The Amazon Kindle

[Professor Phineas Brownsm]

My Lords and Ladies

I have come to an point where I need a little bit of help, for one has been thinking about getting an Amazon Kindle for some time and finding it difficult to make up my mind? would it be a good or a bad Idea??

Thanking you in advance.

Prof. Phineas

[Mécanicien de Vapeur]

Prof,

do you just want it to read ebooks and/or are in a situation where the month-long battery life is an essential? (Such as for my work colleague, who resides on a narrowboat and therefore cannot easily charge a tablet as one could in a house, for instance)

Or would a tablet 'puter (many of which will happily run the Kindle 'app') be more flexible, though having (much) shorter battery life.


The cheapest (new) Kindle is £89.

The same price would get you a half-decent Android 4.0 tablet.


Personally, I know which one I'd chose  

[Lady Chrystal]

A Kindle is half the weight of a paperback and has a great battery life.

The screen is very easy to read in all sorts of light levels.

I've had mine almost a year and love it greatly, although I still read p-books, too.

Kindle is by far the best e-reader I've seen and I'm happy to endorse it.

(I think the responses you get to this question will be very much polarised!)

[Professor Phineas Brownsm]

Prof,

do you just want it to read ebooks and/or are in a situation where the month-long battery life is an essential? (Such as for my work colleague, who resides on a narrowboat and therefore cannot easily charge a tablet as one could in a house, for instance)

Or would a tablet 'puter (many of which will happily run the Kindle 'app') be more flexible, though having (much) shorter battery life.


The cheapest (new) Kindle is £89.

The same price would get you a half-decent Android 4.0 tablet.


Personally, I know which one I'd chose  

Thanking you Sir, that has helped

A Kindle is half the weight of a paperback and has a great battery life.

The screen is very easy to read in all sorts of light levels.

I've had mine almost a year and love it greatly, although I still read p-books, too.

Kindle is by far the best e-reader I've seen and I'm happy to endorse it.

(I think the responses you get to this question will be very much polarised!)

Thank you Lady Chrystal.

You both (and the rest of the non SP on the book of faces) have helped greatly.

[ForestB]

I had a first generation Kindle, I used it until my mom got me an iPad for Christmas. Now I have the kindle app on that, but my husband took over the kindle itself until it died. I like the idea of having many books in one small device and being able to access more when desired, mostly because I read insanely fast.. The kindles they have now are more than just ereaders, some act like tablet computers as well..

(sorry for the ramble, I haven't had caffeine yet..)

[Inflatable Friend]

I went through the Tablet or Kindle dilema a little while ago.

I ended up choosing the Kindle; while it may not be as versatile as a tablet it does what it is made to do much much better.

The Kindles screen is easy to read in most lights - I've been lounging out in bright seaside sunshine easily reading the screen, utterly unable to see the screen of a mates ipad or my own phone due to the glare, the E-ink is much nicer to read for prolonged periods than any LCD screen. The battery life is also fantastic, being able to spend a long day engrossed in a book is great, less so if you've got to remember to keep yourself near a plug socket. The lightweight nature of the kindle is another point in its favour!

In the end though it comes down to what you want - If you want something purely for reading books then get the Kindle, if you want a tablet then get that!

[Professor Phineas Brownsm]

Thank you all!!

I'm having to wait untill I get paid before I make my final decision on purchase! (it has made an appearance on one amazon wishlist)

[Boston Jones]

I love my kindle, especially since I travel quite frequently on ships and planes it really saves space in the luggage.

I do not recommend the kindle fire as you might as well just get an Ipad.  Get the one you can read in sunlight, otherwise what's the bloody point right?

It's great esp. when you're tired in bed and you don't want to hold the pages

[Lady Ava]

My kindle is possibly the bets thing ever. Had it almost a year and being the kind of lady who reads 4 books at any one time, it's beautiful to not have to carry AND thick and heavy novels any more.

[Wishmaster]

For pure reading enjoyment, a Kindle is without peer. It only uses battery power when turning a page or the screen redraws, hence the phenomenal battery life per charge. It can be read in full sunlight and still looks just like the page of a real book. The only thing close is a real book! The one drawback you may level at the Kindle is the lack of backlight. That's really being picky though.

If you want to read books and do all those other things you can do with a PC, a tablet is the way to go. The screen won't ever look as natural as the Kindle and cannot be used outdoors easily, especially in sunlight. Battery life is likely to be one or two days if you're lucky. If you buy a cheap tablet with a relatively low quality screen and low screen resolution, you will find text is not sharp enough to read comfortably for any length of time.

