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Amazon Kindle

LilBastage

LilBastage

Meat is murder! Tasty, tasty murder.
Joined
Oct 25, 2005
Messages
5,462
Location
Somewhere, out there.
TheWife(c) has gotten into her head that she wants one of these devices. Does anyone here use one or a similar device for reading? How do you like it?

I just don't see how reading a "book" on one of these is the same as reading an actual book, but hey, I'm old fashioned like that I guess.
 
I have a Kindle and love it. My wife, who said she would never like one, uses it more than I do. The font is easy to change for those of us with aging eyes.

She was really sold when we were driving and she finished the first in a series of books. It took about 30 seconds to download the second book in the series as were driving.

I just bought one for my father-in-law for Christmas (and his 80th) birthday.
 
I've been looking at these for awhile but haven't pulled the trigger yet---I guess I need to actually see the text screen in person to be convinced it's for me. If it's as easy on the eyes as a book I'm sold though, because a lot of the stuff I read just doesn't come in a large print edition, but does exist as a pdf online that can be imported to a Kindle, and scaled up to a larger text size.

Damn old eyes, anyway. :blush:

~Boar
 
Oprah strikes again, eh Alan? Just wait until her network comes out and her product endorsements go through the roof. :thumbs:
 
MoeCizlak said:
Oprah strikes again, eh Alan? Just wait until her network comes out and her product endorsements go through the roof. :thumbs:
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No, it was the stupid commercial during the football game Thursday night and her subsequent visit to a couple of websites.

I won't tell TheWife© you accused her of watching Oprah on the chance you may meet someday. I'd hate for her to poke you in the eye first thing. :laugh: :laugh::sign:
 
Hello,

I have asked for one of the eReaders for Christimas, and therefore I have been researching them. I went into Barnes and Nobles today and asked a load of questions. Basically, you can only download from their selection, about a million right now. They do have free wifi on the nook and you should be able to use it wherever there is a cell signal. When you purchase a book, most of which are $9.99, you can share it with other nook users for free as long as you give it to them via the nook within 14 days of purchase of the book. Some of the the old books, like Charles Dickens etc are free to download. Its about the same size as the sony. The only part of the nook that is touch screen is the bottom where the books are, the screen turns the page with the touch of the buttons. The Kindle from Amazon, uses any book that Amazon sells. It is bigger than the nook and Sony, but doesn't appear to be as user friendly as the nook and Sony, or so I've heard, although those that have it love it! I checked out the Sony today, its light weight, seemed easy to use and doesn't have restrictions to the books you want to purchase. You can buy any book from anywhere as long as the publisher has a download version for you. Both the Nook and the Sony have an MP3 player feature, the nook you need headphones to listen, Sony you don't because it has speakers! As far as I can tell the Kindle doesn't but i can't tell you for sure. Hope this helps, I am still searching but the Sony has a touchscreen version which I like and also a pocket version that has button control. The Sony's come in different colours, not sure about the others. That's all I know for now! Good Luck! The Sony is $299. for touchscreen, $199. for buttons, (pocket version), and Nook is $249. (Sold out, are delivering for Jan 15th), Kindle is $249, I think!
 
Alan,

Worth it if the mrs is a reader. as for me, i am happy with kindle on my iphone. i just d/l last month. love reading while flying etc and no need to lug books



Best,

Joe
 
Devil Doc said:
souldog24ca said:
britishfields said:
The Kindle from Amazon, uses any book that Amazon sells.
Click to expand...

This just sold me on it. Now I want one because I mow through books in a day.
Click to expand...

Yea well, it doesn't take long to get through a Nancy Drew novel.

Doc.
Click to expand...

Hey now, The Secret of The Old Clock was an invigorating read that kept me on the edge of my seat all the way through to the end. However, The Secret of Red Gate Farm is another matter for another discussion.
 
I have a long history with assorted ebook readers.

I originally got the 500 model Sony Reader, then "upgraded" to the Kindle. I later gave the Kindle away and went back to the Sony Reader (best decision I could ever have made!). I traded up to the 505, then to the 700, then back to the 505.

I'm waiting to get my hands on the Nook but for my money, the 505 is the "reader's" device. It's solid and more importantly if FEELS solid and the user controls are far more "comfortable". The display is clean and crisp (put it side by side with a 500 or Kindle and you'll immediately see what I mean).

I could talk your ear off about them but I'd consider how it's going to be used. If what you want is a device that will hold piles of books and make reading enjoyable, the 505 is the way to go. Touch capabilities are a bad thing at the moment.

If you're a big fan of periodicals and RSS feeds, the 505 will do it. The Kindle will do it. But neither is really a good choice for that sort of person.
 
