Friend Bijou Drains,
there are alot of free books available online. Some are older books in the public domain and some are current. At fictionwise new releases are often sold with a 100% rebate if you have a micropay account.
mobilereads forums is also a great resource for anyone with an e-reader.
The limitation isn’t so much the amount of memory built into the device (64GB is about the limit for mass-market solid-state memory, and you’re right about the advantages of solid-state over a spinning hard drive) – it’s the inability to expand it by adding/swapping standard memory cards. Part of that, no doubt, is that you can’t sell people extra memory at $100 for a 16GB or 32GB increment if they can get it cheaper on an SD card.
I’m assuming that competition will force the next generation* of tablets to include standard interfaces for memory cards and a standard USB port (Apple does love to sell their overpriced proprietary cables).
*Assuming the iPad doesn’t turn out to be a flash in the pan that discredits the whole concept, of course.
True. But, and please correct me if I’m wrong, an analysis I saw of the pricing shows that the difference between a 16GB SSD and a 32GB SSD is about the same as the difference between those two ipad versions, and the same with the 64GB. So Apple isn’t making much (if any) cash on the upgrade. If anything, you’d think they’d undercut the price a little to entice them to spend the savings on the 3G, which is where the profit is.
Fair enough, perhaps my choice in how I represented the items was poor. My point was primarily to counter the statements previously of amazon-only file formats.
There are several good ways to read RSS content on the Kindle.
Issues with the iPad cropping up:
Overheats in sunlight.
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-31747_7-20001749-243.html
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/opinions/view/opinion/Techies-Fume-Over-iPad’s-Hidden-Weakness-3098
As in, forget taking it to the beach, don’t bring it to the park and have a sit if it’s over 70 degrees.
Wi-Fi extremely weak
Rule of Apple Thumb remains: wait for revision three.
In comparing the Nook to the Kindle, I did a simple experiment. I made a list of all the books I had bought from Barnes & Noble and from Amazon over the last several months. Then I checked the B&N Nook and Amazon Kindle stores to see how much of what I was really reading would have been available for purchase.
I had intended to see if e-books from Amazon tended to be more expensive than ones from B&N or vice versa. Instead, what I found was that Amazon had e-book version of about 75% of my recent purchases. B&N had less than 20%.
Clearly this will vary according to what you read. I don’t read lots of best-sellers, but I tend to get hooked on mystery and science fiction series, often starting with a book late in an established series and then going back to buy earlier books in a series that I’ve decided that I like. Amazon’s e-book store, right now, caters better to my reading tastes. But I think that anyone considering buying a Kindle, Nook, iPad, or whatever to use with e-books should consider running the same experiment for themselves.
I read ebooks all the time on my Palm Pilot. The backlit screen may not be the greatest in bright light but when reading in bed, for example, it’s great. With a Kindle, you have to have another light source. So that’s one thing the Kindle doesn’t do as well. However, from what I hear, its battery life is fantastic; the Palm’s is not so great if I do a lot of reading, and I’d presume some of the same issues would apply with an iPad.
Note: I don’t own either the Kindle or the iPad, nor do I have immediate plans for either, just extrapolating based on the device I do own. If I were to buy either, I’d be more tempted to get the iPad however.
One thing that would be a deal-maker, bookwise, would be if either of the devices supported borrowing ebooks, e.g. from the library. To the best of my knowledge there’s currently no way to do this with the Kindle. Does the iPad have any way of doing so?
I can borrow certain books which are available in an Adobe format, for the Palm. But that’s because there’s a handheld and desktop version that supports things expiring. Apple typically doesn’t support anything like this (e.g. I can’t borrow e-versions of audiobooks for the iPod, but I could if I had a generic MP3).
I fuckin love it. My Nook gives me a giant nerd-boner. It is my favorite gizmo ever.
B&N admittedly screwed up by releasing the device when the software wasn’t quite ready. It was slow and the interface was buggy. There have since been a couple updates (pushed out automagically over the cell network) and the software is vastly improved.
In addition to e-books and magazine subscriptions which you can buy from B&N (they have a pretty good selection) you can put PDF and text files (and several other formats) on it by plugging in via USB. The e-ink screen is gorgeous and as easy to read for hours without straining your eyes. The color touchscreen on the bottom is nicer than the Kindle’s keyboard. You can also use it for gesture control of the reader.
The battery lasts for a long time, and even longer if you turn off the cell radio and don’t use the touchscreen a lot.
There is a micro-SD slot for MOAR MEMORY!
And unlike the Kindle’s proprietary OS, the Nook runs on the open Android platform which means it is super-hackable, and all sorts of clever people are working on putting cool stuff on it.
Disadvantages:
Rendering PDFs that aren’t designed for the Nook’s small screen can be iffy. I have a few programming books in PDF and the Nook will often screw up the layout of code samples. Still perfectly readable, but ugly.
Like any e-reader, you can’t skim stuff or flip through pages. Turning the page takes about half a second. Fine for serialized reading, unusable for random-access reference material.
