Can I sync a kindle ebook to my kindle 3 and my iphone?

Readability: Kindle 2 wins by a noseThe Kindle's screen is larger than that on the iPhone, it delivers sharp, high-contrast letters on an off-white non-backlit background, and it more resembles an actual book page than the iPhone 3G. In the iPhone's favor is the backlighting, which makes it possible to read ebooks in dark rooms without having to bring along a clip-on light. However, being able to read an entire page on the Kindle 2 instead of a paragraph or two at a time on the iPhone gives it a much more book-like feel.

User Interface: iPhone 3G FTWI didn't like the page-turning buttons on the original Kindle, and though the Kindle 2 has improved on the idea, it's just not the way you read a book! When you pick up your first-edition copy of The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger, do you turn pages by clicking a button? No, you flick the page with your hand.

Kindle for iPhone and eReader both let you flip pages with a flick of a finger across the screen. Why Amazon didn't consider a touch screen for the Kindle 2 is beyond me. And if Apple ever decides to come out with a large-format iPod touch or iPhone (I can dream, can't I?), that would be the best ebook reader I could think of.

A full page of text at a time, reading on a backlit screen, and using a flick gesture to turn pages would be ebook heaven. Battery life: Kindle 2 is the long-distance marathon winnerOne of the reasons Amazon didn't choose to include a backlight for the Kindle 2 display is that backlights use power. With a Kindle 2 with wireless turned on, you can read for up to 4 days.

Turn the wireless off, and you can read for up to two weeks. The E-Ink electronic display uses no power except when updating a page. The iPhone 3G burns through a full charge like Sherman through Atlanta (forgive me for that simile, southerners!).

Is this a problem? If you want to read a book for a long time, like on a flight between the US and Australia, forget about using an iPhone unless you can plug it in. However, for short reads while you're commuting or waiting in a doctor's office, the iPhone's shorter battery life isn't that important.

Delivery of books: Kindle 2 is the clear and free winnerBoth devices download ebooks over a 3G network from online bookstores. On the Kindle, you can browse and purchase books from the Amazon Kindle bookstore, then have them delivered free of charge to your device. The cost of the 3G service is included in the price of the book; there's no monthly fee to AT&T or your other carrier.

With the iPhone 3G, you're going to pay that monthly service charge whether or not you are actually using it as an ebook reader, so it's really a sunk cost. But still, the Kindle 2 delivers for free and that's why I'm giving it the win. Number of books available: iPhone 3G WinsWhen I first started writing this post, the Kindle was the hands-down winner in terms of the number of electronic books available.

With the release of Kindle for iPhone, the 245,000+ books in the Amazon Kindle library are now available for purchase by iPhone owners. The iPhone has an advantage over Kindle in this category, in that it can read books in the iSIlo, Palm Doc, plain text, PDF, ePub, eReader, and MobiPocket formats. Through other bookstores such as Fictionwise and eReader.com, hundreds of thousands of ebooks in many of these other formats are available for the iPhone and not on Kindle.

Other capabilites: iPhone 3G wins by a huge marginThe Kindle is primarily an ebook reader. It does, however, have a very rudimentary web browser listed under the "Experimental" item in the main menu. It can also read books to you through a text-to-speech capabilityThe iPhone?

There are well over 20,000 apps now available in the App Store. And the winner is...anyone who loves books! Based on the six criteria listed above, there is no champion ebook reader.

For people who are looking at buying a portable device to read electronic books, the iPhone and Kindle 2 both have positive and negative points.