight savings again, that this feature might see some action. Why? Cause the last Daylight savings change was a freaking FIASCO.

The bad news is if you own a Windows Mobile Device. Apparently it's up to the maker of said device to issue an update. What are the chances your carrier will release an update? I don't know; what is their track record for doing so up till now? Yeah, that's what I thought.

Microsoft ended up releasing a CAB update anyway due to the fact that this was just plain silly.

But I'm not expecting any updates while I own my device.

The way updates work in the cell phone business is called:

1. Buy a new phone
2. Sign a new contract
3. Fill out a rebate form
4. Get some money back
5. Rinse and Repeat

iPhone being the notable exception so far.

What a difference a week makes.

Today I am going to sleep with a 70% charge remaining on my phone after medium usage since 8am this morning. So that's 16 hours the phone has chugged along using on 30% battery. Now either it's lying or something was very wrong with it last week when I first got it. But that's actually really decent battery usage and better than the BJI. I've correlated these results with my co-workers who are anxiously sporting their BJ IIs after hearing my sob story.

I suspect there are a few things going on:

• The battery is now calibrated. I know these things have all sorts of circuitry so my guess is something was not right.
• I didn't use GPS today. I have a sneaking suspicion GPS can do bad things to the battery.

I'm still VERY VERY annoyed at the removal of the Internet Connection Sharing feature and if I traveled a lot, this might have to be replaced with a Moto Q. However, I like that the Blackjack is, smaller, lighter, and has the cool jog dial. I have a temporary workaround for the lack of ICS thing (using it as a modem) but that's kinda a pain.

update: see this post to get ICS working.

I really genuinely hope that AT&T and Samsung release a service pack for this thing to make it whole. They have a horrible track record of doing so though.

I had to turn off push email during peak times to prevent the backlight from coming on a zillion times a day, but setting the sync interval to 10 minutes increases my battery life and makes more sense during the work day.

I am very much looking forward to Windows Mobile 6.1 for the following features:

• Threaded SMS
• Copy/Paste Support
• Awesome Home Screen Navigation

But my guess is that I'll have to wait for the Blackjack III to get it.

In the mean time check out:

• Extreme Text for Threaded SMS
• Vito Copy/Paste for Copy/Paste support

One of the "Experimental" Services offered on the Amazon Kindle is called NowNow. The way NowNow works is you send it  question you want researched and you get back 3 answers within a few minutes. These are answers that human beings research using Amazon's own Mechanical Turk.

I've not had much use for the service but today I had a question I could not get an answer to.

"how can I find out about new Amazon Kindle book releases?"

Trying to search the world wide web using Google and Live Search netted nuthin.

So I asked NowNow. Within 10 minutes I got the following answers:

Answer #1: It's a little complicated...

Go here
Sort by Publication Date
Then you'll see the latest items added.
Currently this is the only way to see new releases, and there is no notification tool.

Answer #2: Check the Amazon website

But if you own a kindle chance are you will get emails from amazon telling you about new kindle release.

Answer #3: On Amazon's website, there is a Kindle store, where all the Kindle books are listed for purchse.

At the Kindle store, there are other listings like Kindle Magazines, Newspapers, and Blogs. There is also a support menu for your Kindle

Answer #1 was the best, and Answer #3 clearly the worst. But at least it worked .

Still, even with the no DRM nonsense, iTunes is still placing restrictions on what I can buy and charging me more for the privilege.

Here is the new Daft Punk Alive 2007 Album in iTunes:

And on Amazon.

Amazon lets me purchase each track individually, iTunes does not.

Album is:

• $11.99 on iTunes
• $8.99 on Amazon

Harder Better Faster Stronger indeed.

Love the Amazon MP3 service. Bubba has a detailed review.

Somehow my Blackjack II got wind of all the nasty things I've been saying about it and it decided to behave today. Same thing happened to 2 other folks at Microsoft.

As of right now, my Blackjack II has been unplugged from the charger since 8am. It's been 12 hours and it's got 70% of its battery left. I have been syncing mail every 15 minutes for 4 hours and using Direct Push for 4 hours.

I didn't do anything to the device that would cause this type of change.

The only thing that I can think of is:

1. the battery was not calibrated yesterday, and after draining completely and re-charging it is now calibrated.
2. the network was hosed yesterday forcing my phone to do a lot of 3G <-> EDGE switching which has always been a weak point of Windows Mobile Battery Life.

Has anyone seen anything like this before?

Go Figure. Now I'm perplexed as to what to do... I was all ready to return it today and get the Moto Q9h.

Only one day old and the Blackjack II is a disaster. I am so utterly disappointed in Samsung, and AT&T.

