Kindle. Wow!

[W3MIV]

Just bought a Kindle. It is the "global" model, and (ostensibly) will download books in most of the rest of the world. Not that I am off to anywhere for a bit. A goodly bit, likely.

I looked at the new iPad, but rejected it as being too pricey and too much a duplication of my laptop. All I am interested in is reducing the weight and bother of most of the books I read during my enforced status as a handicap. Believe me when I tell you I much prefer to be handicapped in Trap than the way it now works.

Back to the K. It is quite capacious. I have downloaded a plethora of classics -- Dickens, Sinclair (Upton), Norris, Lewis (Sinclair), Fitzgerald, Chesterton, Poe, Wilde, Wister, Wodehouse, and more -- from the Gutenberg Project. All public domain; all free of charge; and all free of avoirdupois. Consider that the K weighs in at less than a pound.

Battery lasts very long time (I know not just how long since I have not run it out, though I have read up to six hours without shutting it down). I generally plug it in to recharge when I turn in.

Screen is ultra sharp, and I am told that the real-ink technology only uses power to change the screen, and that the current is off until the page is changed. No backlight, but it holds up very well in bright sunlight -- unlike most backlighted LCD screens.

Good deal at $260 with free ship from Amazon.

Anybody out there using one?

[al2n]

I finally joined the band wagon and downloaded the Kindle app for my laptop.

Gotta say, I am pretty impressed so far. I may very will pick up the Kindle hand held unit this fall. Been downloading a bunch of the classics, many of which I have not read in years.

[kf0rt]

Cheap books written on paper:

I'm a bit of a fan of Amazon's used stuff. Books are cheap, and who cares if someone read it before you did? Ditto DVD's and the like. My one complaint about Kindle is the cost of the books. Seems like it's all $9.95 or something. If it's not a new release, you can usually get the real thing cheaper through their used book stores.

[n6hcm]

i'm concerned about drm, which is why i haven't gone too far with the kindle or anything like it.

i do buy ebooks ... usually as pdfs. o'reilly was having a sale: any of their ebooks for $4.95 ... available in a variety of formats (epub, pdf, ...). i bought twelve last night, and saved about $500 over their paper counterparts.

some public libraries offer ebooks (usually epub format) for loan.

[n0iu]

I don't have a Kindle reader, but I do have the Kindle app on my iPod Touch.

Oh, and I already informed my wife that I will be getting an iPad... sooner or later...

UPDATE!!!
My wife never listens to me... but that's not news!

So I told her I wanted an iPad so you know what she does? She goes to the online Apple store and orders one for my birthday! This is my third marriage and we are comin up on our 10th anniversary. Looks like this one is gonna stick!

But anyway, I have had the iPad for a couple of weeks and I do like it... a lot! I have tried the iBook app, but I still prefer the Kindle app for reasons stated earlier.

Mini Thread Hijack: I also installed the EchoLink app on the iPad. I had never used EchoLink before, but in my quest for free apps, I found this one and I must say that it also works great! I can now sit on my porch (when its not pouring down rain or 95° outside) and connect anywhere! So this is what all the fuss is about!

Now back to your regularly scheduled post.

[kf0rt]

Wife's Kindle just arrived. Third gen on this? Sure is a "cute" piece of wizardry. Got her the "International" version, but it's connected to the house WiFi at the moment. $189 plus $35 for the official case (rapage on the case, I'm thinking, but will see). I already want one, but the XYL gets to be the guinea pig. Owing to the fact that Target was out of stock last Friday and I can't keep my mouth shut, she's had about a week to anticipate. "Hey y'all, watch this!" BFF already, I'm thinking.

I'll probably be hanging out in the recipe section of the Island as I learn how to cook. :rofl:

How you liking it months later, Albi?

[kf0rt]

Bwahahahaha! As I was writing that (email open on the other monitor), I start getting a flood of Amazon receipts. She's ordered four books so far. All of them free.

Attagirl.

[w6tmi]

Initially I was a bit with n2' on the liking paper, but given the amount of literature on the Gutenberg project, and I really hate reading off of a computer, I decided to try the Nook. Barne's & Nobles similar device, based on it seems a little smaller with a touchpad rather then keyboard, and at 200 with a free 50 buck gift cert.

They charge you a buck for the freebies, I guess that's how they subsidize the 3g service, but you can read PDFs, so with CutePDF you can turn anything readable on your computer into a doc for it..

I've also found PDF's of books I own. Possibly questionable legality, but considering I have the actual book boxed up...
You can add plenty of memory via a micro SD card I have 8 gigs on mine the 4 or so it has is plenty, but I figured in case I wanted to play music..

I havent tried music, but I dont care, my books dont play music either, that's why I have a music player.

Have bought a couple as well, def nice to have that option when you're stuck, bored finished your last book and need something.
Another cool option is if you buy a book, you can "loan" it to someone. You virtually give it to them, it becomes in-accessible while they have it.

Not quite as good as the old book swap network but at least if you have friend(s) with similar taste you can save some money doing so.

I probably won't buy too many given the price is the same if not more at times then an actual book, but the "emergency book" aspect makes it worth having a CC on file with it.

You can't zoom, but you can enlarge the font to a fairly big size.

And I do like the space saving, too many boxes 'o books.

[W4RLR]

I downloaded the iBooks app for the iPhone. It came with a free copy of Winnie the Pooh.