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So I want to buy a Kindle

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Zzoram said:
I would buy a $199 color E-Ink Kindle, if it has all the features of the Kindle DX and supported some new file formats.

Oh, and Textbooks would have to hit the Amazon e-book store as well. I would gladly pay $200 to store all my textbooks on a super light Kindle Color.
Awesome.
 
Zzoram said:
I would buy a $199 color E-Ink Kindle, if it has all the features of the Kindle DX and supported some new file formats.

Oh, and Textbooks would have to hit the Amazon e-book store as well. I would gladly pay $199 to store all my textbooks on a super light Kindle Color.


And you should win stuff by watching.
 
gregor7777 said:
I believe if you get it to .txt format it will read it, but I'm not 100% sure.

txt works yes.

what you do is you get calibre for free from here

http://calibre-ebook.com/download

then you put whatever the hell you want on there, push convert and then upload to kindle.

Also you can use it to subscribe to a large list of websites which will update daily then push it to your usb'd kindle.

Anyone else own the DX kindle? So awesome. So overpriced.

1) The "next," "previous" page buttons on the Nook have a bit more resistance and are recessed beneath the unit's top layer of poly-whatever. This means they are harder to hit accidentally, and will never get clogged with hair or finger grease or whatever. See, if the "next page" button goes out on any eReader, its instantly useless. I love the Nook's design on these.

this terrifies me actually. I would not no what to do. Especially since I'm in europe so I get a shitty 1 year american warrantee instead of a standard 2 years by law euro style awesome warrantee and a whole work of 'fucking ship it too us' to deal with if it goes wrong.
 
I can't comment on Whitta's movie skills (haven't seen Book of Eli yet), but his post on the first page completely misses the point.

Reading on an iPad is NOT IDEAL. The screen is bright, has glare, and WILL hurt the eyes after a while. Plus, the battery life is not as good.

E-Ink is a different beast. It's remarkably close to paper and no strain on the eyes. Whenever someone pimps one of the iProducts or a smartphone over a dedicated e-reader, that is a very clear sign that they don't know what the fuck they're talking about.

No, the Kindle or Nook can't play games or do your taxes. But if you want an amazing reading device, well, they DO do that.

edit: Kindle owner here, BTW. Love it!
 
QVT said:
Is this like or unlike cheap shots at Kindle in threads totally unrelated to iPad? Because I know you're a troll, a hack, and a nobody, but I didn't think you were a hypocrite.

Way out of line. At least go crazy with personal attacks when I'm not right there participating in the thread.
 
DaBargainHunta said:
I can't comment on Whitta's movie skills (haven't seen Book of Eli yet), but his post on the first page completely misses the point.

Reading on an iPad is NOT IDEAL. The screen is bright, has glare, and WILL hurt the eyes after a while. Plus, the battery life is not as good.

E-Ink is a different beast. It's remarkably close to paper and no strain on the eyes. Whenever someone pimps one of the iProducts or a smartphone over a dedicated e-reader, that is a very clear sign that they don't know what the fuck they're talking about.

No, the Kindle or Nook can't play games or do your taxes. But if you want an amazing reading device, well, they DO do that.

edit: Kindle owner here, BTW. Love it!
Plus it's heavier, doesn't work really well in direct sunlight and you need to pay for your 3G access.
From the little time I've spent with the iPad, I can see it being used for reading short passages, but I really can't imagine myself doing any long form reading on it.
But honestly, I don't really get why people are trying to compare those two devices all the time, they are vastly different beasts with different goals.

As for the question in the OP, if Amazon is planning on adding a touch screen to the Kindle, I'd say it's a reason to get one now.
Touch interface is kind of a bad idea for an e-book.
 
Chichikov said:
As for the question in the OP, if Amazon is planning on adding a touch screen to the Kindle, I'd say it's a reason to get one now.
Touch interface is kind of a bad idea for an e-book.

I've been reading (rumors of course) that it's going to be the main feature in the next one and to be honest I can't think of anything I'd really need or want to touch on an e-reader?
 
zero margin said:
I've been reading (rumors of course) that it's going to be the main feature in the next one and to be honest I can't think of anything I'd really need or want to touch on an e-reader?