Let me start this post though by saying that the Blackjack I was my favorite phone ever. I have owned this phone and generally loved it for 12 months and 12 days which is the longest I have ever held on to a device. Something like 1 in 5 Microsoft employees I work with has this phone. It was/is a smashing success IMHO... but as you can see below, it's been a disaster for anyone I know who has replaced their BJ I with a BJ II.

Lets count the ways that the BJ II sucks:

1. Battery Life is terrible. I unplugged the device at 7am and at 10am it was 50% full. the phone did not make it to 7pm. I did not use Direct Push at all. Other than demoing to people how lame it was, I didn't use it except to check mail every 15 min and make 2 phone calls. My old Blackjack I with the extended battery lasted 2 days with Direct Push running 24/7. update: see this post, it looks like my battery wasn't calibrated and now it's lasting a full day with push mail and 50% battery to go.
2. Whenever you get an email, the screen comes on. It stays on for however your backlight timeout is set to (mine is 30 seconds). This is almost a deal breaker. update: if your phone is locked it comes on for only a few seconds.
3. Internet Connection Sharing is removed from the ROM. Gone, bye bye. update: there is now a way to enable ICS.
4. The polished black plastic is ugly, gets fingerprints on it and generally makes the phone look cheap. The rubberized plastic on the old BJ was far better.
5. There is a new and different proprietary connector from Samsung that is different from the Blackjack I. Way to go Sammy.
6. There is an LED light on the phone that blinks ONCE when you get an email or text message. Awesome Feature...NOT I mean WTF is the point of this?
7. The keyboard often defaults to the wrong input mode.

The ONLY thing I like about this phone is:

• Jog Dial
• Voice Command works over Bluetooth
• GPS uses a Sirf III chipset

Every person I know who has this phone has or is returning it to AT&T. Maybe they will get a clue and do something about it.

I can't believe a whole year has gone by and they have produced a phone that is WORSE than the Blackjack I.

I'm returning mine tomorrow and getting the Moto Q9h and just learning to deal with it's limitations (which pale in comparison to this).

Bottom line, if you have a Blackjack I don't get your hopes up on the II, it's not 1 year better.

I really don't know what to think... did a bunch of people at Samsung and AT&T sit around a conference room table a few times in the past year to dream up how to make a crappy device? Did they even test this thing to notice that the freaking screen was coming on every time you got an email and that battery life might suffer as a result? Was this thing rushed to market for Black Friday?

Since using Vista at Microsoft I've been victim to more credential prompts in the past year than I have in my life. It really drives me nuts and I had no idea why.

There are two kinds of prompts I see:

1. credentials prompt from sharepoint when opening an office document (clicking a link to a word doc
2. credentials prompt in Outlook when connecting to Exchange

Now in a domain controlled environment you should never see prompts at all unless you don't have access to a resource. Windows takes care of this via Single Signon etc.

Well FINALLY I see David Rasmussen posted an explanation of issue #1, with a link to the SharePoint team blog explaining the issue. Sadly our IT department had no clue about this when I would call them.

The issue is that you must have "Automatically Detect Settings" enabled in your proxy configuration in IE. The problem is that in Hotmail we use some custom proxy servers to communicate with our labs and you need to disable "Automatically Detect Settings" to get to work. I can't tell you how many times I go to that dammed dialog to configure proxy settings. The crazy thing about this behavior is that if you just hit cancel on the credential dialog the document would still open:

With Office 2007 running on Windows Vista, opening an Office document hosted on a SharePoint (i.e. WSS 3.0 or MOSS 2007) site results in a prompt for login credentials even if the user is already logged on with an account that has access to the document. Canceling the credential prompt may still (but not always) allow the document to open in read-only mode.

And of course if you wanted to edit the doc you were out of luck.

Issue #2 is related to some configuration issues in our DOMAIN environment that have been addressed, but nasty to track down. We all suffered a lot in the interim (entering credentials as many times as > 100 a day).

Another weirdo Vista problem solved. This is why I hate new Operating Systems. Too many regressions that are very hard to understand let alone get a fix.

How mad am I? I'm as mad as an A-list blogger with a video camera and a Kindle. I mean, watch the video... Scoble is angry mad at the Kindle. Imagine if he were using a Blackjack II.

So, I just got my Samsung Blackjack II today. While it has numerous improvements over the Blackjack I, it's also got major regressions. The biggest one of all is that they crippled Internet Connection Sharing, one of the best features of Windows Mobile. There are some other smaller ones (they removed it from the ROM entirely, there is no Internet connection sharing in the \windows folder). On the Motorola Q9h the application can be found in \windows but the shortcut is not there).