I have a Kindle 3 (the one with the keyboard) and a 10" ASUS Transformer tablet. Apples and oranges. Even if the tablet was small enough to read on, I wouldn't choose it over the Kindle for ebooks.

[Maxwell B. Cooper]

I've had my Kindle for nearly a year now and haven't regretted it once, it is just so convenient. I use it mostly at work, catching up on some reading during my lunch breaks. I would highly recommend it if you just want to read ebooks since I haven't found anything better.

[Lachlan_MacAuslander]

I initially resisted purchasing a Kindle. I work with computers for a living, so reading things on screens is not a huge deal for me - I even went so far as to read text files downloaded from the Gutenberg Project on a Palm device... But backlit screens can be a little hard on the eyes if used to excess, so for evening relaxation, I still preferred printed text in a bound volume.

Then my wife decided to buy one with an anniversary bonus from her job. I borrowed it a couple of times, and wound up purchasing the large DX model for myself. We eventually purchased secondary devices attached to each other's Amazon accounts in order to share books, and I just picked up a Kindle Fire last week... To my shock, the last time I tried reading a paperback book in bed, I found it to be something of a hassle by comparison to the reading experience on an e-reader.

Be forewarned. If you wind up liking the Kindle, you may wind up REALLY, REALLY liking the Kindle. My wife has purchased and read a faintly ridiculous number of books over the last year and a half, and I'm working on catching up with her. The Fire is backlit, so it's mostly a daytime reader for me (with the added bonus of being able to view/play video content as well, in a portable form factor), while I keep the others around for evening leisure reading.

Having access to an entire library on one device is extremely convenient. The downside of not being able to transfer files from one account to another is irritating, but I'm told there are quasi-legal ways around the DRM (which I'm researching because I simply don't trust "the Cloud")... and in the meantime, the ad-supported models are running $79, which is pretty cheap for handheld electronic gadgets anyway (thus the decision to buy 2nd Kindles and register with each other's accounts...). You can transfer non-Amazon specific e-texts (from Project Gutenberg, for example), .pdf documents, and so forth using the Kindle's USB cable (or even e-mail them to yourself using a Kindle e-mail that Amazon generates for each device), and it's kind of nice to be able to indulge in a trashy novel or three without having to display garish cover art to the world.

[Miss Ava Lark]

The downside of not being able to transfer files from one account to another is irritating, but I'm told there are quasi-legal ways around the DRM (which I'm researching because I simply don't trust "the Cloud")...

Actually I think DRM varies from ebook-to-ebook. I self-published an ebook on Amazon (and won't link it in this post, so that it doesn't look like I'm shamefully plugging it ;P ) and had the one-time choice of choosing whether to have DRM on or off. I chose off because, in the world of the newly published novelist, obscurity is a far greater threat than piracy. Hard to say what most people would do.

[Michael Farley]

Before purchasing a kindle, I would offer the following advice:

Firstly, check that the the books you would want to read are available at a fair price. Unlike paper books sold by Amazon, kindle ebook prices are set by the publisher so they may be only marginally cheaper (or occasionally even more expensive) than the paper version. Similarly some publishers and authors won't release their books electronically for various reasons (for example, the Harry Potter books have only recently become available as ebooks and you still can't buy them from Amazon). So if you like a particular author, make sure their work is available from either the kindle store or another DRM-free source (either of the legitimate or 'aaaarrr jim-lad' variety)

Secondly, make sure you're aware of the limitations of the kindle. The kindle is an excellent ebook reader but it isn't a replacement for an ipad or android tablet (such as the kindle fire). If you want to read colour books, browse the internet, use apps or read in the dark, buy a tablet. However be prepared to sacrifice battery life and the ability to read in bright sunshine (both of which the kindle does perfectly due to its crisp e-ink display).

[anilae]

Actually I think DRM varies from ebook-to-ebook. I self-published an ebook on Amazon (and won't link it in this post, so that it doesn't look like I'm shamefully plugging it ;P ) and had the one-time choice of choosing whether to have DRM on or off. I chose off because, in the world of the newly published novelist, obscurity is a far greater threat than piracy. Hard to say what most people would do.

My husband and I run a publishing house, and we published my best friend's book in June of 2011, and a few months ago, someone had put her book onto a downloading site (I'm not sure where, my husband found it). I don't remember her reaction, but I honestly thought it was kind of flattering that someone had put it up there. I'm kind of... unique.