Incidentally, I'm committed to eBooks. I find paper books to be a plague. They take up too much space. They're inconvenient, heavy, prone to unreasonable wear. You can't search through them or zoom.

Paper books are expensive. eBooks are typically significantly cheaper, not to mention that "classics" and other public domain books tend to simply be free. The Sony Library had hundreds of free books, and when that gets old, there is Project Gutenburg. School books? Absolutely! The selection of physics textbooks alone would make an MIT student giggle like a little girl. Besides...I can't tell you how many backpacks I went through in college simply because the seams couldn't stand the strain and quite frankly, I've never been one of "those people" who dog ears, highlights and scribbles all over their books.

Really, why would you do that? So that you can pass it onto the next person who has to sit and wonder what you were thinking when you wrote down those completely incomprehensible notes? The same person that has to deal with your broken book spines and folded pages covered in pizza sauce?

Paper books.... :rolleyes: What is this, the dark ages?
 
Some of us prefer to stay in the "Dark Ages". To me, reading a book is a tactile experience. I love the smell of books, the feel of paper, and the the ability to make notes as I read. I also write with a fountain pen most of the time, too. :p

We're both well out of school, so that's not a consideration. Besides, we still have all of our old textbooks. I guess if her optometry journals were available, that would be cool. I'll have to look into that.

TheWife(c) just likes to read. She goes through about 8-10 books a month. I do about half that, but I'm not giving up my books, dammit.

Thanks for all the input. I guess I'll take a look at the Sony next time I'm at Target. I thought I saw them there last week.
 
LilBastage said:
Some of us prefer to stay in the "Dark Ages". To me, reading a book is a tactile experience. I love the smell of books, the feel of paper, and the the ability to make notes as I read. I also write with a fountain pen most of the time, too. :p
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You got me all worked up now! I've piled up the last few remnants of my once vast and glorious paper library I'm putting them in a box on the corner. I've held onto them not because I like exacerbating my dust allergies but because I'm a pack rat.


If you do look at the Sony Reader, be aware that the touch versions refresh the page faster but the digitizer overlay necessarily obscures the crisp contrast of the screen. the newer versions have a "glossy" display but that just opens up a whole can of glare in my opinion. The display is the only reason I went back to the 505 but it's a big one for me. It's been suggested that if you haven't used the 505, you "won't know what you're missing" and so therefore probably won't care. *shrug*
 
Wolfie: if you were buying 'tomorrow' would you pre-order the nook or get another 505? I have a TON of stuff in ebook/PDF format and I would love to make the jump...
 
If I were to be honest, I'd probably buy another 505.

The Nook really gets me for eye candy appeal and coverflow, if done properly, would be a really nice feature. I won't deny that I'm looking forward to a hands-on and I want to be won over but I have some reservations and they're prominent enough that it's going to really have to impress me to invest time and money into converting again.

I really like the tactile controls and they've gotten around the obscured display by limiting the digitizer to an area not devoted to reading but if it only gets used when I'm selecting a book, how much does the wasted real estate bother me? It doesn't look like much, and proportionately isn't too much more than with the 505 so realistically it's probably not a notable tradeoff but I think I really need some time with it to tell myself it's a non issue.

The processor and display controllers are improved so you'll get far faster display refresh. The 505 isn't a speedball in the display refresh and it doesn't really bother me (by the time my eyes are back at the top of the display, the refresh is long done) but I certainly wouldn't mind if it were a little "snappier". Add performance and the secondary (backlit) display together, though, and I start to worry about battery life. In the 505, I literally spend several hours a day with it for three or four weeks before the battery reads low. By that time, I've usually connected it to my laptop to drop more books onto it and in the few minutes it's connected, the battery generally charges. I'd hate to give up that convenience.

The Sony Reader runs linux and has a huge modding community. New firmware you can install is available on a number of well organized forums. On the other hand...The Nook uses Android which is a big up and comer and undoubtedly will have a growing dev community. I'm up in the air on this one but software-wise, the Nook probably takes an advantage here.

PRS-505:

sony-ebook-reader-prs-505.jpg


Nook:

nook_1.jpg
 
I have a kindle and absolutely love it. I dont know what you guys are using yours for but I can read books off mine, and thats all I wanted. The font is super clear and adjustable. Now the wife wants one
 
Of course, the Nook is bright white and has a soft-looking, well manicured female hand holding it (only one...presumably she's lost the other one in an accident or perhaps it's busy elsewhere) whereas the Sony Reader is a single piece of rugged and manly anodized aluminum being held by man-hands (the main housing is actually a one piece "sleeve" and the components "slide" into it which )
 
The early reviews of the Nook have been coming in and they have not yet been very kind, it seems. However, most of the comments are software related, which isn't unexpected for a first release...particularly one which was hurriedly pushed to market. I'm still hoping to get some hands-on time with one.
 
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