Mrs Gabb has offered to buy me a Kindle for Christmas. I want to use it for reading the increasing number of books I’m being sent to review, and to read the tidal wave of pdf files coming my way. I don’t want to watch videos on it, or write my own books.
Any advice on which model my wife should buy me?
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wouldn’t an Ipad be better? That way you could read PDFs on the move and use it to surf the net and aught else?
I want to be able to read Amazon stuff as well
My advice would be to get a Sony ebook reader, which means you’re not tied in to Amazon. That wouldn’t bother me so much if they hadn’t pulled that trick of removing bought books – coincidentally a couple of Orwell’s – from customers’ Kindles and crediting the cost back without asking. You can still read Amazon’s Kindle formatted books on other readers if it’s a DRM free book (or if you’ve removed the DRM) and converted it to an epub, but I can’t imagine Amazon would have much that can’t be found somewhere else. And unlike Amazon’s reader Sony’s, and I believe others, aren’t tied to their own store. I’ve only bought one title from Sony so far, all the rest have come from Lulu, Borders, etc. Oh, and Project Gutenberg of course. 🙂
An iPad is not great for concentrated reading. Backlit screens mean that your eyes have to adjust every time you move them away from the screen (thing shining a littl torch in your eye and then taking it away). And you can send PDFs to a Kindle either by email or by USB connection and most of them do fine (obviously you’ll have less luck with those that are PDF facsimilies of original pages or crazy folk who put two columns in their PDFs).
I have a Kindle and I was also looking at swapping it for a Soney eReader, but that was mainly for the touch screen as I use the Kindle for reading stuff I should really be making notes about as I go along and the tiny keyboard on the Kindle I have is painful to use for that – I end up just making a very short note so that I can find the place again if I want to .
My worry about the Sony reader is about the availability of content. Looking at the Wh Smith and Waterstones sites they point you to from the Sony webpages the selection is small compared with everything that’s so easily available on Amazon/Kindle. On the other hand that very availability is somewhat addictive in that it is all too easy to go and blow a small fortune on Kindle books when my lecturers recommend something!
Someone I was talking to the other day thought that a neat resolution to all this would be for someone to port the Kindle app for Android (the new eReader runs a heavily modified Android derivative) onto the Sony eReader which really ought to provide the best of all worlds. If I knew that was on its way I’d get one now. As it is, I’d personally stick with Kindle. I can’t be bothered trying to remove DRM, converting everything through Calibre or something and then copying stuff across manually. The convenience of shopping on Amazon and just getting the book next time the Kindle is on the network is the clincher at the moment for me.
Oh – so if you do end up getting a Kindle, which version? Well, given what I said about making notes above, I wouldn’t bother with the version with a keyboard, and especially if you are not going to want to make any substantial notes. The current entry level £89 one should be fine.
Thanks, Jock. I think it will be a basic Kindle.
Jock, Calibre (freeware ebook manager, and IMO better than either of two proprietary ones I’ve used, including Sony’s) converts Amazon’s format to epub. Actually it converts pretty much any format to any other format, but the point is that with little effort Amazon’s list can be opened to other readers, the only caveat being that much of Amazon’s ebooks have DRM protection which must be removed first and strictly speaking this is a bit of a no-no. Without wanting to go all considerably more libertarian than yow on IP (and I’m much less libertarian than some on it) DRM is another reason for me not to go with Amazon and I’ve managed to source every title I’ve wanted somewhere else. Admittedly mostly not the Sony store since their online presence Down Under is pretty poor, and sometimes you can find that an ebook available in other countries isn’t available in your own meaning use of a proxy or similar is sometimes necessary. Again, a little naughty but the way I see it the author still gets paid if I jump on a plane and connect to a wifi network at LAX, so what’s the difference? Can’t speak for the UK but there’s a certain amount of protectionism going on with regard to the Aussie publishing industry. I’ve even seen an ebook listed as out of stock. WTF? It doesn’t have a physical form, how the hell can it possibly be out of stock? So if they can’t be arsed to compete and prefer to hide behind IP laws and parallel import regs then I’m not going to lose sleep buying from the US or UK.
Agree with everything you said about iPads. My first ebook reader was a cheapie with a backlit screen. Not just bad on the eyes but also a colossal power hog. E-ink screens are miles better and apparently only use power to change what’s on the screen, so my Sony, which is one of the new ones that just came out, goes for ages unless I’m using the wifi or zooming in and out on pages a lot.
I suppose for balance I should mention a few minor criticisms of the Sony, though might not all apply in the UK. First, it launched with no accessories, which means no nice cover with built in LED reading light like my wife’s older version. Second, the tight bastards didn’t even include a slip cover to protect it. Third, although touch screen it’s IR sensor based and if you’re used to iPad/smartphone/touch pad type things it feels fairly imprecise unless using the included stylus. Fourth, and this is the only major one I’ve got so far, it comes with a stylus and there’s nowhere to put it. For the sake of a making it a marginally larger and heavier unit, and it’s so light and thin that it wouldn’t have suffered from the addition of a few mm and grams here and there, they could have made a storage slot or something to keep the stylus in when you’re not using it. Other than that, absolutely love my Sony.
If you want an e-reader that works as an Android tablet, the Kobo Vox.
If you want an Android tablet that works as an e-reader, one of the Velocity Micro Cruz products.
If you want something that’s nothing but an e-reader … well, you don’t, even if you think you do.
Perish Amazon.
My wife is going to get me a Kindle for my birthday. I have asked for a Kindle Touch. It’s only slightly more expensive than the basic version and I am assuming it’s a bit easier to use.
I have the last generation of the Kindle Wi-Fi/3G. It has the tiny keyboard which is fine for taking notes and searching for books. If you have no need for a 3G connection or keyboard (and no objection to Amazon), I would recommend that basic Kindle model. The lower-priced tablets are looking increasingly attractive, but I’d be wary of that back-lit screen for extended reading.
I wasn’t sold on e-readers until I got my Kindle. It has dramatically eased the process of bringing reading material on the road.
Err, and the upshot of this is? Presumably the basic Kindle or the Kindle Touch?
Sorry, not technological-just want to read good books.
Kindle Fire?
Tony
Trouble with Kindle Fire and so far as I can see also the Kobo Vox is that they are back-lit tablet clones. The Kindle Touch is not yet available in the UK and there was no indication of when it would be, and it also looks like they’ve reduced the range available in the UK to the £89 Wifi one without a keyboard and the £149 3G one with a keyboard (which is actually more than it used to be when I got my Wifi keyboard version at £111.
The other Kobo, the touch, appears to offer the ability to read Mobi files, but you’ve still got the issue with DRM to get round on purchases from Amazon.
However I have found this – http://news.softpedia.com/news/Sony-eReader-Hack-Turns-it-Into-an-eInk-Android-Tablet-230512.shtml – about a hacked Sony eReader to turn it into an e-Ink based Android tablet onto which you can install the Kindle reader app for Android, which might do everything I would want.
It’s looking more and more certain that Mrs Gabb can go out and just buy me the basic Kindle for £89. Hacking other products to make them do different things is something I’m happy to defend, but not follow.
Jerome – I have now started in earnest on your novel. The long passage about printing out and faxing back e-mails was so funny, I had to stop reading for a while. If the rest carries on at this level, it will be worth reading in pdf on my notebook.
“The long passage about printing out and faxing back e-mails was so funny, I had to stop reading for a while…”
Should I admit that I was once paid to do something much like that?