Guess I am going to break down and buy a reader. Is kindle the way to go? Or are there others you would recommend?
Kindle
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If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.
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Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.
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This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.
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After roe, women are no longer free.
The Tim Channel
There was a ‘gamechanger’ yesterday. Did you miss it?
Enjoy.
DougJ
I have no interest in a reader so I won’t get a Kindle or an iPad, but iPad over Kindle seems like a no-brainer to me.
I have a good friend who works on Kindle, doesn’t really like it, and thinks (and hopes) Apple just killed it yesterday.
Bret
Yes. Kindle, Kindle Uber Alles.
I got mine 2 weeks ago, and have already read more books than I have in the past 2 years :) It’s wonderful.
Zifnab
The Kindle and everything else currently on the market is pretty weak. I’d wait on it. The devices are slow, and the resolution is way too low.
Maybe the iPad isn’t the answer, but I’d at least wait to see what HP fields.
Comrade Mary
Haven’t handled either, but I’ve seen people criticize the backlit iPad as being less easy on the eyes.
cleter
The MaxiPod looks more futuristic-y than the Kindle. You should get whichever one most closely resembles the gizmo the astronauts are reading in 2001.
gwangung
Yeah, you might want to wait and see how other people use their iPads (which can, right now, read Kindle files).
It may not make sense for people like me, who have an iPhone and a laptop, but for someone with an iPhone and desktop machine? Might be good.
(and guarunteed, the 2nd version will be much better).
WaterGirl
John, did you see the post from right after you got hurt where someone here said they had gotten 2 kindles for christmas and offered to send you one?
WaterGirl
@gwangung: The iPad won’t be out until March, which might be a little late in the recovery game for our fearless leader.
Mike in NC
A neighbor got the Sony e-reader for Christmas and loves it.
asiangrrlMN
@WaterGirl: Ditto this. It was a very kind offer, I thought. I think it was a John somebody, but I am not completely sure on that.
Bernie
Kindle all the way. I got my for x-mas and it is the best gift I have ever received.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
If you want to read a lot, go with the kindle. It’s got the e-paper, and it’s not backlit, so a charge will last a long time and it’ll be easier on your eyes.
If you want to do iPod touch stuff only bigger, go with the iPad, since you can download the kindle reader for it.
RobertB
I like my Kindle, but if money is no object then the iPad looks pretty nice. Not sure what eyestrain using the iPad will be like but I have no problem with reading on the Kindle for hours at a time. If the iPad could multitask there’d be no contest.
James K. Polk, Esq.
If you put up a link to a paypal account for a Kindle, I’m sure more than a few here would throw some duckets your way.
I know I would.
Um Yeah
LeVar Burton has a nook.
Comrade Darkness
The Kindle’s great. Turn off the wireless and the battery goes forever. I wouldn’t wait. It’s just for reading books, newspapers and blogs, but it does that quite well and if that’s what you want it for, go for it.
Punchy
Buy a AM radio, headfones, n just listen to sportstalk radio instead
trollhattan
Kindle probably wins on the content side. I suspect nobody has anything close to the number of titles Amazon has amassed. It appears that titles bought through Apple will cost more–perhaps a lot more.
Whatever you buy will be “out of date” in mere months so I wouldn’t sweat the decision too much. I’m more troubled at the apparent difficulty of moving books from device to device, especially if you jump providers.
JimF
The question of which reader to buy really hinges on where do you get your eBooks. All three major readers, Sony, Apple and Amazon attempt to lock you into their universe.
Tim F.
Reasons to buy a Kindle: (1) e-paper draws so little battery that I only charge once a week, if that. Battery consumption makes Kindle about the only electronic device that I can use throughout a transatlantic flight without supplementary power. (2) e-paper doesn’t tire out the eyes like a backlit display does. (3) The free cellular internet connection rocks for commuting. You can read blogs on the bus and anywhere there’s a signal. (4) Amazon limits the price of most books; Apple doesn’t. You could save a ton if you buy a lot of new releases.
IMO the Kindle stands out among e-paper-based readers.
Reasons to get an iPad: (1) You want to do more than read. The app and multimedia potential obviously eats Kindle for lunch.
That’s about it. I agree with Hitler that the iPad really ought to work more like a laptop and less like a big iTouch before I would think about buying it.
Mike S
My wife gave me the Sony E-Book for X-Mass and I love it. It’s the pocket sized one which is about the size of a paper back. I’ve already saved about $200 on new releases. King’s “Under the Dome” was $35 in print and I got it for $9.99.
I just came back from a vacation in Cabo where I read 4 books but had 6 loaded. Usually that would have added pounds to my luggage but this time it fit in my backpack on the plane.
It takes some getting used to, I never would have bought it myself, but once you do it’s on of the best purchases a big reader can get.
twiffer
if you want a dedicated e-reader, i’d go for a kindle or a nook (kind of leaning towards a nook right now, more books available for it via barnes & noble). you may want to wait and check out the que from plastic logic (here) if your tastes are more business use oriented. don’t bother with the iPad, as it is backlit and not e-ink (also about a pound heavier and charges you for wi-fi).
Cyrus
I’m liking my Sony e-book reader, from Borders. I didn’t comparison shop too much, and I haven’t used it for anything but reading books yet, but this is just fine for that. I slip it into my bag or even my pocket, it takes about three minutes to download new e-books from opening the web browser until I’m ready to read the book, etc.
Don’t know anything about the iPad yet, but I’m intimidated by Apple. This iPad thing is just a laptop with a more ergonomic design, right?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): I’m holding out for one until they fix the inability to run multiple apps at the same time.
Prof. Smackdown
iPad.
For sure. Can handle creating documents (via iWork), playing media (music, video), and will be able to do many more things once the developers get their hands on it (see iPhone).
Why spend a bunch of money on a gizmo that can only do one thing?
Bob
If you want something right now: Kindle.
If you can wait until March, then wait and don’t decide until you can hold an iPad in your hands. I’m sure you know someone with a Kindle so you can compare Apples to Apples (pun intended). Also, the Kindle software should run on the iPad, giving you the best of both worlds.
gwangung
@trollhattan: How can titles through Apple cost more when you can read kindle files on an iPad?
(though various recent interviews have mentioned that titles will be the same on the iPad as they are on Amazon, etc.)
BDeevDad
The Lenovo U1 was all the rage at CES. Seems like it would be an eReader+, although it’s not eInk.
arguingwithsignposts
@Tim F.:
did I miss the Godwin here?
meh
dont do it – if you’re on a Mac, love it, and will eventually break down and buy a pad, just save your money. The pad has a better interface (as far as I can tell) than the Kindle (and I have a kindle and like their interface).
Sanjuro
Barnes and Noble has a new reader called Nook that is similar to a Kindle but has better features in my opinion.
joel
Got a nook for the holidays, and I’m really enjoying it. Easy on the eyes, resolution is more than ok, and lots of titles at the b&n online store to choose from.
I could quibble a little about the touch-screen menu — a little more sluggish than the iPhone screen and not enough “finger runway” for full use — but honestly, you only use that when shopping and selecting what to read next anyway, so it’s a minor issue.
Tim F.
@arguingwithsignposts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQnT0zp8Ya4
Grand Wazoo
Gotta vote for the Kindle. I’ve had mine for about nine months and I love it – long battery life, easy on the eyes and a lot of books available. I think I picked up the complete works of HP Lovecraft for under $5 and you can find a lot of older, public domain type works for free or close to. I bought one for my wife for Christmas and she loves it, too.
BJK
Clearly you are looking for a comely Nazi prison guard with a propensity for younger men and long, soothing bubble baths.
ellaesther
Noooooooo John! Come back, come back, little Sheba! Down the road of the e-reader lies the ruination of civilization! Or at the very least, the annoyance of ellaesther!
Sigh.
This is a losing battle, isn’t it.
/locks library door.
Chat Noir
@James K. Polk, Esq.: I would, too.
Crashman06
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think you actually OWN the books you buy with Kindle. They’re linked through your amazon account. If Amazon happens to yank them from their catalog, they mysteriously disappear forever. I think some people were having problems with this a couple months ago; there was some kind of copyright dispute on some title, Amazon pulled it, and everyone who paid it could no longer access it.
I think there’s a lot of stuff, technologically and permissions-wise, that still needs to be hammered out with eReaders. I’d wait.
geg6
@DougJ:
Everyone I’ve talked to who is a techie on this campus said the same thing to me. They said Kindle is crap next to the Ipad.
Andrew
The Sony Readers have a plus that they integrate with many public libraries. If you’re public library supports that format you have tons of free books at your fingertips.
Martin
@Tim F.: Apparently the iPad gets 140 hours of music play and 10 hours of video. I think charging it every other day or three for reading would be about typical – unless you’re a power reader.
But John is going to want an iPad once it ships, though I wouldn’t fault him for getting a Kindle now. One of my staff was laid up for 4 months last year after a major injury and I don’t think she would have made it through without her Kindle. John I think reads too much online and in non-book form to want to switch from the Kindle to a more suitable device for doing those things.
And I’m 99% sure the iPad will play any Amazon e-book, just as the iPhone does. Amazon is a book seller – the Kindle was necessary to get the market moving properly, but I don’t think they’re going to care about protecting its marketshare so long as iPad users are buying Amazon books. I understand that the iPad will also work with B&N and other ePub resellers, but I haven’t yet seen that confirmed. Apple will aim to be the universal client here, and can because they have the most flexibility within the device itself.
Blake
Have two Kindles now, and love ’em both. Also have a first-gen Sony eReader, and after the recent switch to ePub from the Sony proprietary format, I’d say Sony is pretty competitive. I still much prefer the Kindle HW design, but that’s largely a matter of taste any more. Amazon has a larger selection and the prices are better, but I don’t know how long that advantage will last.
iPad starts at almost twice the price of a Kindle, and only goes up from there. If your primary focus is reading on the device, I wouldn’t even consider the iPad.
SpotWeld
What ever you do end up doing, please post your thoughts on it at some future date.
ellaesther
@ellaesther: Or, in other words, I’d like to go into a Nook and use all the iPads to Kindle a roaring blaze that would put an end to e-readers once and for all.
