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I'm tempted to get the Kindle for an xmas present to myself.
Yes, but it's a limited experience. The screen refresh is very slow in these devices and also to achieve the really good battery life time the processors used are also very slow so don't expect video, flash or even animated gifs. Another problem is that the screens are capable of generating only 16 levels of gray - perfect for text, not so great for everything else.
Borders carries the Sony e-readers and B&N the nook, so getting to see one of these things in person before buying shouldn't really be too much of a problem for US residents.
I'm tempted to get the Kindle for an xmas present to myself.
I'm beginning to think along the same lines ... or at least put it somewhere on my list for Santa.
I think we should all get one!I'm beginning to think along the same lines ... or at least put it somewhere on my list for Santa.
And thanks to Bender and Slomo, I don't even have to do much research
I bought my wife a Nook for our anniversary (she is a voracious reader) and there is only a $10 difference between the two (nook is more expensive). I chose the nook because after going over the reviews (both expert and consumer) it seemed like the Nook was *slightly* better FOR WHAT SHE WOULD BE USING IT FOR. The two really are neck and neck and I am not surprised when I read that experts suggest to only buy those two. The main disadvantage that I found with the Nook was that its battery life is not as long. This isn't really a big disadvantage to me seeing as the difference was you would have to recharge after 8 days with the Nook and 11-12 days with the Kindle. I really cant see that being a problem either way. The reason for the difference in battery life is because the Nook has a color touch LCD screen at the very bottom for navigation, to help with the integrated web browser, etc. As has already been said, the LCD takes a little more power to run, so thus the battery life difference. Luckily the Nook, unlike the Kindle, has a user accessible battery so if this really is an issue you can buy a backup battery (cheapest I found was about 20-25 dollars). Once again, though, if you can go over 5 days in between charging, I cant imagine a scenario where this would be an issue. One of the advantages that the nook has over the Kindle that has already been brought up is the ability to lend books to friends. If I have purchased a book, and you want to read it, I can lend it to you for 14 days (during this time I won't have access to the book). As you can imagine, this has caused groups of Nook users to band together and create book lending clubs, so you really don't need to know anyone with a Nook to be able to take advantage of this, just use google to find one of these clubs. Speaking of google, it is correct that the Nook can read epub while the Kindle can not. Google books is a service that google started to catalog all of the books with expired copyrights to make them available in one place for public consumption. These books are in epub format which (from what I read) is starting to become the standard. This gives you access to, not hundreds, but far far more free books. To Amazon's credit, they have a similar service which has a ton of free books, which are not in the epub format. One more feature that the Nook has which the Kindle does not, is the ability to walk into a barnes and noble and be able to connect to their wifi through your Nook and read any book in the store while you are there. This is one of those features that I think looks good on a feature list, but doesn't get used in practice.
Speaking of that type of feature, this is the way I see the 3g feature on both e-readers (Nook and Kindle alike). With the prevalence of wifi everywhere the only time I could see the necessity of a 3g connection is if you were going on a long road trip through BFE, and even then I see the value as very little. The reason for this is that both e-readers can hold in the area of 1500 books, and if I am going on a long trip, I download 4 or 5 and can be on my way. Its value would only surface if I don't plan, or in a pinch and I really can't see myself paying $40 extra for a feature that I may use 8 times over the next 5 years. As far as using the web browser over 3g, I think I would just use my phone that already has that service and be done with it. the Consumer reviews pretty much confirmed my thought process here, almost all of them that purchased the 3g version of either e-reader basically had the same thing to say about it "it works really well, and I will never use it."
I know there are a few things that I missed, but I can't think of them at the moment. If you have any other questions, though, let me know and I answer to the best of my ability.
*side note, the nook is android powered so I have been reading that developers are gearing up to begin developing apps for it (already has a chess game and a solitaire game). Also, a new firmware update is coming out to make the "page turns" even faster.
yeah, I agree about the 3G thing... I would buy the wifi only kindle for myself. I see myself just d/l whatever I want while at home...
Don't mean to highjack the thread but I just wanted to give other options. I use my Blackberry and psp to read ebooks. One of the Blackberry apps lets you have access to thousands of books for you to download and read on your phone, for free. I'm sure you can do this for the Iphone too. Last book I read on the blackberry was The GodFather by Puzo. It didn't hurt my eyes or anything and it was nice because i could read in the dark and not bother anybody.
With the psp, you can go to 'rent sites and download ebooks from there and download them onto your psp. The interface for both the Blackberry and PSP are pretty easy to use and friendly.
5 days battery life is not nearly enough. I travel a lot and to get stranded on an airport without a book is a scary thought. I can actually get over 3 weeks out of my kindle if I switch off the wireless communication (which I have to anyway when traveling by plane) - I can easily see how a less avid reader could get up to a month of reading without recharging.
