The most disappointing thing about the Kindle is that it is useless for reference books. A reference book has to skipped around a lot, and the Kindle is designed for going page-to-page in the order presented. It’s a pain in the ass to skip pages, much less jump around to find the exact information you need. What I really needed was a more portable form of my dictionary, and other features of the Kindle were just a bonus.
The second most disappointing thing about the Kindle is that if you buy one from Amazon, you don’t stop getting Kindle come-ons on the front page of Amazon just because you already goddamned paid for one. I guess I’m just a fool. How will I sleep of nights?
If he isn’t really going to use it for reading I’d get the ipad. I love my Kindle and the Kindle is the best ereader on the market by far, but that’s all it does. I’m ok with that because it’s doing exactly what I bought it for, but if you want it for other things, I’d go with the ipad.
I don’t know if this was mentioned, but there is now a color version of the Nook reader available. It’s about half the price of an ipad but has a lot of the same functionality.
I went online last Friday to buy a kindle. My gf began trying to talk me out of it. I was too dense to realize and play along. My birthday is in February, and it turns out she thought she had the perfect gift after hearing me discuss it for the past year or so.
So she ended up buying me an early bd gift. It arrived yesterday and I was up late last night reading. WooHoo!
Update: I went to B&N and played with a Nook. It took about 60 seconds to discover that I hate the touch screen navigator with a burning passion. So that makes my decision easier. Since the touch screen drove me batty, I’m guessing I don’t want to pay extra for the Sony with its full touch screen either. Though I’m up for playing with one if I can find a brick and mortar that has them.
On one hand, I kind of want to go with the Kobo and make the local library stuff accessible. On the other hand, the Kindle does feel sturdier and is a bit more fun to use, and my darling can always load it up with The Fall and Stephen King’s new short story collection as part of my gift, which relieves me of current pressures to hit the library.
Also, I hear tell you can buy a card at the NYC library for $100, and they have MOBI books.
I saw somewhere on Amazon that they are soon going to allow sharing of books, for two weeks, and the ability to borrow from the library. Now when that’s going to happen I don’t know, and now I can’t find the page I was looking at. I know it was in one of the Amazon discussion forums, but seem to have forgotten where. This was in the last two or three weeks.
dzero, I’m looking for something around $150, so color stuff is out for me.
I took my husband’s suggestion and made a sample list of books I’ve read recently, books I like, and books I’m interested in. I came up with 28 off the top of my head. Number of those available through the library: 3. Number available through Amazon: 25.
So it’s looking like the library issue I’ve been so worried about is not a big deal. Yes, I could search through distant libraries that let you get a card, but I’m not confident that any library system will have a lot of the stuff I like. In which case, I should just go with the Kindle, I think. I’ll mull it over today, but I’m thinking that’s how I’ll go.
If what I’ve read about it is correct, the color Nook is sort of a compromise between a regular Nook and an iPad: it has a back-lit screen rather than the e-ink screen of the original Nook, Kindle, etc., which may be an advantage or a disadvantage, depending on what you’re looking for. (For one thing, it means a lot lower battery lifetime.)
If you want to read only books that have only text, like novels, and have no interest in being able to view color pictures as you might find in books on history, horticulture and such, then the kindle seems to be the model most people prefer. That’s especially true if you don’t like touch screens. There are a lot of complaints about the original Nook being slow and clunky - which is part of what makes the new one a better choice. There’s also the e-ink issue with backlight being a problem for a lot of people during extended viewing.
As for the availability of books, the nook does let you view any electronic book available at a B&N store (I’m pretty sure of this - but check). So if you live near one, you can go in and browse their electronic library all day while sucking on a latte or five.
There are also less “traditional”, shall we say, sources of PDF and related files, but I assume that’s not of interest to you.