E-Reading: A Midterm Progress Report

E-readers have been around long enough now that the novelty has largely worn off. E-readers are simply part of the reading landscape now -- the first Kindle was released almost five years ago -- and it's time for a midterm progress report. How is the technology developing? What has been accomplished and what remains to be done?

• One good development in the past five years: more options for reading at night.
• LCD screens are as glare-prone as ever: though there are some screen protectors that claim to reduce glare, I have yet to find one that has a significant effect, so if you're going to be reading outdoors the e-ink screens are still your best bet.
• E-ink screens today have much better contrast that the earlier ones did.
• E-readers still have limited typeface options and do a generally lousy job of handling kerning and spacing.
• E-books tend to have far more errors than print books, especially older books that have been scanned using OCR software and carelessly edited (or in some cases not edited at all).