As much as I like the Kindle and the Nook, their interfaces can be sluggish which is one of the reasons I returned the Kindle to begin with. A touch screen could reduce some of that since you don't have to navigate around as much. It would be like using the arrow keys and the enter key to navigate around a web browser rather than directly clicking on what you want. For highlighting and looking up words it would be great too since you would just touch the area you want rather than navigating the cursor to it. So I can definitely understand the want for a touch screen interface.
 
DaBargainHunta said:
I can't comment on Whitta's movie skills (haven't seen Book of Eli yet), but his post on the first page completely misses the point.

Reading on an iPad is NOT IDEAL. The screen is bright, has glare, and WILL hurt the eyes after a while. Plus, the battery life is not as good.

E-Ink is a different beast. It's remarkably close to paper and no strain on the eyes. Whenever someone pimps one of the iProducts or a smartphone over a dedicated e-reader, that is a very clear sign that they don't know what the fuck they're talking about.

No, the Kindle or Nook can't play games or do your taxes. But if you want an amazing reading device, well, they DO do that.

edit: Kindle owner here, BTW. Love it!
I've found that people who pooh-pooh e-ink fail to acknowledge or recognize that the benefits are found with extended use. In terms of eye strain, e-ink doesn't reveal its superiority through a quick glance. I enjoy dinking around on my ipad (esp. Plants vs. Zombies), but I'll continue to read on my Nook. e-ink is the best alternative to reading a paperback/hardback. Some books you just don't care to have cluttering your bookshelves.

Amazon/BN/Sony may lose a few marginal sales to ipad, but I don't foresee the e-reader market being subsumed or abandoning e-ink. Its benefits are too pronounced. And as e-ink (and e-readers in turn) improve, I expect that the market will grow. The only wrench in the works is if publishers jack prices (as they seem wont to do) and reinforce a lack of perceived value for an intangible, non-resellable ebook.
 
zero margin said:
I've been reading (rumors of course) that it's going to be the main feature in the next one and to be honest I can't think of anything I'd really need or want to touch on an e-reader?
The only thing I can think of, is highlighting.
 
zero margin said:
That is the only reason that keeps me from going all in on the nook. Amazon isn't going away and I'm not implying B&N is but amazon they're not.

Might be a good thing. Why all the respect for Amazon's publisher relations? Didn't Amazon users wake up one morning to find MacMillion books totally gone due to a spat over pricing?

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/amazon-pulls-macmillan-books-over-e-book-price-disagreement/

Of course, I'm not saying B&N can't get themselves into the same pickle. I'm just saying Amazon is the one that's already pulled book availability in a game of hardball.

Eh, like I said, this is six of one and half a dozen of another until one of them start signing exclusives...
 
xbhaskarx said:
Seriously, why is this? Is it because of Whitta or the movie?
If the movie is really that shitty I may have to rent the DVD...

Movie is actually really good in my opinion.
 
Because I spent most of my net time on GAF, can I just ask these questions here

Does the Kindle (or Nook or any other) have a bookmarking feature?
Is there a feature where you can highlight a section of sentence of paragraph for future reference?
How many books can these devices hold?
And importantly, is there a Cloud like feature where you could download books to another storage device/area and then have the option of transferring that to your reader?
Is there a feature where it remembers the last page you were on if you're reading multiple books?

Sell this to me GAF
 
Meus Renaissance said:
Because I spent most of my net time on GAF, can I just ask these questions here

Does the Kindle (or Nook or any other) have a bookmarking feature?
Is there a feature where you can highlight a section of sentence of paragraph for future reference?
How many books can these devices hold?
And importantly, is there a Cloud like feature where you could download books to another storage device/area and then have the option of transferring that to your reader?
Is there a feature where it remembers the last page you were on if you're reading multiple books?

Sell this to me GAF

Yes
Yes
1500 books on each with the Nook offering a micro SD slot for more storage.
No
Yes
 
I'm trying to determine which of these ebook readers is the best. It doesn't seem like one is overwhelmingly better than the other ones. It seems that most of them have considerable flaws.
 