I use Internet Connection sharing to get my PC on the Internet whenever I travel, work or pleasure. It comes in super handy.

Now here is the kicker. Why would they (AT&T) remove these bits from the ROM of the device? The Motorola Q9h Global that I purchased for my wife has ICS right there, and these are both brand new phones that just came on the market from AT&T?

I HATE crap like this. It's stuff like this that really has me questioning our mobile device strategy. Is it any different from crapware infested PCees? Is Apple going to out do us here as well (arguably they have as soon as they turn on Exchange Active Sync, get 3G and support tethering and apps).

More later on how you can still get on the net using the old dial strings (*99# anyone?) as well as a more detailed review and comparison of the BJ II and the Moto Q9h Global.

update: updated post to reflect that ICS was remove from the ROM... it's not there folks, not in \windows like it usually is.

A few days ago I posted about CFLs. Of course I started to get curious... I have a bunch of CFLs in our house already (bathrooms, and ceiling fixtures) but I have a lot of Floodlights (Incandescent and Halogen) throughout the house.

I wasn't pleased with the color of all the CFLs that I had and I would like a lower wattage solution for our 15 recessed cans that currently are dimmable with 65watt floodlights. I also wasn't happy with the CFLs I had in my home office, they were too yellow.

I did find a great non CFL solution that saves energy for my recessed cans, see the end of the post for that info.

Also, since CFLs have mercury, you need to take care when recycling them. I found out that you can take CFLs to IKEA for free recycling. You can also order a Recycling Kit from Sylvania for $15 which includes return shipping via FedEx.

Well, I tested the following spiral 13w (60w equivalent) CFLs for the ceiling fixtures, bathroom lights etc.

• Sylvania Soft White (sold at Lowes)
• GE General Purpose Soft White (sold at Target)
• Philips Duramax (sold at Costco)
• Commercial Electric (originally sold at Home Depot)
• n:vision Soft White (sold at Home Depot)
• n:vision Bright White (sold at Home Depot)
• n:vision Daylight (sold at Home Depot)

The bottom line is that there are a few big differences between all these brands:

• instant on (some CFLs have a second delay before they start)
• warm up time
• color temperature

Popular Mechanics does a great write up on a bunch of brands, some covered above and some not. They highly rate the n:vision soft white that I also liked.

So you know, the color temperature of a standard incandescent bulb is about 2700k. The higher the number the "cooler" the light. Most folks will be used to this color temperature which can be described as yellow. Daylight for example is around 6500k. Halogen lights are a bit cooler than incandescent. Around 3200k.

Halogen–Superior Incandescent Technology
Tungsten halogen lamps are a refinement of incandescent technology that offer up to 20 percent greater energy efficiency, longer service life and improved light quality...

Whiter, Brighter Light
Halogen lamps have higher color temperatures than standard incandescent lamps—their light output contains more blue and green. Halogen lamps therefore appear whiter and brighter. Although both types of lamp essentially have a CRI of 100, the higher color temperature of halogen lamps provides more pleasing and vibrant color rendition across a wider range of colors.

Personally I've always liked the color temperature of halogen lamps.

My Testing Results

So, here is what I think of the CFLs that I've tried.

Sylvania Soft White

• no instant on
• color temperature is about 3000k
• I found the color to be a bit industrial looking
• grade: B

GE General Purpose Soft White

• no instant on
• color temperature is about 2700k
• color was a bit yellowish but acceptable
• grade: B+

Philips Duramax

• instant on
• color temperature is about 2700k
• color was a bit yellowish but acceptable
• grade: A-

Commercial Electric

• instant on
• color temperature is about 2700k
• color too yellowish
• grade: B

n:vision Soft White

• instant on
• color temperature is a bit cooler than 2700k
• color was just right (a bit whiter than incandescent). Nice for general purpose, hallways, sconces etc.
• grade: A

n:vision Bright White

• instant on
• color temperature cooler, 3500k
• color is bright white . Nice for a bathroom or office.
• grade: A

n:vision Daylight

• instant on
• color temperature cooler, 5500k
• color is bluish white. Not sure where I'd use a light like this. Looked very weird to me. Maybe in a garage? Hanselman likes these, I have no idea why.
• grade: n/a

So I've basically settled on the n:vision soft white (for general lighting) and bright white (for bathrooms and workspaces). They are also cheap, sold in packs of 4 for $9. I like that they have instant on and the color temperature is whiter than an incandescent (more like a halogen). Unfortunately, these "green" bulbs come in that horrible plastic blister packs, which probably negates some amount of the environmental friendliness of the bulbs. WTF n:vision? Use cardboard packaging.