My lawn. Off!
/locks self in library.
Wile E. Quixote
Kindle. The iPad isn’t a dedicated reader, it’s just a maxi-sized iPod touch and Apple didn’t even come close to killing the Kindle the other day. The Kindle DX isn’t a good deal compared to the iPad but the regular Kindle is 250 dollars cheaper and can now buy books anywhere in the world. You don’t have to buy time on AT&Ts network to buy a book or be close to a WiFi hotspot, which is very cool. The battery life is better on the Kindle and the form factor of the regular sized Kindle is a lot more convenient than the iPad’s.
The regular sized Kindle also has native PDF support now, which was the biggest reason to get the DX (and why I got one). Oh, and you can have a Kindle today versus waiting until at least March for an iPad and at least April for an iPad with a 3G modem.
For the price of the low end iPad, sans 3G modem you could buy yourself a Kindle and a refurbished, second generation iPod touch with 32Gb of RAM and the two devices together would still be smaller than an iPad. Apple didn’t come out with a Kindle killer or netbook replacement the other day, Apple just came out with the world’s largest iPod touch.
sgrAstar
Kindle is a no-brainer if all you’re doing is reading. No additional wireless fees, super-long battery life, light weight makes it perfect for traveling. A further bonus- don’t feel quite as guilty indulging my passion for crime fiction. Downloading is a far superior to further acquisition of physical objects, imho.
Lee
Friend at work purchased a series 1 of a used kindle off craig’s list. He loves it.
I’m now checking craig’s list as well. Looks like a series 1 will run around $130-$150.
geg6
@ellaesther:
I’m with you, girlfriend. I’ll buy a reader when they pry my real live book from my cold, dead hands.
Though I’ll admit, I may get an iPad one of these days. But not for reading. Not interested in that at all. But I hear it does so many other things and I don’t have a home computer, so this might be the lower cost solution for me. We’ll see. I’ll certainly wait for the 2nd gen.
L. Ron Obama
John, as many people have astutely recommended, you should buy the technology that you need immediately but won’t be available for at least two months: iPad. But resist the temptation to pick up a sports almanac while you’re in the future.
superking
I love my kindle, but it’s not the best for technical reading.
And I actually miss things about books, like being able to check the contents, index, and endnotes easily.
Otherwise, it’s pretty frickin’ cool.
Bruuuuce
I’m waiting for a reader that uses the Pixel QI screen technology debuted at CES. It will be color, able to do video, but also has a low-power mode for brightly lit areas, so that its battery life will be far better than anything other than ePaper, which just about handles grayscale.
Of what’s out there now, I’d probably go with the Nook, the high-end Sony, and the Kindle, in that order. Amazon hasn’t significantly improved its user protections since the 1984 debacle. And there is no way in hell that Apple will ever see a cent from me; its top-down dictatorship means that even if you buy a device from them, you never really own it.
eastriver
iPad. You watch movies, right? Surf the web? Play games? Travel? All that?
It’s not even a fucking contest.
Apple brought a gun to a knife fight. Kindle has been pwned.
Comrade Scrutinizer
If you want it now, a Kindle or a Nook. (I’d chose the Nook.) You know that you have to go throw about 3 revs of Apple before they get it right (iPod? iPhone? Mac128? All sucked in their original releases). Plus the backlight on the iPad is going to be MUCH less friendly on the eyes than the eInk on the Kindle and Nook, if you read for more than a few minutes at a time.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@eastriver:
__
That’s why I have a netbook. The iPad seems to me to be a product in search of a niche.
Morbo
@DougJ: Sure, but is it a $240 (or $570 FFS) no brainer?
Wile E. Quixote
@Prof. Smackdown:
Because it does one thing really, really well. The iPad reminds me of one of these. Yeah, it’s got lots and lots of blades, screwdrivers, corkscrews, etc, etc, etc, but it’s still not as good as a regular screwdriver, a regular corkscrew, a regular thermometer, etc.
Erik Vanderhoff
I’m on my second Sony eReader. I prefer e-ink over a computer screen. Sony’s newest eReader has three versions: a paperback sized one that uses the controls, a larger touch-screen version, and a touch-screen with wireless. Sony just switched to the new publishing industry standard format; however, they’ve got a little DRM code of their own, so you can’t use their files on other programs (ditto other ebook stores). The PDF reading software in the new eReaders is much improved.
While you can’t rival Amazon for their selection, Sony is making deals with publishers all the time and really accelerating the pace of additions to their store. I prefer the function and style of the eReader over the Kindle. I don’t know much about the Nook, other than that its owners express general satisfaction.
I would not buy an iPad. It’s essentially a bigger iPod Touch that, if you spend a fuckton of money (over twice that of the eReader wireless edition), has 3G capability. Screw that — I didn’t buy an iPod Touch for a goddamn reason. Though I understand iPhones and iPod Touches can use Kindle software, so if reading a paragraph per page tickles your fancy…
maus
@DougJ:
I have friends who work on Kindle, and I’m totally and utterly blase about the iPad product. It’s not e-ink, doesn’t offer me anything that my iPhone doesn’t already, can’t read it in bright light, it’s dull as anything. The design is sexier than the Kindle, but if I’m going to be reading e-books and pdfs, I can’t do it on a PC LCD or any approximation thereof. I can’t imagine that the eyestrain is going to be THAT much better on a iPad that it’ll get me over my aversion.
Coming from someone who works in products all day, if you’re focusing a 40-80 hour week on one specific product, it’s easier to miss the forest for the trees when you know of all the bugs and terrible aspects that your average end-user will never ever see.
That or he’s an annoying apple fanboy usually only seen on engadget/gizmodo and posting “unboxing” videos.
ellaesther
@geg6: I still want a netbook, rather than an iPad. All the things I find annoying about the iPhone strike me as still a problem with the iPad (though I suppose the iPad doesn’t have the drawback of forcing you to hold something that feels like a small brick to your ear to conduct a conversation).
But it’s all academic at this point. I literally have a large mason jar on the floor of my office labeled “netbook fund” in which I’m collecting change…!
Lost Left Coaster
I have a nook and love it. I haven’t used a Kindle, so I can’t make a direct comparison to interface, etc., but after the debacle with Amazon deleting everyone’s copy of “1984” I vowed that I would never own a Kindle. Barnes and Noble allows you to actually own the books you buy, and you can get them from multiple sources, not just their website (of course they make their books the easiest to buy, but you can load up content from other sources through your computer). Otherwise, the nook is small, easy to read (also has the non-backlit screen), lasts a long time on a charge — I love it.
DougJ
Sure, but is it a $240 (or $570 FFS) no brainer?
I guess it all comes down to price, you’re right.
arguingwithsignposts
@Tim F.:
I’m sorry, but that never grows old, no matter what the meme. Where’s the Balloon Juice specific version?
evie
Kindle is for readers and reading. The iPad will do lots of things, one of them is reading, but unless most of what you read includes pictures and charts, Kindle is hands-down the best choice.
— Reads like you’re looking at paper
— Extensive battery life (a couple weeks with moderate reading)
— Killer downloading at no additional charge
— Best prices in town
WaterGirl
@asiangrrlMN: Good memory. You were close! Just found it in the Jan 14 open thread (the one with the photo of John :-) in the blue shirt with his shoulder contraption).
Jim Once (post 81):
Seth
As a nook owner, I can’t endorse Barnes & Noble’s device heartily enough.
The eInk screen is the same as the one in the various Kindle devices, so the reading experience is identical.
Two things set it apart:
1) A color touchscreen for navigation and management. Easy to use if you’re an iPhone person; easy to learn if you’re not.
2) ePub support. What that means from a practical standpoint is two-fold. First, you can buy ebooks from a bunch of other retailers other than B&N (lower prices via competition) AND you can download a ton of public domain works for FREE via Project Gutenberg.
My two cents.
trollhattan
@28 gwangung
You have more faith than I. I have not read that books already on Kindle can migrate to the Apple but perhaps they will. More importantly, publishers may break with Amazon to align with Apple and get higher prices and cuts. I’ve heard interviews with publishers who hate the current Amazon pricing strategy.
In any case, it all appears to still be in flux.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703906204575027503731077976.html
Wile E. Quixote
@eastriver:
Yeah, I have this really awesome thing that does that. It’s called a laptop. It’s bigger than an iPad (or the MaxiPod Touch as Apple might have to call it if they lose their trademark lawsuit with Fujitsu) and heavier, but it also allows me to run real applications. I also have an iPod touch, which allows me to watch movies, listen to music and play games. I can also read e-mail on it and surf the web if I wanted to and unlike the MaxiPod touch it fits in my pocket and is convenient to connect to my car stereo.
batgirl
Just say no to the Kindle. Kindle locks you into Amazon (unless you bypass their technology and “free” your books.)
There are many other good options out there that read many different types of e-books. As it stands it looks like ePub is slowly becoming the standard.
Definitely look at Sony. You are not locked into buying your books from Sony as someone suggested above. You can also borrow library ebooks if your library subscribes.
As for e-ink all the main readers use it (not the iPad).
I went with the Pocketbook 360. It is a bit smaller. It has a 5 inch screen but it really will fit into your pocket. You can change the battery and add an SD card. Check out pocketbookreader.com
Also go check out mobileread.com to get the info on the different readers out there and the pluses and minuses.
different church-lady
I’ve heard a lot about these “book” things. Apparently they’re made of paper. Are they any good?
AdamK
I got a big Kindle (“Kindle DX”) for my birthday a couple of weeks ago. I love it. Even when I’m not reading I just sit and stare at it.
I’m not about to get some other brand so I can compare, though, so what can I say. Get some e-reader; read some stuff. If there’s a better one out there, meh.
toujoursdan
Both Kindle brands come with free downloads over 3G for life.
The iPad can only be used in a WiFi environment unless you want to fork out the cash for the more expensive versions tied to an additional cost from AT&T monthly billing.
Martin
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
And everyone else isn’t the same way? Original Kindle didn’t have a browser (the current one barely, barely has one) and it couldn’t read PDFs. I mean, if we’re going to trash Apple, let’s be honest and recognize that EVERY tech company is in the same boat here.
