title: FileReader advantages vs. FileInputStream advantages
body: <p>From what I can read on Stack Overflow, the <em>FileReader</em> only takes files, where the <em>FileInputStream</em> can read all. But is there any advantages in using the <em>FileReader</em> then? Is it faster?</p>
  
  <p>I read that: </p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>"FileReader does not allow you to specify an encoding and instead uses
    the plaform default encoding, which makes it pretty much useless as
    using it will result in corrupted data when the code is run on systems
    with different platform default encodings."</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>But didn't quite get it. What does platform default encodings mean?</p>