Apparently Amazon has released two free games for the Kindle, but make no mistake: it is definitely not designed or intended for game play.
I’ve played with the “Experimental” Web browser for a bit, and had no trouble bringing up a few Web sites, both from their initial list of bookmarks and for a few I typed in. Since I have the 3G model, effectively I have a very basic Web browser available to me just about anywhere.
Aha! I’m glad I read through all three pages; this was my question, too. I don’t care too much about downloading books from my library - their e-book selection sucks eggs.
A very informative and interesting thread. Thank you!
can a kindle fit into a nook case?
Not to come off as a purist freak, but I got my Kindle for the purpose of reading books and for the convenience of accessing more books. Yes, it has a web browser, and yes, you can browse pretty much any website, but I didn’t even know I could browse the web with it before I received it, so the fact that it can, poorly, I might add, doesn’t affect my affinity for the device one way or the other.
There are two popular hacks for the Kindle. The first one is the screensaver hack. I don’t know if it is still the case with the new Kindles, but for the Kindle 1, Kindle 2, and Kindle DX, you’re limited to a defined set of randomly selected screensavers when the device goes into sleep mode. It’s either one of a number of dead authors, a diagram of various species of fish, a diagram of various species of birds, a silhouette of a kid sitting under a tree reading with a Kindle, or an image of some kind of mechanical device (a loom?). The screensaver hack allows you to use your own images as the screensaver.
The second popular hack is the font hack, which allows you to select some interesting and somewhat crisper fonts than are available natively on the Kindle.
The challenge with the hacks is in order to receive software or firmware updates on your Kindle, which Amazon applies from time to time, you must uninstall the hacks first, which is a pain in the butt.
Depends on the case. Some Nook cases say they’re compatible with the Kindle.
Eh, I want to read books on it too, I’m just the kind of person who likes to prod the edges of things. It’s good to have the capability to do things, even if you only do them once a year. That one time is critical. (Like ordering flowers for my grandmother’s funeral, while in the middle of nowhere, with a broken car. Had to be done, and I had nothing to do it with but the web browser on my cell phone. But it worked.)
We have both a nook and a kindle. I read a lot, and the kindle screen is pleasant for that. But the nook really shines in a few areas – one is children’s books. My kids love to “turn” the pages by flicking the screen of the nook, and the illustrations in full color, some with pop up words, are great. The only problem is the so-far limited selection, but I suspect this will improve.
“Illustrations in full color”? Are you talking about a color nook rather than a regular nook?
And now you can download books directly from Gutenberg to the Kindle. Just point the Kindle’s web browser to http://m.gutenberg.org/
But unlike the Kindle, the Nook supports ePub…which means: After you buy it, you don’t have to CARE That it doesn’t exist anymore. You can put documents on it from other areas (Like FictionWise)
And not that I’d recommend it, but they DO pirate books, also.
I have a sneaking suspicion my wife got me a Kindle for Christmas. I so want it RIGHT NOW.
Has anyone tried putting sheet music onto an E-Reader? I’ve been slowly converting my collection to pdf and would love to have a portable reader to house them all and be able to have them in my guitar case as needed.
I thought the issue was DRM, not format. ChordedZither addressed this in another thread.
Keep in mind that it’s very much a YMMV thing. I’ve got no problem at all reading on an iPad for hours with no eyestrain.
Ever websurfed for more than an hour or two? Did you have this mysterious “eyestrain”? Then you won’t with an iPad either.
The “can’t read in sunlight” thing means that if you angle the screen exactly so it reflects the sun in your eyes, you can’t read it. Of course, the same’s true for anything with a plastic/glass screen. I spent yesterday afternoon reading outdoors in full sunlight. I just postitioned the chair so the sun wasn’t directly over my shoulder.
And you can read for 10+ hours non-stop without charging and you can plug it into your laptop or the wall and read while charging.
There’s a lot of weird anti iPad stuff out there some justified (no usb ports, you kinda have to use the dreaded iTunes, etc)
That said, if you just want one of the two you listed, Nook allows for more formats. The kindle (IIRC) won’t accept ePub which is kinda sorta starting to become a universal format. It’s not yet, but it’s starting.
There’s a program called Calibre which alllows you to convert ePub (and many other formats) to the Kindle format.
Great program, too. The Kindle will read Mobi, which is about as common. And Calibre will convert epub to Mobi in a jiffy.
I was just going to post this.
I guess it is as you say, YMMV, because MM definitely does V. I have both a Kindle DX and an iPad, and there is no way I can read for as long or as comfortably on my iPad as I can on my Kindle; it’s no contest, and there’s nothing mysterious about the eye strain I get from reading for too long on my iPad. Also, I brought both my Kindle and my iPad out on my patio and although it is not impossible to read in bright sunlight on my iPad, it is not something I’d want to do often, especially if I simply want to relax and read.
That said, the iPad is definitely better in heavy shade and low light than the Kindle, but that’s what I have a booklight for. 
Yes and no. It’s more like an MP3/iTunes situation. If all you ever put into the device is DRM-less ePub/mp3, then you don’t have to worry about vendor lock-in.
There’s also the library support that the Kindle lacks.
And, well, lets just say quasi-legal reading material is just as available online as is music and movies. :eek:
And I’m warming up to Calibre…
Just to ask, what’s the selection like, exactly, with these readers? I see they have very old titles (through Project Gutenberg) and very new titles, but what about in between? Would I have an extremely poor chance of finding stuff that’s not very generally popular, or does the cheapness of “printing” in that format actually make that chance better?
As I said in another thread, I can see that it’d be in some companies’ interest to heavily push e-readers to stifle interest in unprofitable older and more obscure books/authors, not to mention used books (since there’s no such thing as selling or buying a “used” e-book).
(Unrelated issue: I wonder if there’ll ever be a time when most/all “copies” of a book are locked away behind a proprietary and obsolete format, like some computer tapes are today? Though I see from a post that there are converters - probably technically illegal - out there, so perhaps that’s not a huge issue, but still.)