At least with the iPad there’s a pretty damn big developer community chomping at the bit to solve these kinds of shortcomings.
sidereal
People who compare the Kindle to the iPad have never owned either. Google ‘e-ink’. Reading a novel on an iPad will give you permanent migraines.
I love my Nook. The Kindle has massive lock-in issues. . the Nook is slightly better. Or go with the Sony reader.
Michael D.
The Kindle might not be as glitzy as the iPad, but I’d be willing to be anything that the eyestrain you get from the iPad will be 10X worse. I’ve had my Kindle for nearly 2 years now that I think about it. There is a reason it’s the top selling thing on Amazon. It’s terrific.
The iPad is backlit. Bad for the eyes. It has an OLED screen. Can you say “Impossible to read in sunlight?” And it’s $7-800 for any decent amount of memory and 3G. You get 3G on Kindle out of the box.
If you want something that’s hard to read, but has a pretty bookshelf graphic and pages that turn realistically, spend $700 on an iPad.
If you want a reader, get a Kindle.
Martin
@trollhattan: Well, the Kindle app for iPhone should work on the iPad, so I think at a bare minimum, that problem is solved. Amazon already let that genie out, and what’s more, they were pretty eager to do it, even when the Kindle had just come out.
Honestly, I don’t think they see the Kindle as dominating the market. I think they’re much more motivated to drive customers to buy their books. I expect that Amazon will be VERY fast to put their own reader on the iPad in order to get their own little ‘Buy from Amazon’ button in the corner.
At least, that’s been their consistent MO so far.
L. Ron Obama
John, on second thought, e-reader technology will be much better in two or three years. I would wait until then. This should give you enough time to heal and then re-injure yourself, at which time you will need an e-reader again.
gwangung
@trollhattan:
Given that you can already read Kindle books on an iPhone right now (there’s an app in the app store), it doesn’t take much faith to think an iPad’ll read ’em (same operating system).
And generally, if Jobs wants prices down (and I think he does), he’ll get them down. If he could do that for the first few years of iTunes, I don’t think it’s a stretch he could do it with book publishers.
That said, if all you want is to read books, with no color, (and don’t want to pay a wireless fee each month) probably should go to a kindle. Want color? Want to surf the web in between books? iPad is probably a better bet.
dr. bloor
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
Yeah, this is about where I am. I bought a netbook a month or so ago, and it’s my go-to for Starbucks word processing, etc. The iPad doesn’t really appeal because of the keyboard issues–the netbook is an easier package than the Pad and keyboard deal. If I buy a dedicated reader, it will be a nook.
Am I getting a whiff of a generational divide in the comments, or am I off the mark?
L. Ron Obama
@sidereal:
Wait, how many people own an iPad? Other than John I mean, once he gets back from the future. Great Scott man.
dr. bloor
@James K. Polk, Esq.:
Ditto that. C’mon Cole, don’t be shy, you can bleg yerself a nice little get well present (we’ll say it’s from Lily).
Chuck
At first I was puzzled as to why Apple had chosen an open e-book standard, ePub. After all, as a closed content distributor (which is Apple’s true business model) there is no way to sideload ePub content from other vendors. BUT… Apple could sell content to users of the Nook, Plastic Logic and Sony readers.
toujoursdan
@Wile E. Quixote:
Not only that. You’ll still need a laptop to put YOUR media on YOUR iPad. There are no USB or SD ports. You’ll have to plug it into iTunes and either download media or transfer YOUR media on to it. It’s not like you can take this to the park with your camera, shoot pictures and transfer them, like you can even with a netbook.
We seem to be moving to a new paradigm where it is a radical idea to buy a computer (or whatever) and then assume you own it, i.e. that you can tweak the operating system or install something else like Ubuntu, install software that hasn’t been vetted by a company and turn it into a machine that serves your needs.
I like the slickness of Apple, but I refuse to purchase their products because I don’t want to be joined at the hip with Apple for life. At least with PC products you have some greater independence.
Jonathan Lundell
Lack of color rules out e-ink for me, I’m afraid. My reading includes too much documentation that would be unreadable that way.
Read Nicholson Baker on Kindle vs the iPhone Kindle app. On e-ink:
(hey, the boldface isn’t my doing)
Tagg
We have two kindles. It is in mho, the best of the best. Aside from the enormous selection available, the added bonus of newspaper, magazine, etc. subscriptions is super. Add in the fact that it is instantly downloaded, it can’t be beat.
slag
@ellaesther: I’m actually kind of with you on this one.
Beyond the tactile value of books, though, I refuse to buy a Kindle because I simply refuse to become Amazon’s bitch.
That said, reading a trad book is probably kinda difficult with one arm, so I give John a pass for going over to the Dark Side.
Remember November
Pee Wee Herman got one ( an iPad) . Nuff said.
see his Funnyordie.com video it’s hysterical!
Michael D.
@Jonathan Lundell: Like I mentioned above, it’s not glitzy.
And if you look at any book, it’s not black on white. It’s kinda black on gray or black on yellow-ish.
Black on white would kill your eyes.
Michael Carpet
She Who Must Be Obeyed bought me a Nook for Christmas after researching all the e-readers. It is great, holds a charge, and B&N provides lots of titles; many classic books are free or $.99. It is easy to use, and you can load books to your Nook or to your desktop/laptop and use B&N’s free reader. Titles can be lent to friends with Nooks.
The e-paper screen is MUCH easier on the eyes than an LCD, particularly if you are reading in bed with a small reading light in a darkened room — an LCD screen would be disturbingly bright and very hard on the eyes. My son the optometrist says the e-paper screen is the way to go in this department.
Benji
I _LOVE_ my kindle, of all my gadgets its my favorite!
blahblahblah
I have the Sony PRS-505 6″ reader and an iRex Illiad 8″ reader. Both aren’t very good. The Sony is akin to the original 6″ Kindle in size and screen type. The 6″ units are the cheapest and most readily available. This is a good option for reading novels but doesn’t work well for technical and academic PDFs. The bigger units out there like the 10″ kindle and the iRex DR series are perfect for serious reading, but still very expensive and not terribly fast at rendering PDFs.
So, upshot: For light reading the 6″ kindle, Sony, and other competitors are just fine. For reading and annotating technical and academic documents I’d recommend waiting for the technology to mature.
Raoul
I like my kindle- books are cheaper than the bookstore but Sony has a reader with free books (a la library).
Wile E. Quixote
@trollhattan:
The only reason why you wouldn’t be able to read Kindle books on the MaxiPod Touch is if Apple decides to not let Amazon port the Kindle reader app to the MaxiPod touch. That’s it, they already have a Kindle reader for the iPhone, rewriting it to take advantage of the MaxiPod’s larger screen size should be, according to Apple, fairly easy to do. But Apple might do this for the same reason they shot down Google Voice, because they don’t want the competition.
As far as publishers hating Amazon’s current pricing strategy they aren’t going to like Apple’s much better, Apple isn’t going to treat them with any more kindness than they treated the music industry. Amazon also has a huge advantage over Apple in this space, they’re selling all of the treeware that these publishers are still churning out, which gives them a huge amount of leverage. It will be interesting to see where it goes.
I’m also interested in seeing where things go vis a vis DRM on eBooks. A lot of really stupid people bitch about DRM and how evil it is and certainly the ham-handedness of the MPAA/RIAA didn’t help. But here’s the thing, there’s a Hell of a lot of illegal copying going on out there and while everyone likes to get all self-righteous and justify it by blaming the evil corporations it does hurt content creators. Authors, unlike musicians, don’t have the alternate revenue stream of live performances, T-shirts, etc, etc, etc. The doctrine of first sale is a neat idea, but it was formulated in an era where you couldn’t buy a book, make a perfect copy of it and then sell the original you bought to someone else, who can do the same thing, ad infinitum.
Turbulence
I’ve got a Kindle 2 that I use everyday on my 2 hour commute. I love it.
I’d really suggest that you get a look at an e-ink display in person if you’re uncertain though. The display technology is just very different from standard LCD displays, including the one on the ipad. The more light in the room, the better it looks. If you’re thinking about the ipad, remember that it will be at least twice as expensive as the Kindle. Plus I charge my Kindle about once every 3-4 weeks. Serious use of an ipad would probably require charging every 3-4 days. I would steer clear of the Nook; I really want to love the Nook, but all the reviews say it is just painfully painfully slow — much slower than the Kindle.
Finally, I’ve developed a nice workflow for reading stuff on the Kindle that might appeal to you. I use instapaper.com and added their little bookmarklet to my bookmark bar. Whenever I find a long form article that looks interesting, I hit their bookmarklet and the URL gets saved at instapaper for me. Once every week or so I visit the site and email my kindle a book containing all the articles I found in the past week or two.
Martin
@Michael D.: It’s not OLED. It’s E-IPS.
There’s a small concern about Amazon’s 3G service – it’s not free. The seller is responsible for paying for your bandwidth, or you pay $.15/MB. Now, that’s $15/100MB compared to the iPad’s $15/250MB, assuming you ever consume that much, but *any* content moving over will cost at least $.15, so it could add up fast even if it never gets to 100MB.
I’m not sure how many $.15 charges you’re going to accrue moving PDFs over (can that be done over USB now?), or pulling down web content, or however Amazon handles what to bill for and what not to, etc. but people should at least be aware that there’s a cost to extending the Kindle functionality where it touches 3G – and there’s no wifi to eliminate those charges.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/?ie=UTF8&docId=1000476231
The Other Steve
I really want to get one of these things myself, but what I see out there reminds me of computers in the 1980s. Until they’r e interoperable though I just don’t see me buying one. Also I need more tech content available. I’ve got 8 feet of book shelf devoted to technology books it’d be nice to carry in my bag.
They all need to be on one format, and I need to own the material. Thus if I decide to buy a new one in 5 years I don’t lose all the books I’ve bought.