For a crazy amount of info on CFLs see Don Klipstein's page.

So what about all the dimmable cans that I have? Well it turns our that Philips released a new line of bulbs that are more energy efficient than a standard halogen called Halogena Energy Saver.

Philips Halogena Energy Saver

Philips managed to take a 40w bulb and get it to output the equivalent of 65w of light. They also have a 70w bulb that outputs 100w of light. These lights are carried in a variety of shapes and sizes and one of them is a BR30 for recessed cans.

Philips calls the technology used to get this increased efficiency, EcoBoost.

More light, less heat

The EcoBoost technology is based upon optimizing heat management of the integrated electronics and burner. On the burner, a special compound conducts away the heat, keeping it cooler and ensuring that more electricity is converted into light. Another resulting benefit is that the burner is less likely to break, which lengthens the lifespan.

These lamps are currently sold at Home Depot and cost about $9 for a single BR30 or $9 for two standard bulbs. You can also find them at Amazon.

I replaced 5 can lights with these and can't be happier. They are not CFLs but they will get me a 39% improvement in power usage vs a CFLs 79%. If I replace all my recessed cans then:

This seems like a great way to:

• Save $7 a month
• Maintain Dimmers
• Continue to have Instant On

If I moved to CFLs I'd see savings of another $7 a month but have to sacrifice lighting features.

Oh, and the Energy Saver Halogena bulbs have NO MERCURY.

Hope this is useful to some one... of course some of this is obviously subjective.

Since having our daughter Sarah, we have done things that we normally don't do or haven't ever done... like visit the San Francisco Zoo.

Yesterday was gorgeous in the city, so we trekked up to the Zoo. I've been to a few Zoos in my life, but none where I could feel like I was close to the animals in a nice habitat. I do plan to go to the San Diego Wild Animal Park this spring, so we'll see how it compares.

This was also a good chance to play with Nikon 18-200 DX lens with Vibration Reduction that I borrowed from Mike Fullerton. I have to say, this lens impressed me.

But back to the animals. The zoo has an incredible collection of Lions, Tigers, Bears, Gorillas, Giraffes and a fantastic petting zoo for kids. I highly recommend a visit on a nice day.

See some sample shots bellow or the entire Gallery.

Many years later and I still love SmugMug. They are about to have their 5 year anniversary! Very exciting.

It's funny how having a kid changes how you utilize cameras and photo sharing services. I find that I'm uploading a few hundred pictures a month now and sharing with people all over the world. SmugMug has been great for giving me the flexibility I need to share photos via their great email feature as well as setting the right privacy settings for each album.

One of the weak points of SmugMug for years has been their video support. My wife and I have taken hundreds of short video clips of Sarah over the past year. First time giggling, saying "Dada", playing with our cat and so on. It's such a joy to watch these later and share them. Because they are only a few minutes long it's quick and easy to get a smile "fix" .

I've been using MSN Soapbox to upload and share videos for the past few months but I don't care much for this solution. I wanted my videos to go side by side with my photos. Well Chris MacAskill (one of the co-founders) and I were chatting and he mentioned the new video support. I rushed on over and lo and behold they now offer video services. I uploaded a few WMV files and they were flawlessly converted to H.264, the new hotness in video formats. Even better is that they support 1280 x 720 which my Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX100 supports.

note: you need a power/pro account to upload videos.

I'm not sure I've seen a gadget blogged about as much as the Kindle. Most of the posts were negative or critical when most of the bloggers had not owned, used or lived with a kindle. Were they pissed that Amazon chose to give old media (Newsweek) the scoop? And where are the in-depth comparisons to the product it is going head to head with (the Sony Reader)? And really, the fact that it doesn't do PDF is something people care about? Honestly, I bought this thing to read books purchased from the amazon store. I could not care less what format they come in... and DRM? Well we had to suffer through that for how many years with the music business? It took Apple how many years to loosen the shackles of DRM? It sure as heck did nothing to keep the iPod from experiencing explosive growth. The industry and the customers will go along kicking and screaming till Amazon can re-negotiate the DRM thing. But to do that Kindle will have to be a success.

At the end of the day, I think books are different than music. You see, I can purchase a CD and rip it with no DRM, so I've always had a viable alternative to DRM on music. But books? It's not like you can just scan them and read them on your laptop. This is a bit trickier. I think the best kind of DRM for a book would be to model it after a library or something. You can purchase a book, and "lock it" for reading. When you are done reading it you can then return it to your library and you can then:

• gift it to some one
• rent it to some one
• lend it to some one
• transfer it to some other reader format

that seems reasonable to me.