6.8 said:
I'm trying to determine which of these ebook readers is the best. It doesn't seem like one is overwhelmingly better than the other ones. It seems that most of them have considerable flaws.

The Kindle and nook are pretty balanced feature and use wise, which is good. It is nice to have the feature set and quality about even, as it will push both companies to try harder to improve. I personally have written off the Sony due to the lack of wifi store (but was recently fixed).
 
grumble said:
Might have been a reference to the Apple love in an e-reader thread and the reaction to that.
Well, I apologize if I offended anyone, my post was intended to be at least partly humorous but taken within the context of a whole flood of unwanted iPad posts in this thread I can see why it might have left a sour taste. For the record I've spent a fair bit of time with the Kindle and I think it's a very cool device.

Gizmodo has an interesting article today about how the future of Amazon's Kindle business is more likely to be centered around selling e-books on a variety of platforms like iPad and the upcoming wave of tablets rather than its own dedicated hardware and suggests the former will outlive the latter.

http://gizmodo.com/5510620/the-ipad-amazons-secret-weapon
 
PhoncipleBone said:
The Kindle and nook are pretty balanced feature and use wise, which is good. It is nice to have the feature set and quality about even, as it will push both companies to try harder to improve. I personally have written off the Sony due to the lack of wifi store (but was recently fixed).

So what do you think about the models out now then?



Interesting article, Whitta.
 
grumble said:
So what do you think about the models out now then?



Interesting article, Whitta.

The Nook is rootable if that helps =)

Personally, having owned both, I feel that the Nook interface is a bit more intuitive to me and it was easier to do things thanks to the second screen which is context sensitive. I also like the form factor of the Nook over the Kindle too. It's a bit smaller than the Kindle but has a bigger screen. Other people who have just used a Kindle though are quite happy with it.

I used to like that the Nook was ePub friendly and open to more sources and formats, but the reality is you can convert them to a Kindle recognizable format easily. But it is nice how easy it is just to drop stuff on the Nook without the need of conversion.
 
Marty Chinn said:
The Nook is rootable if that helps =)

Personally, having owned both, I feel that the Nook interface is a bit more intuitive to me and it was easier to do things thanks to the second screen which is context sensitive. I also like the form factor of the Nook over the Kindle too. It's a bit smaller than the Kindle but has a bigger screen. Other people who have just used a Kindle though are quite happy with it.

I used to like that the Nook was ePub friendly and open to more sources and formats, but the reality is you can convert them to a Kindle recognizable format easily. But it is nice how easy it is just to drop stuff on the Nook without the need of conversion.


The navigation on the nook is nicer, I agree. And easily changed and updated with firmware updates. The more open formats is also nice, without the need to convert.

Speaking of which, someone told me that the PDF viewer on the Kindle was upgraded and fixed from its first awful version. Is this true?
 
So, what are the selection of ebooks like? If there is a massive catalogue then I'd be very interested. And because it's digital, I suppose you can download the ebook to your device as many times as you want right?
 
Meus Renaissance said:
So, what are the selection of ebooks like? If there is a massive catalogue then I'd be very interested. And because it's digital, I suppose you can download the ebook to your device as many times as you want right?

~ 400k titles from Amazon alone I believe.
 
PhoncipleBone said:
The navigation on the nook is nicer, I agree. And easily changed and updated with firmware updates. The more open formats is also nice, without the need to convert.

Speaking of which, someone told me that the PDF viewer on the Kindle was upgraded and fixed from its first awful version. Is this true?

Well, at first there was no PDF reader on the kindle. You had to convert them.

Then they added PDF support a few months ago and it's the current shitty version :)
 
Meus Renaissance said:
So, what are the selection of ebooks like? If there is a massive catalogue then I'd be very interested. And because it's digital, I suppose you can download the ebook to your device as many times as you want right?