You know, like the way my DVD player works.
west coast
Depends on what you want to do. If you want a paperback of everything you read: Kindle. If you want to surf the net, then stop and send e-mail, then stop and watch a movie, then stop and read something, then stop and play a game…iPad.
I got a Kindle for Christmas. I use it every day, have read more books since then than in the past year. Cancelled my daily NYTimes and started it on Kindle, my fingers don’t get dirty in the AM. That cost savings alone will pay for it.
If you want a one-at-a-time multi-media machine the Kindle isn’t it. If you want a more convenient format for reading the Kindle is the bomb.
Cat
If you buy a Kindle the books you buy do not belong to you. You can not loan them out and at anytime Amazon can revoke your access to them.
If for any reason amazon revokes your account you also lose your books if you lose your device.
If you don’t have an amazon/kindle account you can’t get new documents onto your device, etc….
The Kindle is the first steps to the Gibsonesque technology dystopia. Get something that supports EPUB and doesn’t require the vendor’s permission to use your device.
The Other Steve
@Wile E. Quixote:
Apple has said they promised book publishers 75% of the price.
What wasn’t said was that all books must cost $.99 or $1.29. :-)
Martin
@Chuck: Nah, they won’t do that. They’ll take content from B&N, etc. but not worry about going the other way. That’s how it works now with music. The iPod will play pretty much anything, regardless of where you bought it, but they don’t worry about putting iTMS content on other devices.
The point of the content stores is to make it easy to get content onto the device, but Apple really doesn’t make a lot of money there and it’s just not worth it to them to deal with the hassle of other devices. If you want to take the time to buy from Amazon and dump it into iTunes, that’s fine – it’s your call. People have this very inverted sense of what Apple is trying to influence. I’m almost positive you’ll be able to dump any ePub book into iTunes and sync it to the iPad.
Apple really just wants to make it convenient for the customer and the publisher to bother doing all of this that the customers keep buying the devices and the publishers keep feeding them content in order to want to buy the devices.
Jade Jordan
Let me put my tin foil hat on first – Check
I wanted a kindle until I realized that they could remove book, edit the books remotely (which means they can be hacked into).
When I buy a book I want to own it. Can’t imagine a book store coming to my house to reposses a book. I want to make sure I am reading the authors words.
When the Texans finish re-writing the bible to take out the liberal parts, I don’t want my kindle bible to be replaced by that version.
I won’t buy an e-reader until they can only download content into the reader, not monkey with it after I have purchased it.
Tin foil off and out
Annie
@Cyrus:
I love my Sony reader, too. I was totally against the concept becaue I love the feel of books. However, my husband said our house was being over taken by novels, so he bought me a Sony reader for Christmas, and I am addicted. It is small enough and in the case, it feels like a book. Great size. And, now, when I run out, I just plug it into the computer and shop to my heart’s content. I didn’t like the feel of the Kindle.
Wile E. Quixote
@Martin:
Yes, that can be done over USB now. Jesus, do any of you people actually *know anything* about the Kindle? Plug it in to your laptop and it shows up on the desktop as a drive. Drag things on and off of it. It’s that simple. You don’t have to manage everything with iTunes like you probably will with the MaxiPod touch.
gwangung
That’s a recomendation for Apple, you know…
Turbulence
@Cat:
This is wrong. You can always plug in your Kindle to a computer and copy over Mobi files. There are free software packages that generate Mobi files and can convert between them and other e-reader formats.
Now, if you mean that people who don’t have Amazon accounts can’t purchase stuff from Amazon, then yes, that’s true. But so what? You can’t buy stuff from Amazon if you don’t give them money…Who cares?
arguingwithsignposts
@Wile E. Quixote:
Sorry, I know enough textbook publishers riding the 400 percent price margins to call bullshit on that one.
L. Ron Obama
@Michael Carpet:
This reinforces my suspicion that people who complain about eyestrain on LCDs have no idea you can turn the brightness down.
Or that you can invert the colors, which is how I read on my MacBook in a dark room: white text on black background. Hint: Command-Option-Control-8.
Jimmm
@Wile E. Quixote:
This. Furthermore, a *lot* of the content I read on my kindle is free stuff from Project Gutenburg, freebies from the kindle store, and things released by the authors into the public domain (or published under a license allowing redistribution – like Cory Doctorow’s stuff).
The Kindle uses a modified version of the Mobipocket format, which means anything you find in the mobi format will run without modification. If you download the mobipocket conversion software, you can make lots of other formats look pretty on a kindle.
Also, I believe that there is now built-in support for PDF docs with all versions of the kindle (for all versions of the DX, and since the last software update for the rest).
Martin
@Wile E. Quixote: Amazon may have more leverage, but they’ve squandered that. They were giving publishers 35% before. It doesn’t matter how many paper books you are selling, when someone comes along and offers to give you double the cut, they now have all the leverage. Apple’s not the one reaming consumers, Amazon was. Apple is the one that fought hard to keep song prices at $.99 and they’re the ones now fighting hard to lower TV show prices to $.99, and Amazon would still be keeping 65% of each sale if not for Apple coming along.
Now, Apple will gladly take your money when you buy the device, but on the content they’re pretty close to break-even. They really don’t make much out of their various stores.
I mean, who charges less for online music than Apple? And apps for handhelds used to be $10-$20 until Apple pushed most of them into the $1.99 range.
burnspbesq
@ellaesther:
I will be happy to sell you my Toshiba netbook as soon as I can get my grubby paws on an iPad.
Turbulence
@Crashman06:
You’re wrong.
I don’t know what “own” means. I do know that I can plug my kindle into my computer, copy the mobi files to my desktop, and read them there with free apps. I know that I can convert them to other formats. And I’m pretty damn sure that there is no way in a million years I’m ever going to get sued for doing that.
The thing about Amazon pulling books is: what do you think they should have done? Everyone got their money back so there was no fraud. And I guarantee you that Apple has the capability to remotely delete apps on iphones and ipads. People screw up sometimes; that doesn’t mean there is any huge conspiracy to control what you’re reading. Especially since most of the reading I do on my Kindle is long form articles I grab from the internet.
John Cole
@James K. Polk, Esq.: The paypal link is on the left where it always is, but I really prefer to save donations for site related stuff.
Martin
@Wile E. Quixote: I’m pretty sure the Kindle 1 still requires you to email PDFs to the 3G gateway for the Kindle at $.15 a piece. And I don’t think the series 2s could do it until about 2 months ago.
No point reasoning with you though, given the childish names. You’ve clearly dismissed the iPad before even touching one.
Turbulence
@L. Ron Obama:
Your suspicion is unfounded. I’ve known about display brightness settings and inversion shortcuts for years. I use them every single day. And I still find the Kindle display much easier on the eyes.
I think what you don’t get is that there are physiological changes that happen to people’s eyes as they age that make staring at transmitive (rather than reflective) displays tough after a few hours. Not everyone gets those changes the same way, but just because you can stare at a computer for 20 hours a day without eyestrain really doesn’t mean that everyone else can too were it not for their ignorance.
tde
I bought a 2nd generation Kindle, tried it for a week, sent it back.
The screen, like all e-ink systems features pretty dark grey letters on a pretty light grey background. It ain’t nowhere near black and white.
You don’t save much money on books, if any, given that kindle editions can’t be re-sold at used book stores.
I thought it would be good for magazines, but photographs suck and graphs, charts, etc. (from the Economist and other magazines) were either omitted or gibberish.
Oh, and you can’t read it in bed unless you get a night light and clip on it.
I’ll try out the iPad when it comes out, but as of now, e-readers pretty much suck.
SMR
I am a reading fanatic, according to my husband I am hard to buy gifts for, so for xmas he gave me a Kindle.
I like books, like to hold them in my hands, loan them to friends/family, enjoy them over & over (or, if they suck, exchange them at the local used book store for something that hopefully doesn’t suck).
I don’t LOVE my kindle, but will probably love it when I am reading it on our trans-atlantic flight this weekend, or during our 3-wk trip abroad, all without the weight & space of the dozen books that I purchased on it and have been hoarding specifically for this trip.
It steams me that the cost for the kindle books is so high. Much higher than what I’d pay for a used paperback at the used book store. And if I want something so bad that I’d pay the going kindle rate for a new release, wouldn’t I rather have a real book that I could hold, enjoy, keep, loan out? Absolutely.
Apart from two that I paid the premium price for (one of them based on recommendations on your reading suggestions thread), the others on my kindle are the $2 books. If you sort the kindle books at the amazon online kindle store, price low to high, then rating 4 stars and above, you can get plenty of great books for free (not for me here in Canada) or $2. Many of them are classics that I probably should have read long ago, many are random authors with plenty of other books out, and if you like the author you will likely find that their other books are the usual $8 jobs.
So, bottom line, to buy a kindle or not? Depends on what you want from it, why you read, what you read, etc.
arguingwithsignposts
@Turbulence:
Just spent an hour at the eye doctor (thanks, health insurance), where he explained why my 42-year-old eyes aren’t the same as my 6-year-old ones were, even with glasses. Just agreeing with you there. f**k astigmatisms and cataracts.
Wile E. Quixote
@Cat:
Yeah, Amazon can revoke titles from your device. The one time they did this was because some fuckhead was selling copies of a book, 1984 through Amazon that they didn’t have the rights for. What’s Amazon supposed to do in this case? Go to publishers and say “Yeah, we’re going to set up this store where anyone can publish an e-book to be read on our device, and if they decide to publish your book under their name without paying you royalties we hope you won’t sue us.”
Amazon handled that poorly, but there are a lot of shitheads in the “information should be free because I don’t like paying for things” crowd who have attempted to use Amazon’s Kindle store, which allows anyone to publish their books, with or without DRM, to sell books that they don’t have the rights to. Hey, just take that copy of Nine Princes in Amber, scan it, run it through an OCR program and you don’t have to pay royalties to Roger Zelazny’s family, and why should you have to give them money anyways, information should be free and he’s dead and the book was written a long time ago.