I got one of those plastic sleeves for my Kindle and ended up taking it off because it added another 2 oz or so of weight. I can’t imagine how heavy 24 oz. woudl feel.
I bought an attachable LCD light for my Kindle and now I can read in bed with the lights out so that my husband can sleep in peace. I don’t really want a backlit screen.
And the battery lasts forever, which makes it nice to take on a plane. I hate that my iPod batteries don’t last very long when I watch movies, so now I lug around a AAA battery supplement to my iPod.
I’m intrigued by the iPad, but no more intrigued than I was when the little mini laptops came out. I’d like to use them for traveling, but the biggest downside with the iPad is the lack of a decent Word Processor.
My biggest wishlist for an all-in-one device would be:
a) Skeletal word processor that is compatible with Word. (Sorry, Steve J., but Bill G. has won the war on word processors.)
b) Ability to watch movies or tv shows (similar to iPod video).
c) Ability to listen to downloaded music.
d) Ability to read books (and turn off backlight) with little eye strain.
c) A detachable real keyboard.
d) Long battery life (e.g. 7 hours) for those long plane rides to Hawaii.
e) Ability to browse the internet.
f) Email.
g) Light, in terms of weight.
h) Ideally, you could charge it with the same cord as cell phones. (Europe standardized their phone cords a year or so ago. Did the US ever follow suit?)
I think your wishlist describes the iPad almost perfectly.
There are several word-compatible word processors for the iPad.
Look at Apple’s iWork. It’s not even skeletal - it’s a full-blown word process with page layout. On Leo Laporte’s tech shows they’ve been playing with the iPad a lot, and they were importing and exporting from Word to the iPad.
The iPad does both of these tasks better than the iPod. Movies are full HD (720p) and are supposed to look gorgeous. The large screen allows for easier navigation and selection of your music library, and the player will show you full screen album covers while songs are playing if you want.
I’m a big fan of the Kindle, and I know what you mean about the quality of the E-ink display in terms of eyestrain. But I’ve read a number of reviews now from people who have read books on the iPad and the Kindle, and most of them prefer the iPad. And there’s a Kindle app for iPad, so you can read all your Kindle books on it. In fact, the iPad is the only book reader on the market that can read every current book format - iBooks, Kindle, Nook, and all the open formats and Sony formats as well.
Apple makes a very nice bluetooth keyboard which works great with the iPad and can be packed into a very small space with the iPad. They also have a keyboard dock that the iPad can snap into, which turns it into basically a netbook.
People are quoting real battery life times of 11-12 hours with the iPad while under heavy usage - watching videos, etc.
The iPad excels at this. Leo Laporte thinks it’s the best browsing experience there is, and prefers it to his desktop browser.
Yep. Built-in mail client, can work with all mail services.
While the iPad is heavier than a Kindle, it’s much lighter than any netbook or any other device that will do the things you want. Our Kindle stays in its leather case all the time, which easily doubles its weight. It doesn’t bother me, because I never read while holding the thing in mid-air. It’s either resting on my stomach if I’m lying in bed, or it’s propped up against my leg or on the arm of a chair or on a table if I’m reading elsewhere. In any of the reading positions I use with the Kindle, the added weight of the iPad won’t be a problem.
The iPad allows USB charging, which is the standard for Cell Phones. I don’t know if it has a mini-USB connector, so you might need a charger where you can unplug the cord and plug the large USB connector into it.
Isn’t the Kindle about half the price of the basic iPad?
Wasn’t that answered in the first 20 posts of this thread?
Possibly, I did skim the thread and read much of it, but I guess I missed it.
The Kindle DX, whose screen size is about the same as the iPad’s, is about the same price ($489 vs $499). I presume that’s what they’re talking about, rather than the much smaller Kindle 2, which isn’t really a comparable device.
:rolleyes: No I’m not. Weight, battery life, and size were all listed in the post I responded to, and I didn’t dispute them. What I said was that listing those three things as positives (compared to the iPad) is wrong, because the iPad does those things too.
“big honking bulky piece of shit” is a rather extreme value judgment, and I didn’t have that experience with an iPad when I tried using one, although I admit that it was heavier than I’d like for reading, and there wasn’t an obviously comfortable way to hold onto it like there is with the Kindle.
On the other hand, you implied being able to put a Kindle in your pocket. Maybe you have really big pockets, but I wasn’t ever able to do that with my Kindle.
Am I the only one who wonders why every electronic gizmo category has to have winner and the question “Is the Sony Doddad a Widget killer?”
I mean you never hear, “Is the new Honda Accord a Camry killer?”
I agree. I do not need my Sony to be a Kindle killer. I chose my device and I am very happy with it. My friend silenus is very happy with his Kindle. Some one may be perfectly happy to buy an iPad. There is lots of room for a diversity of electronic gadgets.
The Kindle DX isn’t really comparable to the iPad either. It’s a book reader, while the iPad is a general-purpose Internet device.
And frankly, I think the Kindle DX is a complete flop. It’s much bigger than a book reader needs to be, and its slow response and lack of color makes it unsuitable for viewing formatted documents (PDF, PowerPoint, etc).