Not quite an impulse purchase; e-readers have been in the back of my mind for a while. But something tells me I’m about to go get one within the next few hours/days.
But I know relatively little about them (for now), though I’m learning. As with most things, I’m finding lots of sites with information are trying to sell me something, so it’s a bit vexing to sort out what’s what.
If it makes a difference, most of my reading is in bed at night. I don’t commute anywhere (work from home), so massive portability features may go unused. Not sure what else I’d use it for—entire house is covered by a wireless connection, and since most every room has a computer (either as a workstation, integrated into the television, recessed and wall-mounted, etc.) having Internet capabilities is only a mild plus (if they come with that sort of thing). Most fiction I read is in the public domain (I have a think for the classics), but I like to alternate 2-3 fiction with 2-3 non-fiction works. The non-fiction is typically either textbook-like or math/physics (e.g., Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea).
So … thoughts or recommendations? Crucial features? Major complaints? What do you have/what do you want?
I love my Kindle. Really, really love it. The integration with Amazon is fantastic. The ability to get a new book wherever I am in seconds is great. It’s light, easy on my eyes, not backlit - as close to a real book as possible. I have no desire to read things on an iPad or something after spending all day looking at a computer.
Can the Kindle display text from, say Project Gutenberg or are you locked into everything coming via Amazon? Does Amazon have a similar service with public domain books?
I have no good reason to say why being locked into one supplier is a touch unnerving, but there it is. But then again, if that supplier has everything I need, what’s to worry?
ETA: I’m a duffus. From their page:
I have a BeBook Neo, which I like. It has the highest processing speed of the eReaders on the market, which was important to me because I didn’t think I would like slow page turns. It does feel a little “unfinished”, I guess. It comes from Norway and has minimal instructions. I don’t know what the user interfaces are like with the other eReaders on the market, but this one is a bit unwieldy.
Good things:
Fast page turns
Touch screen with stylus minimizes space dedicated to controls
You can draw using the stylus and take notes inside a book
You can highlight text and it creates a screen of annotations that lets you zip right to that part
Natively reads .pdf
You can install tiny little programs, like hangman, minesweeper, a dice roller, and a calculator
You can buy books from anwhere but Amazon
Not-so-good things:
Don’t love the wifi connection, although it could be because of a lack of instructions that I have a hard time with it
User interface feels a little like a school project that got a B
From what I read, the SD card slot is picky. I didn’t have a problem, but you update the firmware by putting the file on the card and rebooting and some people report that their cards work for reading books, but not for the firmware
Customer service isn’t super because the company is in Norway and there is a time zone problem. Also, I think they grew faster than expected.
I originally bought my wife a Sony Reader (pocket edition) for her birthday. You had to connect the reader to the computer to load books onto it, but it would let you read ebooks from the library. We soon learned, though, that Sony’s readers have a quite irritating bug in them, though, if you are using them for content other than what you bought from Sony. There are two formats that the libraries use: ePub and PDF. If you load an ePub book it locks up all your PDFs. If you load a PDF it locks up all your ePub books (even the ones not from the library). Apparently the only way you can unlock it is to redownload it (I am not sure about this). Most library checkouts of ebooks only allow you to download three times.
I finally found the issue on Sony’s support site. Their “fix” is to tell you to only load one type of ebook on the Reader at a time. I returned it and got my wife a Nook.
She really likes the Nook. She takes it almost everywhere with her and uses the cellular connection to buy books more than I thought she would. We do not have 3G but it still connects to the network with GSM or something. You do have access to Google books which are the free public domain titles that include many of the older classics. It will connect to a wireless connection and in the most recent update they included a web browser, though navigating the web on it is not really a joyful experience. (The update also included a chess game and sudoku.) The nook will also allow library ebooks and does not lock up with different types.
The amount of light needed is the same as for reading a book and she was using it out in the bright sun the other day and it was definitely comparable to a physical book in sunlight.
There are a couple of spots around the casing that you can press to turn the page. The case cracked near one of these spots. My wife took it to Barnes and Noble. They said they had seen that happen a few times and agreed to replace it. It still worked fine with the crack, but we can think of nothing that we did that would have caused it.
I got the Kindle app for my iPhone (I imagine there must be similar for the Android line?) and love it.
At first I thought I’d hate using an ereader, especially one on such a small device. I have to say that I love it and use it frequently. I particularly love being able to read it in bed with the light out. I also like that I can download books directly from Amazon with the phone and not have to sync via a computer. Likewise, I like that when I delete a book from the phone it still exists on Amazon’s servers, meaning I don’t have to worry about loosing the phone.
Our phone is a first or second generation Razor–since we don’t commute we rarely use it (having moved from the city to the country helps too; we don’t leave the house all that often).
Can the Kindle take e-books from the library? They use “library” all over their site, but don’t trumpet the availability to DL books from other sources.
Has anyone here used both a Kindle and a Nook? It’s pretty much down to those two for me, unless something new and awesome gets released in the next couple of months. MentalGuy, is the library book thing the reason you got your wife a Nook instead of a Kindle?
Primarily. I like that you can still use books from other sources and are not tied into just the B&N store. The library option was an important consideration for us also.
That’s strange. I had a Sony Reader (PRS-505) that I replaced with an iPad. I always had many ePub, PDF, and LRF format books loaded and I never had any problem.
Since I know longer have it, I cannot be sure, but I was thinking it was any ebooks in those formats. It is possible that it was only the ones with Adobe DRM, which is what the ones checked out of the library have.
I have a Sony 505, and I have been very happy with it. I have not had the problem described by our friend MentalGuy. I did not like the ebook management software that came with the Sony, and have been using Calibreto manage my ebooks.
Love my Kindle; I love not having to find shelf space for a book I may want to read again some time. I also enjoy the ability to sync with my iTouch so that in some waiting room I can continue reading the book that I put down the night before, and when I get home my Kindle will reflect my new bookmark. I have only had one experience with not being able to DL a book while on vacation, which was in a woodsy environment in the mountains in SC (had to drive to a more open area to get it).