The Consumerist article you link to is full of shit. You can get documents onto any Kindle by plugging it into your computer via USB and dragging them over from the desktop, something that the tards at the Consumerist were probably too stupid to do, oh, and if you lose your Kindle guess what, as soon as you get a new one and register it all of the content you bought from Amazon is available for immediate download because it’s not linked to your device, it’s linked to your account. Something which the ignorant fucks at the Consumerist also didn’t mention. Try doing that with a physical book or with content you buy from any other publisher. If you lose your laptop after buying a bunch of songs from iTunes on it you’re shit out of luck unless you find a nice Apple rep who will let you download them again, which is why iTunes pops up a window telling you to back up your content as soon as its downloaded and offering to do so (a feature which would be useful if Apple let you dump it to anything other than a CD or DVD).
Instead we get bloviation about DRM and how awful it is that Amazon uses it. Yeah, DRM sucks and record companies are evil, but see how many authors will continue to write if you make it possible to take their work and copy it without limit, and without paying them. Doctrine of First Sale only works with physical objects, attempting to apply it to bits and bytes is every bit as stupid as the Supreme Court’s applying the Fourteenth Amendment to corporations. Is DRM the best solution for this? Probably not, but the solutions that the “information should be free because I don’t like paying for things” crowd doesn’t have any realistic solutions for how to compensate creators either.
Eljai
I subscribe to this blog on my Kindle. Though I can’t read all the delightful comments, at least I can check out the main posts so I don’t start trembling from withdrawal symptoms. As a book fiend with a short attention span, I love my Kindle because I can carry around tons of reading material without actually carrying around tons of reading material. And I like the instant gratification of downloading a book after just hearing the author interviewed by Terry Gross. And finally, I don’t have to give any more money to depraved companies like ATT to use the wireless.
Seanly
@Um Yeah:
I liked the Nook though I haven’t gotten one yet. Was hoping the iPad wouldn’t be so underwhelming. No multitasking, no flash (so no Netflix or Hulu). However, I have lots of dead tree books I haven’t read as well as just received ME2 in the mail and also have use of both hands. [Watch as I proceed to fall down stairs & break both arms]
WereBear
I have the Kindle app on my iPod touch, and a friend has a Kindle. She loves hers, and I love mine, since I use it for email, games, web browsing and the functions of the Palm Pilot it replaced.
If I had the doremi I would get a Kindle too, because the wide choice of items, and instant gratification, and the ease of reading in bed …
Wile E. Quixote
@Martin:
And there’s no point in reasoning with you on this issue because you know nothing about the Kindle. If you wanted to move PDFs over to the Kindle you can either mail them to your Kindle, with the aforementioned charge, which converted them into a Kindle format, or you could convert them on your desktop and drag them over via USB. Now that all of the Kindles have native PDF support you can take any document, print it as a PDF and drag the resulting document over to your Kindle via the USB connection. You weren’t locked into transferring all of your data over 3G, which is what you were claiming.
That’s nonsense, go read this article and educate yourself. Apple is doing quite well from the iTunes store, they’re not just breaking even and using it as a way of selling iPods.
Don
I am interested in the iPad for a number of reasons, but as a reading device? I don’t see how it could possible be as comfortable to lay on the sofa and hold it with just one hand. And the difference between 1.5lb and 10oz may not seem like a lot… till you hold the thing up for an hour at a time.
My wife got me a kindle for xmas largely because it fell into the category of “something I want which I wouldn’t spend money on myself,” which is rare in a gadget. However the Kindle seems to me to be in no small part a recipe for me to spend money I wouldn’t otherwise spend; I am a big user of the public library.
That’s not entirely wrong, but it’s turned out that there’s a lot of ways to get free content on it as well. The biggest for me is the Washington Post, which I finally kicked the print version of to the curb.
I use a free app called Stanza which allows me to schedule a mass downloading of WaPo’s RSS feeds which it bundles into an appropriate format. If the Kindle is connected via USB it copies it over automagically. Every morning at 6am the grab and load happens and I’m free to continue reading the paper over lunch.
I could configure it to use the email send and I wouldn’t even need that, but it would cost me about $0.15 for the bandwidth every day. Not a bad deal but since I come home every night it’s no sweat to plug it in.
Just being able to always have the newspaper with me has been pretty slick. Someone on the internets observed to me that if you wanted to read in the tub this thing is pretty much a no brainer. Shove it in a quart-sized ziploc bag and you have a more durable solution than a paperback.
TrishB
I received a Kindle for Xmas and absolutely love it. Despite being an avid reader, I never would have thought to purchase one for myself. Why did I convert? Well, to begin the tale, more than half of my last expense for moving was caused by crates of books. I have a room with 6 floor to ceiling bookcases beyond full. No one can walk in that room because of the books on the floor and the books still in boxes.
Since Christmas, there are 25 new books on my Kindle, but just one small item on my coffee table, not a huge stack gathering dust. It’s very light weight and easier to hold than a paperback. When I read a book, it will often be from beginning to end in one session. Despite issues with my 43 year old eyes, there’s no strain. I wish I could say the same after staring at my modified LCD after long hours.
There are tons of free books if you’re looking for the classics. B&N includes these in their available book count, whereas Amazon doesn’t. There are also good places to buy books beyond Amazon, such as Ereader.com. If you have pdfs, they can be easily moved to a Kindle via USB. It’s a great reading device. Is it a killer web thingamajig? No. But it does what it sets out to do extremely well.
Someone mentioned page lag – I don’t see an issue with it. My reading speed is pretty decent. A standard 400 page novel on the Kindle takes me the same 3 hours as it would on paper. Sure, I’m hitting the next button more often than I would turn a page, but it’s not a big deal. I’ve also read reviews that mentioned that the Nook page change takes longer, but haven’t tried one myself.
One benefit for John is that the product already exists and is ready to be ordered right now. The other good thing is that it is very, very lightweight and is easily used one handed. How’s he going to hold his iPad with one hand and use the touchscreen with the other on a product that isn’t yet available for sale?
The Raven
“[The iPad has] no USB or SD ports.”
It has wifi. What’s the problem?
We’re going to have to wait and see on the iPad brightness. An LED backlight is used, which has a broader range of intensities than the older fluorescent tube designs, so viewer comfort in most situations could be acceptable. I think direct-sun viewing is less of an issue than generally supposed; many people find paper too bright in direct sun.
I am not sure how accessible it is. Apple’s interface designers generally to use a lot of human abilities in their designs, which is attractive to many (but not all) people. It can, however, be a problem for people with, for instance, injured shoulders, so that’s another wait and see.
My sense of the Kindle is that it’s part of Amazon’s network, remotely controlled by Amazon, and either you trust Amazon or not; when I leave their web site, I always feel a need to count my feathers. The Sony is more user-controlled, but also rather pricey.
James K. Polk, Esq.
@John Cole: Can we haz fungible moniez debate nao?
tammanycall
I love my Kindle, but being an Apple superfan, I’ll probably eventually migrate over to an iPad. Personally I’m waiting for the next generation, though. That way the bugs will be worked out, the price will drop, and there’ll be new features. If you need something now, or to use this year, I’d recommend the Kindle.
different church-lady
@TrishB: my question is: ten years from now when the Kindle format has been superseded by whatever comes along next and your Kindle is dead… what happens to all those e-books you “bought”?
Ever tried to open a word processing document you made 20 years ago using Ami Pro?
Tom W.
The iPad is just another computer – all that glare, distraction, apps, etc. Perfectly fine. Kinda neat. But long-form reading? No way.
The Kindle is a reader – made for books, and it really delivers beautifully.
abo gato
Got a Kindle 2 for mother’s day last year. I like it a lot, but my initial thoughts about it were: 1. I want it to be in color. 2. I want it to have a clock. 3. I want it to be able to play videos. I figured what I really wanted was a giant sized iPod Touch.
I’ve gotten over all that, and have really enjoyed being able to NOT have a big old heavy book in my purse every day. I really like being able to get something immediately. I really like being able to look for a book whenever and wherever I am, when I hear about something that sounds interesting. I like to be able to put stuff in a “save for later” area to be able to buy when I want it. I love it when I travel. No loading up luggage with heavy books. I like that I don’t have to pay any additional money for the Internet access for it. I wish it were faster, but I’ve got the 3G phone and laptop for that.
Now that the iPad is here, it has the things that I was wanting for the Kindle, but I can’t really see going for one. Certainly not till the next couple of generations of them are out. Just the fact that you will need to pay AT&T for the access is gonna keep me away. That’s one of the biggest reasons we don’t have iPhones.
lol
There are full color e-ink readers in Japan. The refresh rate is insanely slow(I think 30-40 seconds, possibly more) but it’s only going to get better and cheaper now that it’s possible and actually out in the market.
Emerald
@Crashman06: I have a Kindle (love it love it love it). You do actually own the books, with a caveat. It’s a lead-pipe cinch to copy them to your computer hard drive. Just plug it into the ‘puter and drag the files onto your disc (well, I have a Mac. A PC might be more difficult, don’t know).
Should you lose your Kindle or lose some content, it’s always available to download from your account at Amazon, exactly the way Audible audiobooks work (also owned by Amazon, btw). I have used that feature on Audible and it works just fine.
However, you can’t lend a book to a friend. Another e-reader claims to allow that, but apparently it’s only a one book, one time deal. You can, though, have a “family” of up to five Kindles, between which you can share books.
For me, anything but e-ink is not in the cards. Backlit screens kill my eyes. I have one of the original Kindles. The only problem with it is that the photo resolution, at 4 bits, is awful. The new ones have 16-bit, so that should be just fine. However, I love this thing so much that I won’t replace it until they develop color e-ink, or the thing breaks.
I also find that Amazon Kindle books are cheaper than other readers, plus, you can download a sample and decide if you want the book or not. You can also save it to your “wish list,” a practice I find is saving me lots of $$$. I’m an impulse buyer of books, but if I just save it to the wish list, that seems to satisfy my impulse.
Emerald
@abo gato: Abo, the Kindle has a clock. Press Alt+T, and the time will show on the bottom of the screen.
Katie
I have 2 Kindles and a sony ereader. I won’t be buying an iPad even though I like and own Apple products (macbook and iphone). Here are my thoughts on the new gizmo and what I think is wrong with it:
1. It’s backlit. That’s too hard on my eyes for long periods.
2. Battery life sucks. 10 hours is the estimate. Apple always seems to overestimate their battery potential. I go on plane rides longer than that.