The numbers get a bit screwy, but Amazon has about 400k, I think B&N claims something like 1.5 million between itself and Google Books, but the Nook also supports other book stores too. Plus if you strip the DRM off Amazon, you can use their books on the Nook too. Yes, you can redownload them if needed. Downloads only take a couple seconds so it's fast.
 
gregor7777 said:
~ 400k titles from Amazon alone I believe.

Barnes and Noble has a larger selection, and works with Google books as well. Some books may be a little more expensive on BN, some cheaper. But you do have access to more stuff. It is the trade off. Both readers and stores are fantastic, and do support syncing between the device and the desktop ereaders. And when the iPad nook app hits later it should sync with that too.
 
Someone mentioned it earlier, but for the sake of longevity, I kinda trust Amazon over Barnes and Noble when it comes to the long term support. Just my gut feeling.

Shame there isn't one standard format they could both agree to.
 
LCfiner said:
Well, at first there was no PDF reader on the kindle. You had to convert them.

Then they added PDF support a few months ago and it's the current shitty version :)

That is what I thought. I thought they still had the shitty viewer, but someone told me they fixed it. I knew I would have heard about it here and not from some random customer at work.
 
Get a Kindle. It has like two weeks of battery life, is lightweight, and has free 3G service for downloads. Why wait for a touch model, when it's sure to drain battery life quicker and will likely add another layer to the screen between you and the text?
 
gregor7777 said:
Someone mentioned it earlier, but for the sake of longevity, I kinda trust Amazon over Barnes and Noble when it comes to the long term support. Just my gut feeling.

Shame there isn't one standard format they could both agree to.

Amazon has had a longer time to stabilize an online store and environment, and to launch the product. This is the first (I believe) consumer electronics product that BN launched, and it is pretty impressive for a first effort. I think the little fight between them is just heating up, with both seeing iPad apps as a secondary revenue stream.
 
gregor7777 said:
Someone mentioned it earlier, but for the sake of longevity, I kinda trust Amazon over Barnes and Noble when it comes to the long term support. Just my gut feeling.

I think B&N will be around for awhile, at least longer than the device will last/be used. But the upside I feel to the Nook is its open formats, so even if B&N goes under, it still supports the ePub standard. Plus libraries also support ePub which means you can get stuff from your local library.

Another small but nice thing is I like that you can customize your screen saver and your wallpaper. It's a minor thing but at least it adds a nice personal touch. I'll take a pic of my Calvin and Hobbes wallpapered Nook later if anyone cares.
 
Marty Chinn said:
I think B&N will be around for awhile, at least longer than the device will last/be used. But the upside I feel to the Nook is its open formats, so even if B&N goes under, it still supports the ePub standard. Plus libraries also support ePub which means you can get stuff from your local library.

Another small but nice thing is I like that you can customize your screen saver and your wallpaper. It's a minor thing but at least it adds a nice personal touch. I'll take a pic of my Calvin and Hobbes wallpapered Nook later if anyone cares.

That is another nice thing. And the free reading while in a store. The lend me option is a nice little bonus too.
 
Marty Chinn said:
I think B&N will be around for awhile, at least longer than the device will last/be used. But the upside I feel to the Nook is its open formats, so even if B&N goes under, it still supports the ePub standard. Plus libraries also support ePub which means you can get stuff from your local library.

Another small but nice thing is I like that you can customize your screen saver and your wallpaper. It's a minor thing but at least it adds a nice personal touch. I'll take a pic of my Calvin and Hobbes wallpapered Nook later if anyone cares.

Actually, I meant long term support for the device.

The Nook running on Android has me interested.

edit: and yeah, take a pic. thanks
 
So some readers are store-exclusive? That's fucking bull man. Shit like that only confuses the customer and threatens the growth of the market.
 
Actually, the point is that none of them are really store exclusive if you strip the DRM off and convert in Calibre. You can use books from any store on any device.

The only ebookstore that can't be stripped of DRM and converted is... iBooks.
 
Meus Renaissance said:
So some readers are store-exclusive? That's fucking bull man. Shit like that only confuses the customer and threatens the growth of the market.