I like the user accessible battery solution though.
3G is really for newspaper/magazine subscription, where the (still) limited availability of wifi hot spot would a limiting factor (and its free).
The lending feature I like. I'm guessing it's really a B&N feature (not the device itself) so I guess a firmware upgrade could be possible for the other devices. The real problem here of course is not technical, but really whether or not they want to make such a feature available to their clients.
The free Wifi books in the bookstore is a cute marketing thing. Not really a deal breaker, but still useful and shows some effort on the B&N people.
As I said before it is easy to put epubs on the kindle or any other devices by using Calibre which is a free software. And since epubs are e-books you get perfect results (unlike the problems that you may encounter when transferring pdfs to e-readers).
Thanks the info!Don't own a nook, but e-readers using e-ink screens are very similar to each others (if not identical).
1) yes, there is slightly more reflection/glare from the screen as there would be from paper, but slightly adjusting the angle takes care of that. It is remarkably similar to print on paper.
2) Again similar to regular print on paper. I have been using computer since the age of 14 and I never could read long text from the screen. Even the most recent and best LCD screen make my eyes "itch" after prolonged reading (mind you I'm talking about reading pages and pages of text, not surfing the internet
3) It is still electronic, so you adjust the font size as you wish.
P.S. E-ink screens do not consume power when displaying text/graphics only during the changing of the content of the screen.
You can even download the free kindle app on your BB, android, PC, MAC or i-phone and have access to your kindle books. Same for the Nook.
The issue is the screen. Some people can not read for long hours from a backlit screen and of course battery life.
On a side note if you use the kindle (and I think the Nook has a similar feature) with the kindle software on your phone, the last read page position will automatically sync on both devices so that you always continue reading from the right spot regardless of the device.
Nice idea but honestly I rarely use it
Good forum and comparison table:
http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E-book_Reader_Matrix
http://www.mobileread.com/
When I travel, I bring my cords (phone, laptop, etc) anyway so this would not be an issue for me, plus it uses micro usb, so I could just plug it into my laptop to charge if I didn't want to bring my main charger.
I don't use this (mainly because I don't have one, its my wifes lol), but if I found a need for it, I wouldn't really have a problem here because at home: its hooked up to my wifi, on the road: I am not aware of a Hotel without wifi, at a friend's house: I am unaware of anyone I know without wifi. I would probably not buy it until the next versions come out because I would assume by then there may be an actual reason for it. If you travel ALL THE TIME, maybe I could see it being worth $40 so you don't have to connect to the Hotel wifi, but for me I would probably save my money and make the connecting to the hotel wifi a 30 second addition to my arrival procedures.I like the user accessible battery solution though.
3G is really for newspaper/magazine subscription, where the (still) limited availability of wifi hot spot would a limiting factor (and its free).
The lending feature is pretty slick. I would assume it is just a firmware upgrade as well, but Amazon would probably have a hard time doing it since it is likely that this is spelled out in their contract with the publishers.
The lending feature I like. I'm guessing it's really a B&N feature (not the device itself) so I guess a firmware upgrade could be possible for the other devices. The real problem here of course is not technical, but really whether or not they want to make such a feature available to their clients.
From what I read, this was B&N's shout out to its advantage over Amazon of being a Brick and Mortar bookstore. With that being said, as I mentioned before, I couldn't see myself using this that much.The free Wifi books in the bookstore is a cute marketing thing. Not really a deal breaker, but still useful and shows some effort on the B&N people.
I guess this is kind of the opposite of the wifi conversation, you don't want to spend the extra time hooking up to hotel wifi, I don't want to spend the extra time converting files.As I said before it is easy to put epubs on the kindle or any other devices by using Calibre which is a free software. And since epubs are e-books you get perfect results (unlike the problems that you may encounter when transferring pdfs to e-readers).
With all this, I truly believe that one couldn't go wrong with either company's offering. They are both just so close in capability that I could see it going either way. I am partial to the nook (because that is what I chose), but I am not some kind of fan boy over it. You really just have to sit down and figure out HOW you are going to use it before you make the purchase (i.e. if you aren't going to use the lending feature, and are comfortable converting your files, save the $10 and buy a kindle. Unlike many other things, you cant just say "I am going to buy this one because it's better".
I have iBooks on my phone, but personally, seeing as how I don't have time to actually sit down and read a book, unless it's a bed time story for my 4 and 2 year old, I've actually considered audible.com or purchasing audiobooks for my iPhone/ipod.
I'm not too keen on having someone else read the book for me, but there are so many books I want to read (and the list is growing) that I won't have time to finish them all for years. Plus, books are expensive, and it's much cheaper just to get the audio kind.
there's always time to read. much better for your brain than video games.
I beg to differ, at least recreationally.
I asked if I left anything out of my review that through her experience she found to be important. She told me that I forgot to write "I like it."
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