3. It weighs 1.5 pounds. That’s a LOT for anything you have to hold for a long time and forget about holding it one handed like I do with the Kindle.
4. You’ll need a subscription for another $30 a month. No thanks.
5. Backlighting makes it hard to read outside. Think working on your computer outside on a sunny day.
I love love love my Kindle(s). I like the Sony too, but it’s not my reader of choice. It’s really light, you can change pages one handed, the books download in a flash even with crappy service where I live, and the Customer Service at Amazon is unbelievably good.
The E ink technology is very easy on the eyes–I can read outside on a sunny day. I can read in the pool if I put the thing in a ziplock bag. With the wireless on the batter lasts about a week. With the wireless off it lasts about 2 weeks and I read about 4 hours a day minimum.
Annie
@arguingwithsignposts:
But Smudge loves you with good eyes or bad. In fact, the less you see, the more fun she will have….
TrishB
@different church-lady: DCL – What? You mean there’s no place to recover my incomparable musing from English 301-302 contained on my 3.5 floppy with MacWrite 1.0 right there on the disk? Surely, you jest.
Oh, believe me, I hear what you’re saying. I love me some dead trees, but the dead trees took over half of a house. I’ve also lost books to flood, fire, and theft, so even good old paper isn’t immune to loss. I worked in ILL in my college library – it killed me to see what people, nay, what academics could do to books.
I know I won’t have my Kindle books forever, but for the short term it’s working. You can ask again a month from now, by when the device will have had some glitch of an annoying kind. At its heart, it’s still a computer and as such, designed to piss people off.
And Another Thing...
@Martin: Wrong… You can email them to Amazon and have a free conversion to Kindle format which you load on the Kindle by USB from your computer, or you can email them to your Kindle via Amazon for the charge. There are many sources for free public domain books but I recommend feedbooks.com. Buy the ebook platform you want, but let’s recognize that it’s Amazon that has made the ebook concept work…god bless ’em. Buy a Nook of a Kindle now (they’re perfect for one handed readers), use it now, or wait for the perfect, multi-use gadget. bleh..
PaulW
It’s called the local library. Try real books. :-)
Speaking of… shameless plug alert.
jojo
Two new Kindle 2’s in my house as of New Year’s Eve. Two pair of old eyes post cataract surgery, arthritic hands. Notice that the Amazon site shows one handed reading with the Kindle 2, but two hands holding the Kindle DX. The Apple trinket will be even worse if all you want is a reader. Amazon has Kindle for PC, so you can download to your PC if you want to read that way, which I don’t.
Totally out of shelf space — I get through a book in less than a day and then have to find a place to store it. In rural areas there are no used book stores and a library in a county of 4,000 people doesn’t have a spectacular selection. I can delete a book on the Amazon site and never have to deal with it again. I have shelves of books I thought I might want to re-read, but won’t. Two people can read the same book at the same time as long as you leave wireless off and don’t sync. We live in a remote area — downloading takes about 3-4 minutes using EDGE rather than 3G. I, for one, wouldn’t pay AT&T a wireless charge on an ongoing basis with the new Apple trinket. It is bad enough that AT&T is the only cellular provider with good coverage in this area.
One point — the standard Amazon cover can crack the Kindle. Buy a Tuff-Luv or TendyDigital cover (in electronics) and start out right — plenty of protection for the Kindle.
A whole new world opened up when the Kindles arrived at our house.
The Raven
So long as as Amazon chooses to continue to make it available. Considering how much online content has become unavailable over the years, it’s a good bet that eventually (five years? ten?) it won’t be available.
lisa
e-readers havent reached maturity yet. But, I love my Kindle, and will get a new model as it improves. Go for it!
tworivers
@ellaesther:
I like the piece that you linked to. Cool stuff.
Will add that the Kindle to me looks like something out of Logan’s Run. Very sterile and cold looking
The Nook looks a bit nicer, but I really don’t see myself getting one anytime soon. I still prefer the feeling of holding an actual book in my hands.
Plus I don’t find myself buying books all that often these days on account of the fact that I have access to a real good public library nearby. That shit’s all free
Turbulence
@The Raven:
Well, Amazon permits you to easily copy the files to any computer. In fact, doing so is much easier than pulling iTunes media from your ipod/iphone/ipad since the kindle shows up as a regular USB drive. In addition to that, Amazon claims that they will always allow you to download your books again, as many times as you want. Apple does not make that claim. Sure, maybe Amazon will disappear overnight. That’s not very likely. Or maybe they’ll decide to stop hosting those files. That wouldn’t make much sense: selling stuff over the internet is their bread and butter. Enraging customers who have alternatives does not seem like a good plan: look how much fallout they caught for deleting one illegal book once.
If you are absolutely determined to believe that Amazon is going to keep you from reading books you paid for, I guess you can always come up with some nutty scenario. But I don’t see why anyone should find the existence of these scenarios persuasive.
tworivers
full disclosure: I work in a library, so I’m maybe just a wee bit biased.
NeenerNeener
I have a Kindle and the Kindle and Nook software for the iPod Touch. In order of my using preference: Kindle > Kindle iPod > Nook iPod > 1200 page, 2 lb book. I may only like the Kindle software for the iPod better than the Nook version because that’s what I got first, so I’m more familiar with it. The iPad looks slicker than snot on a doorknob, but until it weighs less I’m sticking with the 10 oz Kindle.
Oh, and since I’ve only gotten about a third of the books I’ve ever loaned out back I’m thrilled that I have an excuse not to “share” my ebooks.
Leisureguy
I would (and did) go with the Kindle DX (the larger one), since it is particularly nice for reading PDF files.
I don’t believe that the iPad screen will be comfortable at all for reading a whole book. Plus you know that the iPad version 2.0 will be a lot better and probably cheaper.
The Kindle is easy on the eyes for lengthy reading.
Badtux
I went through this last month. My finalists:
a) Kindle. Mature platform. Lots of books available for cheap. Proprietary eBook format. Has difficulty with technical publications because it won’t scale PDF’s. 2 week battery life. Fits in side pouch of my laptop (the small version, that is). 3G for loading books onto the device.
b) Sony e-reader. Mature platform. Fair amount of books available but for affordable prices avoid Sony’s own web site, there’s books out there but they’re hard to find, you have to dig them up from publisher’s web sites and such. Uses standard ePub ebook format with Adobe DRM. Need a computer to load books onto the device. The Sony Pocket Reader is smaller than competing devices (but much larger than an iPhone screen), is cheapest ($199), but more limited (no search capability). Still good enough for reading a typical mil-sci-fi novel. Excruciatingly slow reading PDF’s, much faster reading ePubs. 2 week battery life.
c) Nook. New platform. Raw. Missing some major functionality at the moment. Lots of books available, prices seem to average between Sony and Nook on the books I checked. B&N has had major problems fulfilling demand, has major customer service issues due to fact they’re selling far more of the things than they expected. Has WiFi usable in-store to browse books and buy them, and the touch screen is much more convenient. Physically smaller than the Kindle II so easily pocketable in the side pocket of my laptop case. 10 day battery life. Uses standard ePub format, but with B&N DRM. It is expected that B&N will add ability to put Adobe-DRM’ed ePubs onto the Nook shortly. The Nook is currently unobtainium — the next promised delivery date is in late February.
d) Other readers — these seem to be Sony Reader clones, using standard Adobe DRM’ed ePub format.
My basic criteria was that I wanted it to be pocketable (in the side pocket of my laptop case), use standard ePub format, and be able to read PDF’s in an acceptable manner (i.e., be able to scale the fonts big enough to read them). I dismissed the Sony Reader clones, why buy a clone when you can buy the real thing that is mature and been under constant development for years. The Nook looked like the best bet, but it is unobtainium.
Not being satisfied with any of the alternatives, I finally chose the Sony Pocket Reader because of its small size (more easily pocketable) and $199 price (i.e., if you know you’re only going to use it for a year or so while the Nook matures, it makes no sense to buy something big and fancy), and decided to buy only either unencrypted ePub books, or Adobe-encrypted ePub books (i.e., *not* Sony-encrypted books). These should easily transfer to the Nook platform once the Nook becomes more stable and functional and adds Adobe DRM capability. (There is also a way to strip the Adobe DRM off of Adobe-encrypted books that you purchased, which would allow you to unencrypt your ePubs and move them to the Nook even if the Nook doesn’t add Adobe DRM capability, but I won’t discuss that here because it’s against Federal law to discuss things of that nature here in the “Land of the Free”).
Regarding the iPad: It’s too freakin’ big. It won’t fit in the side pouch of my laptop case. And its battery life is pathetic — even the Nook with its power-hungry touch screen will give you three or four DAYS of real-life reading, not the six or seven HOURS that you can expect out of the iPad. So it’s not even on my short list of possible replacements for my Sony Pocket Reader. The Nook appears to be “the one” as far as I’m concerned, other than the slight problem that a) it’s currently unobtainium, and b) the software is still clunky and buggy, both of which will be resolved by a year from now.
– Badtux the Geeky Penguin
Linkmeister
@ellaesther: Is that library on LibraryThing?
And I’m kinda sorta in agreement with you about these infernal devices, at least until I get to handle one.
Brachiator
@geg6:
A techie ain’t the same thing as a book reader.
The Kindle’s battery lasts days or weeks. The iPad is 10 hours. Ridiculous.
The Kindle’s text is eminently readable. No eye strain is very important.
Some classics and specials on the Kindle cost zero dollars. I get a kick out of having the complete Sherlock Holmes at the price of a $1.
It is easy to “turn” pages on the Kindle using either hand or one hand.
I’m not knocking Sony because I haven’t tried it. The iPad is not yet available and there are some things I like, but more that I don’t like, considering it purely as an ebook reader.
See if you can borrow a Kindle. I like it. I see more of my fellow commuters with it and those I ask like it and easily adapt it into their life.