The Kindle is sorta store exclusive but there are kind of ways around it. The rest seem to support the ePub standard. What I like about the Kindle and the Nook is the lifetime 3G access that comes with it which means you can buy books directly from the device. To me that's a nice feature that most of the other eReaders don't have.

The Kindle has the ability to look up stuff on Wikipedia, a very barebones web browser, and the ability to check e-mail. Most of which aren't really worth using on the Kindle though. The Nook doesn't have an official browser yet, but it does have one if you root it and it's actually a pretty nice browser and much better than the Kindle's . The only problem is, the developers have locked down the 3G access when you root it so you can only use the browser or Pandora on WiFi.
 
Teddman said:
Actually, the point is that none of them are really store exclusive if you strip the DRM off and convert in Calibre. You can use books from any store on any device.

The only ebookstore that can't be stripped of DRM and converted is... iBooks.

Oh, how do you strip the B&N DRM? I didn't know you could do that.
 
Just saw a video on YouTube which demonstrates the Nook being noticably slower in turning pages when compared to the Kindle. Not sure if that is an old firmware.

I have two last questions. From what I have seen none of them have colour. This bothers me when browsing the store ebook library. Are there any plans to change this? I would prefer to have the option to view in colour certain aspects of the UI.

Another question is regarding Text Search. Does the Nook have a Find Text function?
 
Meus Renaissance said:
Just saw a video on YouTube which demonstrates the Nook being noticably slower in turning pages when compared to the Kindle. Not sure if that is an old firmware.

I have two last questions. From what I have seen none of them have colour. This bothers me when browsing the store ebook library. Are there any plans to change this? I would prefer to have the option to view in colour certain aspects of the UI.

Another question is regarding Text Search. Does the Nook have a Find Text function?

That's old firmware. They're virtually the same now. What's the video so I can verify?

Color eInk is in its early stages but it's just on the verge of becoming mainstream. There's expectations that the next round of eReaders may have them. The Nook at least has a color LCD to browse covers if that's what you want, otherwise, the core reading is all in black in white.

Yes, the Nook has a Find Text feature.
 
I'm really interested in one now. I'm in the UK though and I'm uncomfortable in buying something from the states as the warranty would not apply to me (right?).
 
Construction wise, between the Nook and the Kindle which will better survive trips to the beach? Thinking sand getting in it, getting wet, all that. Also, which can take the most abuse?
 
gregor7777 said:
Construction wise, between the Nook and the Kindle which will better survive trips to the beach? Thinking sand getting in it, getting wet, all that. Also, which can take the most abuse?

I wouldn't take any valuable/expensive piece electronic equipment to places where they could get wet let alone have sand on them. :lol
 
gregor7777 said:
Construction wise, between the Nook and the Kindle which will better survive trips to the beach? Thinking sand getting in it, getting wet, all that. Also, which can take the most abuse?

nook as less physical buttons than the Kindle, but the touchscreen might be a little tough to see in the sunlight. But you will only be using that when you are searching for a book to read.

Meus Renaissance said:
I wouldn't take any valuable/expensive piece electronic equipment to places where they could get wet let alone have sand on them.

This too.
 
Meus Renaissance said:
I wouldn't take any valuable/expensive piece electronic equipment to places where they could get wet let alone have sand on them. :lol

Well, I disagree.

But anyway, I'm more concerned with the general construction.
 
Marty Chinn said:
I think B&N will be around for awhile, at least longer than the device will last/be used. But the upside I feel to the Nook is its open formats, so even if B&N goes under, it still supports the ePub standard. Plus libraries also support ePub which means you can get stuff from your local library.

Yeah, that's a huge plus for it, being able to get books from multiple stores, including Indigo/Kobo. Being in canada, though there is no way to get a a nook, other than driving down to the states.
 
that Gizmodo article that Whitta posted is fine but it also says "In many ways, the iPad is the best Kindle yet." That is a load of crap. The best Kindle funnily enough is the fucking Kindle. I want to read. People forget about actually reading and worry about stupid animated page turns.

Im getting an iPad when it comes out here in Australia but in all seriousness if you want to read get a Kindle. Enough said
 
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