[Michael Farley]

Neil Gaiman says he treats online piracy as free advertising (in the same way as people lending his books to friends and family). As an experiment he persuaded his publishers to offer American Gods as a free (as in both free-of-charge and DRM-free) download for a month. The following month in Russia (where his work has the highest piracy rate), sales of the paper book increased 300%. There's a very interesting interview with the Open Rights Group at

Gaiman on Copyright Piracy and the Web

.

Unfortunately not many publishers or authors are as open-minded.

[ForestB]

Hopping back into the discussion, I have discovered more interesting self published and new authors on Amazon thanks to my kindle account...including a close friend from high school that I had lost contact with.. She now has 7+ books out on Amazon, I think more publishers are willing to take a chance on more authors with the advent of ebooks, because there is a smaller financial risk than with physical books, if an author does well online, then maybe the publishing company will expand to hard copy...

[Essex Bounty]

Went on a month long tour through Italy.  Thought it best to buy a Kindle with 3G so I could use the net in free wi-fi zones and carry a lot of reading material lightly.

The 3G was all but useless in Italy.  It would find a connection then get hopelessly bogged down and frozen.  It was good for light travel, but you had to take in your carryon and take care that it never got knocked around or crushed.

At home, I can find cheap cheap books to buy 99 cents and below 5 dollars American, but the books are usually low quality.  Now, it's been sitting plugged in with several books on it still unread because I find I am hard on my books.  I leave them in cars, sleep with them, they fall off the couch, get tipped over off bathroom ledges, actions of which my Kindle would never survive.  So while it was a nice toy on a long trip, as far as every day use, it's too fragile.

[Lady Ava]

Went on a month long tour through Italy.  Thought it best to buy a Kindle with 3G so I could use the net in free wi-fi zones and carry a lot of reading material lightly.

The 3G was all but useless in Italy.  It would find a connection then get hopelessly bogged down and frozen.  It was good for light travel, but you had to take in your carryon and take care that it never got knocked around or crushed.

At home, I can find cheap cheap books to buy 99 cents and below 5 dollars American, but the books are usually low quality.  Now, it's been sitting plugged in with several books on it still unread because I find I am hard on my books.  I leave them in cars, sleep with them, they fall off the couch, get tipped over off bathroom ledges, actions of which my Kindle would never survive.  So while it was a nice toy on a long trip, as far as every day use, it's too fragile.

This isn't entirely true, I batter mine about a lot of the time, and it's fine. Also this can all be remedied by the purchase of a good case.
I have one with wifi and not 3G, so that'll be why I've not had any problems with connections.

[Captain Shipton Bellinger]

Also, my Sony e-reader survived spending the night under 3" of water at the Great Kelmarsh Flood last month. It took a few days to gently dry out completely, but it's functioning perfectly and even remembered my place in the book. I suspect that paper books would not fare quite so well under similar circumstances.

[Essex Bounty]

Went on a month long tour through Italy.  Thought it best to buy a Kindle with 3G so I could use the net in free wi-fi zones and carry a lot of reading material lightly.

The 3G was all but useless in Italy.  It would find a connection then get hopelessly bogged down and frozen.  It was good for light travel, but you had to take in your carryon and take care that it never got knocked around or crushed.

At home, I can find cheap cheap books to buy 99 cents and below 5 dollars American, but the books are usually low quality.  Now, it's been sitting plugged in with several books on it still unread because I find I am hard on my books.  I leave them in cars, sleep with them, they fall off the couch, get tipped over off bathroom ledges, actions of which my Kindle would never survive.  So while it was a nice toy on a long trip, as far as every day use, it's too fragile.

This isn't entirely true, I batter mine about a lot of the time, and it's fine. Also this can all be remedied by the purchase of a good case.
I have one with wifi and not 3G, so that'll be why I've not had any problems with connections.

Mine was both 3G and wi fi and it still got bogged down.

What do you describe as a 'good case'?  Another kindle owner had a leather case and when he put it in the front seat pocket on an airplane while taking a nap, he found out later that at some point during his nap, he'd stretched out his legs and his knee crushed the Kindle screen.

For that reason I found a wooden case - no metal to run afoul of airport metal detectors - so it may very well survive falls and who knows?  Maybe immersion.  But do I want to take that chance?  No.  So my fallback are books.

[Captain Shipton Bellinger]

I discovered a slight disdvantage to my Sony touchscreen e-reader while sipping tea at an outdoor café today. A small spider 'ballooned' its way onto the screen, activating the page navigation menu. As both the spider and I made enthusiastic attempts to move him a less inconvenient location, I watched the pages zipped past at an alarming rate. 

Fortunately the navigator is good enough to quickly find one's place again.