I heard someone on the Leo Laporte radio gadget show talk about getting a solar adapter so they could fill it wit books and use it while away in the Peace Corps.
RAM
I’m not about to buy a device that allows the company that sold it to me to beak into my house and take back the books they sold me. They can have my books when they pry them out of my cold, dead fingers.
The Raven
Customers of Sony Connect, WalMart Music, and Yahoo Music, oh, just might find them persuasive. These are major firms and they are still in business. They just decided to pull the plug on their music access servers.
Other remarks: on the lighting, readability, and access issues, we’ll have to wait and see. I doubt Apple would have flubbed these major usability features. As for battery life, really, how many of us in developed countries are away from electricity for more than 24 hours, or read for 10 hours straight?
I think color may turn out to be the decisive selling point. It’s very powerful for most color-sighted people. I wonder.
tripletee
@Wile E. Quixote:
Good question. Maybe you should ask Cory Doctorow.
Now, I’m not some hippy-dippy “information wants to be free!” techno-utopian. I’m happy to pay for books and other media – I want to support content creators. But in return, I want to be able to use that media where I want, when I want.
DRM is no obstacle whatsoever to pirates, and simply punishes honest consumers lacking the technical know-how to circumvent it. [/soapbox]
Re: the Kindle – I’ve had one for six months or so and I use it every day. It’s not flashy but there’s something kind of comforting about a single-purpose device that just concentrates on doing one thing really well. The e-ink screen really is easy on the eyes, and feels more book-like than an LCD. (As per the above, I de-DRM all of the books I buy from Amazon, just in case – I don’t like them having the ability to hold my personal library hostage.)
I also got my wife a Nook for Christmas and she’s been really happy with it. I like the form factor and hardware much better than the Kindle’s, but B&N still has a ways to go in refining their software and infrastructure to match the Kindle experience. They’ll get there, and if I was in the market for a dedicated reader now I’d probably go with the Nook.
I’ll probably end up getting an iPad too, just because I’m hopeless gadget whore, but for reading I imagine I’ll use it the same way I use my iPhone now – quick snatches here and there using the Kindle app, which will sync my position back to the Kindle for when I have time to sit down and read for an extended period. (I frickin’ love that page sync feature.)
tripletee
@Brachiator:
You got ripped off. Feedbooks is your friend.
gwangung
Or Baen Publishing. Or John Scalzi.
I favor letting the author control the distribution. If you’re distributing someone else’s stuff without their permission, you’re an asshole.
Now whether that means DRM or a digital watermark for each copy, I dunno (I think I lean toward the latter). But I really believe in allowing the creator to control where, how much and when to distribute.
Turbulence
@The Raven:
Selling online music was pretty far from the core business of any of those parent companies. Whereas selling stuff to people over the internet is the core business of Amazon. That makes a difference.
Also, note that we’re talking about a convenience feature that’s not necessary. If Amazon stopped offering books that I already bought, I’d still have access to them. They’re on my Kindle after all. And on my hard drive. And in my offsite backups. That puts Amazon in a very different class than cases where your media stops working when the company decides it does.
The appeal of having a device that you charge once or twice a month despite daily use isn’t ZOMG THERE ARE NO POWER OUTLETS ANYWHERE. The appeal is having one less thing you have to worry about. The appeal for me is not having to care about pulling the Kindle from my bag, finding the charger, plugging it in and remembering to put it back every single night when I come home from work. When I have devices that need to be charged every two or three days, I need to remember to at least think about charging it every single work day. I’d rather not have that claim on my attention.
Most of the books I read don’t rely significantly on color. I’m over the age of five though. Others may differ.
vanya
Kindle sucks. Can’t read Russian, very little on offer in German.
But that might just be me.
Dissatisfied Customer
Get the iPad. Kindle’s dead as Kelsey’s nuts.
Emerald
@blahblahblah: Just to mention it, you can highlight and annotate even on the Kindle One. I have one and do it all the time.
CalD
e-Book Reader (Kindle, Sony Reader…)
Tablet Computer (iPad, et al)
2 different animals.
The difference is e-Paper. (Well that, and the fact that one is a computer.)
E-paper display: Amazing battery life, great for reading long documents, sucks for pretty much everything else.
LCD display: Not-so-amazing battery life, sucks for reading long documents, better than e-paper for most everything else.
Do not wait for an iPad (or buy any other tablet PC) if an e-book reader is what you want/need. (Or vice-versa.)
Emerald
@The Raven: Audible has been running for years and hasn’t lost anything yet.
But should you be correct that Amazon may someday delete all the accounts, I have backups. I copy all my Kindle books (and all the free books I download for my Kindle from manybooks.net and feedbooks.com) onto my hard drive. Also, I have a Kindle One, which has an SD card, so I’ve got ’em all on that too.
Yeah, I own my Kindle books, no matter what happens to Amazon. The only thing that would disrupt it would be for the Kindle to disappear, but I betcha that somebody eventually will construct an app for converting .azw books into other formats.
Katie
The long battery life was a big selling factor for me. I’m not usually away from electricity for more than 24 hours, but it’s not unusual for it to take me 18 hours or more to get where I’m going on a plane. A 10 hour battery life just wouldn’t make it and I hate having to look for an outlet in an airport. I’d rather just find a place to read.
I’ve had no luck de-DRMing things. Suggestions??
Martin
@Wile E. Quixote:
I admit I don’t know a lot about the Kindle. My coworker has a Kindle 1 and I know of many of the problems with PDF. So educate me. But you also made a number of factual errors with the iPad.
Piss off. I can recite parts of Apple’s 10-K from memory. Apple makes less than $200M per quarter off of iTMS, compared to a $3.38B profit last quarter. The store is good for revenues but sucks for profits. Against that $700M or so per year that Apple makes on iTMS, they’re building a >$1B 500,000 sq ft datacenter to keep the damn thing running. Apple dumps money into iTMS almost as fast as money comes out. And it’s pretty damn obvious that they don’t make much if you run the numbers. Apple gives 75% back to music publishers. On a $.99 song, Apple keeps $.24. Between $.11 and $.18, depending on the overall size of your purchase goes back to the transaction house. The remaining $.06-$.13 pays to build that datacenter, bandwidth, service, site development, and finally profits. At best, Apple gets 6% margin off of the store (before they invest in things like datacenters), compared to 40.1% companywide. If you think Apple makes a lot on the store, you don’t know Apple.
And if Apple made a lot on the store, why aren’t there more competitors to the store, and why aren’t they undercutting Apple’s price? Nobody sells music appreciably less than Apple does. Nobody sells software for appreciably less than the App store. Nobody sells TV shows or movies for appreciably less than the iTMS and Apple has stated they will meet Amazon’s price on books. There’s a reason Apple doesn’t have a lot of competition in these areas and that’s because Apple’s interest isn’t in being a content reseller for profit. Apple’s essentially made it an unprofitable market. Steve has admitted as much. Apple wants people to look at an iPhone or iPad or Mac and see that it eliminates all of the friction of acquiring content. That’s also why Apple generally doesn’t prohibit people from getting content from other outlets (remember when big bad Apple was defending people’s rights to rip CD?) because they really don’t care. And they kept pushing the studios to drop the DRM, to let users push the content out further – to more computers in their house and so on. They just don’t make enough money off of the resale to care about preserving these sales. But they do care when consumers complain that they go to a store and buy Windows Media encoded stuff and can’t run it because MS won’t port their codecs. That was killing Apple because prior to iTMS the only electronic music you could buy was WMA, and it wouldn’t play on any Mac. Apple solved that problem by launching iTMS and putting prices so low that nobody had a reason to shop anywhere else. That’s why they are so leery of Flash. What happens when Adobe feels Apple is a threat and stops supporting Flash? Mac users are fucked. Apple has been down this path countless times, so they’re going to kill Flash in favor of open standards so nobody can come in and wreck their platforms. And that’s why Apple will keep reselling content pretty close to cost so that nobody can move that format so that Apple’s customers can’t buy it.
And even that article you think would educate me states at the end that he’s not sure what the hell he’s talking about.
Martin
Ok, I have to call bullshit here.
Here’s everything that Apple has stated – 10 hours of battery life playing video and 140 hours of playing audio. Book reading will be closer to the former, but will be at least somewhat longer by not taxing the CPU. And Apple battery life is very close to what they advertise.
6-7 hours is simply a number you made up.
Martin
@Turbulence:
So my technical journals and publications are for 5 year olds? Thanks. About 80% of what I read for my job involves color. Do you read magazines? They’re pretty dependent on color as well. Textbooks? Same thing.
Don’t be so dismissive just because not everyone lives inside a world of Shakespeare and Dostoevsky.
Turbulence
@Martin:
How should I know what you read? And why should I care? My technical journals don’t have much color or at least don’t seem to benefit from it much. But hey, when someone makes a reasonably priced long lasting color e-ink display, I’ll go buy a read that incorporates it. I’m just saying that there’s a pretty huge market for non-color reading material. I mean, have you been inside a library or bookstore, ever? 80%+ of the material there is not color.
Here are some magazines whose articles I’m reading on my Kindle now: TNR, NYRB, LRB, Dissent, NYT magazine, the Atlantic, Harpers, the Washington Monthly, Edge, the Economist, Technology Review, the New Yorker. So yeah, I read some magazines. And so far, I haven’t missed much for want of color.
In my field, typically only undergrad textbooks use color. Even then, most of the textbooks on my bookshelf are black and white.
About 5% of the reading material on my Kindle is fiction. Are you ever right about anything?
hamletta
If you have a laptop, you can read ePub files right now, by downloading Adobe’s Digital Editions reader software.
It works on my ancient G4 still running Panther (OS X 10.3), which nobody supports anymore.
I know because I was trying to get a job with a certain publishing house, and I looked at the ePub standard. It’s just XML ‘n’ CSS like I’ve been doing for years.
You don’t need new hardware, but I can understand how you’d want the touch-screen action, bein’ minus a wing, and all.
Michael D.
@Martin: Never ONCE paid to download a book on my Kindle. And I’ve downloaded a couple hundred.
Not once.
mvr
I think a lot depends on you. Are you willing to have a dedicated reader and not something that you wish was a computer?