Since the Kindle has built in wireless, this could work very easily. I could for say finish a book and then let my wife read it next on her Kindle. We could have a shared book library where we could put books after we've read them. Ditto for the paper or magazines. Things that we can do today with the ones made from dead trees.

Anyway, I think the best post I've read so far is by the folks at 37signals:

One thing we have all had a chance to live with are books and newspapers. They’re stacks of dead trees. Bulky blocks of words. They take up a lot of space, need to be pushed around by plane and truck, and quickly fill up your carry on if you want to take more than a couple with you. When you buy a book, you’re buying a tiny piece of furniture that you usually carry with you the rest of your life. Moving? Time to pack up the books!

I know book lovers like to talk about the permanence of books, but I think that’s overrated and over-romanticized. Some people love to build extensive physical libraries to house their books. Not me. I’d prefer to read it and move on. Sure I could buy a book, read it, and sell it or give it to a friend or a library, but I’m just looking for the knowledge, not the inventory or an exit strategy.

That’s not to say books are bad. Books are wonderful, important things. But they’re also terrible at a lot of things. You can’t search paper. You can’t bring that many with you at once. They suck up valuable resources in production and transportation. They take up a lot of space. They leave an artifact when you’re done with them.

[37signals]

With any v1 product there are going to be problems... and really, if any company is going to make ebooks work for real, it's going to be Amazon. After all, they sell books.

Kindle isn’t the first eBook reader, but it’s the first portable bookstore. That’s novel. A book in 60 seconds whenever I want it at used-bookstore prices. And the daily push newspaper feature sounds like one hell of a bonus. I love getting the paper, but I hate getting the paper. What a complete waste of resources just so I can get yesterday’s news. I like that there’s some genuinely new thinking behind Kindle. We should embrace this, not tear it to shreds before it even has a chance.

[37signals]

Sony's hardware is nice looking but the UX is clumsy. The buttons are small and hard to use. The formatting of the books is inferior to the Kindle making them harder to read (see screen shots below). I didn't even realize I had a problem till I read a sample chapter of a book I purchased on the Sony Sore. Finally, Sony just plain sucks at making software. It's really sad. I've never seen a Sony web site that was something I'd want to use. Amazon has done a great job of building a usable site to buy stuff, browse stuff and generally read reviews and do product research. Sony's ebook web site and software is terrible.

Another thing... Amazon actually added features to the ebook that make it better than a traditional book. Sony did not. For example, Amazon:

• Lets you look up words with the built in dictionary
• Lets you get to wikipedia
• Lets you purchase or trial books anywhere in the US (like in an airport or wherever) from the device
• Lets you read newspapers and magazines
• Stores your bookmarks, and annotations in the cloud so you have them forever
• Stores your book purchases in the cloud allowing you to download them again
• Actually usability tested the device (the buttons all work well)
• Gives you a freaking AC adapter to charge it

And finally, Amazon added a little bit of magic to the device. Lets give them some credit for creating a piece of consumer electronics device that piggy backs off a cell network without requiring me to fork over a part of my soul to the cell phone carrier.

I've purchased 3 books already, one via the amazon.com website and 2 on the device itself. The process went flawlessly in all cases.

If I think of this device in perspective I think it has a lot of similarities to both the iPod and the Apple AirPort. This device has finally liberated me from stacks of books, and a pc that I need to sync with just to use the device in the same way that my iPod let me carry around my entire music collection (remember mix tapes) and the AirPort let me use my laptop anywhere in my house or at work without finding an Ethernet cable. The Kindle is a portable bookstore that provides a limitless avenue to purchase and enjoy books with an experience that feels book like.

This is the fist gadget of late that functions really well without a computer.

Anyway, I think compared to the Sony Reader, there is no question that the Kindle is a much better device... methinks it's only going to get better.

You can see my full uboxing and a bunch of photos comparing the size and shape of Kindle to the Sony Reader. Note the pictures that show how the Reader and the Kindle format pages differently.

Below are some highlights.

Kindle is only about 10% bigger than the Reader.

Kindle has an odd shape but is very comfortable to hold

Top view

Overhead

Differences in rendering book cover

A couple of things to note here. The reader doesn't format pages as well as the Kindle. Also the font on the Kindle is easier on the eyes.

You can see how the sony reader jumbles paragraphs together. That ugly black mark is a footnote. Annoying and distracting. The Kindle does this better.

You can see how much easier the Kindle is to read here. Line spacing is better and paragraph breaks.

PS - the DRM thing sucks in a way because I gave Sony money for an ebook that I cannot transfer to the Kindle.