I’m getting older and more farsighted as I age, so that I now need reading glasses. I get tired reading on a screen and I prefer reading on the Kindle. If you’d rather (other things equal, meaning font size, distance to the page, same content, not watching video) read on paper than on the screen then I think the large Kindle is the way to go. For what you buy the font sizes are adjustable. For what you make into a PDF to take with you the fonts are fixed, but by turning it sideways it winds up the size of a good paper copy. (This may change if they add better pdf reader software.) You can mark up what you buy, but not what you put on there of your own or downloaded from other sources PDFs. I’ve loaded suitcases full of self-printed-to-pdf documents from my computer onto the Kindle with the USB cable and it is nice to have those with me wherever I take it.
It is light, easy to load, stays charged for a long time, and easier on the eyes than a backlit computer screen. It is also black and white and not color. If you subscribe to the NYT the Kindle subscription will save you money in the long run. I figure mine pays for itself in a year and a half.
The wireless connection is very nice to have. I grab it, head to Starbucks and have my coffee with the paper in seconds after I turn it on, all without having to look for a wifi connection.
But it isn’t a computer substitute. The keyboard allows commenting on stuff you buy, and you can also highlight. But it isn’t a real keyboard. Perhaps those who like texting on cellphones would find it no different. But I like the full size set of keys if I’m really saying something.
Anyway, if you want a device that is really good at the range of things a reader does, the Kindle is quite nice and worth the money. If you want to blog on it, it won’t be an ideal forum because a real computer is just better for that.
Michael D.
@Brachiator:
1. Battery life is awesome.
2. No eye strain here! Again, awesome.
3. I have downloaded MANY classics for free (100+).
4. I read Balloon Juice for free every day using the Kindle Web browser.
Glocksman
For just plain reading of text, get the Kindle.
If you’re interested in comic books on the device, I’d wait six months and see what Apple’s competitors come out with and skip the iPad altogether.
One of the big complaints I’ve read from comics people is that the aspect ratio of the iPad isn’t the same as that of 8.5×11 paper.
IOW, wait for the Samsung tablet that will have twice the memory, larger screen size and resolution, and be less expensive than the Apple.
The Raven
Breaking…
Read the rest.
I think Amazon got a few of your wing-feathers, Kindle-lovers.
Martin
@Turbulence:
You’re the one that felt compelled to suggest that nobody over the age of 5 needs color. You could have left that out but you didn’t. Clearly you care enough to drop the insult.
Even if I concede the 80%, I don’t want to exclude my reading options to those things that aren’t in color. I’m not particularly interested in putting down my reader in order to switch over to National Geographic, and I look forward to being able to have something like this at my fingertips, even if I can only have the last 10 or 20 years on there.
Apparently your series of assertions here is that everyone either is or should be exactly like you, that four-color printing was either a mistake or a waste of time, and that quite possibly the internet would be a better place if only it was limited 16 shades of grey.
Look, I think the Kindle is a fine product. I really do. It unquestionably got electronic books rolling, they got a lot of the form factor and features right, even if I think it was a bit overspecialized and carries a few pitfalls that, while they don’t mar the device, are at least worth making sure people know about. eInk is clearly the better screen type for a lot of people, but not everyone, and the battery life of the Kindle is surely envious, as is the cost. All that said, expecting everyone to neatly contain their usage to those limitations is idiotic. John reads a lot of blogs, many of us do. The photos and videos count as part of that experience in many places. The ability to post comments count. If I find an interesting article when reading a magazine online, I’d prefer to be able to take that and post it in a comment here to share it rather than maybe having to switch off of the device, find the link again, and then do it. I do a lot of visual presentation – multicolor charts are the only way to cut through the information density and so there’s almost always color in what I’m reading and that color conveys meaning. I’m willing to trade some battery life and eye strain in order to not lose information and gain functionality. You aren’t. That’s awesome. Is it necessary to attack people over that?
Martin
@Glocksman:
Why would they be upset when comics are 26 x 17cm? And in what fantasy world do they live in that if any tablet maker was going to match screen aspect to paper aspect that they’d pick comic books over 8.5×11 or A4? Or is the Samsung going to have that ratio?
And do you have a link to the Samsung tablet?
Glocksman
@Martin:
The samsung comment was just a guess based on prior history, not a promise of a future product.
Though I wouldn’t be surprised if Archos or some other company made an Android OS based competitor that incorporated some of the features Apple left out, like USB ports without buying a separate dock, memory card slot, etc.
That said, IMHO if the iPad is aiming at the Kindle audience, wouldn’t an aspect ratio that comes close to that of paper hardback books or even comic books be better than the straight 4.3 ratio of the iPad?
Grumpasaurus
Nook. Same reading technology as kindle (same screen, same manufacturer probably), but it’s not DRM crippled, has expandable memory, and a larger library.
the iPad is a waste tweener of a product – it doesn’t do much more than your phone and does less than your laptop. As a reader, the OLED screen is going to give you eye fatigue, unlike the e-Ink screens of the kindle/nook.
AdamK
Um, the number 5 in a search box is a clock? Because that’s what pressing Alt+T on a Kindle gets you.
MJJ
Call me a little crazy, but I’ve reserved an Entourage Edge. Has both and E-ink and Color screen. Should be out in 1 more month.
BeccaM
I received a Nook as a pre-Christmas gift. Love it. That thing goes with me everywhere. About half of what’s on it is B&N purchased content, a quarter is books I bought elsewhere, and the remainder is stuff I’ve had hanging around for years (mostly old PDFs).
The other day, I had to wait at the pharmacy for a semi-urgent ‘scrip to be filled. “It’ll be 20-30 minutes, ma’am.” “No problem.” Sit down, lose myself.
Nice thing about most of the newer e-Ink eReaders is they’re super easy on the eyes, including my 46 year old ones.
chuck
By all means get an iPad if you have more money than sense. It’s literally a giant iPod touch, running the same non-multitasking OS — no listening to music while reading for you! –and no slots for SD cards. Even its USB needs a dongle adapter.
The killer feature of the Kindle for me is the free wireless (in the USA) which includes web access, including a Wikipedia search feature built in. All it needs now is a lock screen that says “DON’T PANIC”.
(and yes I know about the xkcd comic)
gwangung
Oh, clearly it isn’t. If it was, it’d clearly be more optimized for a purely reading experience.
It’s more clearly aimed at people who do a bit of everything, including a bit of productivity. And that “bit of everything” will change for different sets of people. Whether or not that’s a profitable segment is to be seen, but despite the naysaying, it’s not an illogical approach to take. And a company who could make a monster cash cow out of a seemingly simple MP3 player shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand.
Comrade Darkness
@The Raven: The Kindle is a disposable device, with disposable content, by our particular usage pattern. Download, read, ignore or delete. Voracious readers just want to read the some interesting next thing on their 1000 book to-read list. The copyright battle that hasn’t been solved for music needs to play out all over again. Stay out of the market completely if you don’t want be caught in the middle of it. Meanwhile, we’ll keep reading.
Samsung and HP are welcome to take on the ipad, but neither of those companies can fix the ridiculousness of using win 7 on such a device. I’ve watched clients struggle with windows on $3000 tablets (click the mouse, wait 4 seconds for the menu to pop down) so I can’t imagine the same struggle on a device with 1/4 the capacity to get the price down. The HP demo videos really show up this limitation. And more glaringly their narrow user view. “We asked some people what the wanted. And they said, oh, not just text.” If I owned HP stock, I’d be selling it.
The ipad market is the young itouch user base who can’t get on the home computer because another family member is using it, and older people who get one from a younger relative to let them keep abreast of the rest of the family. Mock those potential customer bases if you like because they are not exactly you, but they’re massive.
PaulW
@tworivers:
I used to work in a library, but I’m still very biased. Use your libraries, people! :)
BTW, I’ll see about paying Xlibris to convert my book to ebook (Kindle, Sony) format. $99 bucks to do it…
tripletee
@chuck:
Jesus Christ. The iPhone OS is multitasking; all of the built-in apps multitask just fine. You can read in the Kindle app with music playing in the iPod app in the background and mail, calendar items and contacts being pushed to the device.
What Apple hasn’t done – yet – is open up multitasking to third-party apps. So if you’re a big Pandora fan and you want to stream while reading, yeah, you’re out of luck, for now. But “non-multitasking OS” is a bullshit statement.
The Raven
@Comrade Darkness:
Unless, I suppose, the next book is published by Macmillan. Doesn’t that bother you? Don’t you wonder what else Amazon won’t let you read, or will revoke your permission to read?
One of the best things about Apple as a books-and-music service is that they’re a distributor. They show no interest in being a producer or publisher of anything but software. I think that’s really cool. Besides, it’s smart business–most distributors who try to go into production lose their shirts.
Steeplejack
@arguingwithsignposts:
Er, sorry, the publishers are not the same as the authors, which was Wile E. Quixote’s point.
grendelkhan
The files are still encrypted, and can only be read by a Mobipocket-approved application. In the long run, you’re going to move to another platform. Because the files are DRM’d, the format is only readable so long as Amazon or their successors make the reader software available for your new platform.
If you’re okay with that, that’s fine. But you can’t pretend that this isn’t inevitable with DRM’d formats. What you referred to as a “nutty scenario” has already happened.
Now, of course, Mobipocket encryption is crackable, like any DRM system eventually is. (Google “MobiDeDRM”.) Doing so is illegal; in fact, possessing that program is illegal (at least in the United States) under the DMCA. Here’s a chart.
If you’re okay with this, that’s fine. Amazon is likely to support their library for quite some time, and even after they stop doing so, I’m sure you’ll be able to crack the DRM and keep the data. But you’re showing flat-out fingers-in-ears denial of the facts of the matter, and you should at least own up to the nature of the beast.
grendelkhan
The Nook still used DRM; it just isn’t applied as restrictively. The end result is the same as with any DRM system. As for the library being larger, you may be referencing a figure including the public domain contents of Google Book Search; this is available to any PDF-capable reader, and as of a recent update, the current Kindle supports PDF.