Kindle

[Joshua]

I am seriously considering buying a first generation kindle, anyone else ever have one/used one? If so what did you think about it, good or bad? Any catches too it, it all sounds pretty good from what I've read.

[Keab42]

IIRC Kindle's tie you in to Amazon's propriety e-book format. There are others out there that will read a range of formats including PDF.

I've played with some in a shop and they look much better than I thought they could, if they weren't so prohibitively expensive I might consider one.

One other point of note, Ebooks can actually be more expensive than their dead tree counterparts.

[Joshua]

So loading up ebooks you have from other sources is a no-go then....that is disappointing.

[Alja-Markir]

I have not used an electronic reader myself, but I've studied them as part of my education towards becoming an Archivist.

Simply put, electronic readers are inferior in almost every way to regular books. Books survive reasonably well through rough handling, spills, sand and grit, electrical discharge and magnetic fields, and anything else you can throw at them short of fire; ERs do not. Books are cheap to produce and easily recycled; ERs are not. Books can be lent and traded individually; ER books cannot, they are bound to the reader. Books, once bought, are yours forever; ER books are rented and access is ultimately controlled by others. Books last centuries; ERs last until obsolete or they fail, at the very best decades. Books are maintainance free; ERs are not. Books are battery-free and energy free; ERs are not. Books are undesirable items for theft; ERs are not.

Of course, there are some things ERs do better. They take up less space, for one. They also (potentially) allow instant cross referencing and comparison of texts. That's about it.

To be fair, I'm not against digital books at all. I think it's a great idea, I just think the technology and the culture for it do not yet exist. I also think that digital copies are so fragile in nature as to necessitate people keeping books anyways for their durability and reliability.

~Alja~

[Joshua]

Ebooks = me not touching that awful paper they make books out of + portability + finding more obscure books much faster/easier.


Edit: The potential to be portable, if they weren't damned expensive.

That is to say the readers.

[theDreamer]

Also, a good ereader will let you zoom in.

My dad recently bought a fairly cheap one, mostly used for renting library ebooks (same as renting normal books from the library, the ebooks are free).

He can zoom in, meaning he doesn't need to use his reading glasses, which he is enthused about.

The screen on it though isn't the best, and is one of those greenish things, like on old Palms...

[Alja-Markir]

Give the tech a couple decades. Once ther are nicer systems, ERs will make a lot more sense.

Less power consumption, less data restrictions, sturdier construction, better displays, better libraries, lower prices, et cetera, all will come with technological advances.

The Japanese are currently working on bio electric device controls, if I recall. Not sure when humanity will see it put into everyday use, but trust me, being able to access data with a thought is handy.

~Alja~

[Lord Chrusher]

I do not think we have to wait twenty years for good ebooks. They may be here in five or ten years.

[iamafish]

Give the tech a couple decades. Once ther are nicer systems, ERs will make a lot more sense.

couple of decedes eh?

[Lord Chrusher]

Alja-Markir being a time traveler and all could have visited the 2030s and know that there are better ebooks there.

[Lorithad]

My friend got a sony e-reader for christmas. Supposedly they're much better than the kindle. They're open source, and can read more than just your normal e-reader files. Or something. I'd suggest checking it out at the very least.

[Kisaki]

So loading up ebooks you have from other sources is a no-go then....that is disappointing.

Actually, that depends. There are stores other than Amazon which sell books in formats that the Kindle can read--Baen, for example, has a fairly large collection of fantasy/sci-fi for the Kindle (quite a few of which are free!) And if you get books from other places that are non-DRM, you can convert them very easily into a Kindle-readable format, either through an Amazon service or through a program like Calibre. And if you have a generation 2 Kindle or DX and the latest format, you can read pdfs natively; they have a screen-rotate tool that works like a sort of zoom, so they don't look super tiny and hard to read. Makes even reading graphic novels on it a pretty pleasant experience.

I have a good 500+ books on my Kindle, and only 30 or so of those came from Amazon (and most of those were free...). Of course, I like to read a lot of public domain stuff, which makes it way easier to fill up. What you CAN'T do at the moment is, say, buy ebooks at the Sony or B&N store and put them on your Kindle, or vice-versa. You also can't share your drm books, unless you and the person you're sharing with are on the same Amazon account, and even then you can only put one book on six devices. So you could buy a book and put it on your Kindle, iphone, computer, and share it with three other Kindles, but then you could never put it on anything else unless you re-bought it. (You might be able to de-register one of the devices and get the book back, but I've never had a reason to try.)

I love mine; it's amazing to be able to pull it out when I'm stuck somewhere waiting, or when I'm traveling. I also managed to get a lot of my books for class last semester for it, which saved a lot of carting things around and cost half as much as getting them from the bookstore would have. Plus I could search and take notes, which came in handy when it was time to write essays. But my reading habits made it so that it paid for itself, in terms of "books that I would have bought in hard copy but was able to get for free," and I tend to be reading ten different books at once. And I've already crammed 1500+ books into my tiny apartment and have no more shelf space For a lot of people, it wouldn't be a very good investment. Or maybe one of the other readers would be better for you--depends on what format the stuff you already have is, whether or not the "free" 3g is at all important to you, what size device you want to read on, what kinds of books you might want to buy in the future, price, etc. You can pick up one of the older Sony's for really cheap now, I believe.

[Evil Jim]

I agree with everything Alja said in his first post (provided he doesn't go edit it now into something weird.) However, there is also this:

[Shinoki]

Ebooks = me not touching that awful paper they make books out of

I don't know if you just buy really poor books or if you are making an eco-joke, but I feel compelled to point out that some books are made out of really nice paper.

[Dave-O_Boy]

My mother got one for christmas. She likes it. *shrugs*

[Joshua]

Ebooks = me not touching that awful paper they make books out of

I don't know if you just buy really poor books or if you are making an eco-joke, but I feel compelled to point out that some books are made out of really nice paper.

No, no joke, I hate the feel of paper, unless it is lamented, or as I like to call it slick paper, it makes reading books, newspapers, comics nearly impossible for me, its as bad as the nails on a chalk board type thing.

Also, update, I bought one.

EDIT: I bought the latest generation 6" model.

[Rikadyn]

Friend was talking about them earlier, and had an idea that i quite liked, that you should be able to get a e-version of a book whenever you buy the paper version, like how some studios are giving download codes for digital copies of dvds with the dvd, or disney giving both dvd and bd...

[Rikadyn]

Friend was talking about them earlier, and had an idea that i quite liked, that you should be able to get a e-version of a book whenever you buy the paper version, like how some studios are giving download codes for digital copies of dvds with the dvd, or disney giving both dvd and bd...

[Evil Jim]

Double post is double.Actually, I posted so you can't just delete the other. Your error is recorded forever! BWA HAHAHAHA HAAAA!!

[Arius]

Is Jim trying to out-troll me?

---

I like the idea from Least I Could Do. Newspaper publishers could stop printing and do all their subscriptions through e-readers.

[Niko88]

My grandpa got one for christmas and the screen resolution is amazing. I thought I was looking at a sticker on the screen, and let me explain why I thought that was a good thing. I can't read a computer screen for a long time because it hurts my eyes. I could read a Kindle for hours and be fine

[Keab42]

The display on the demo reader I fondled in the bookshop impressed me. I couldn't believe the clarity on it.

But the doesn't negate the cost that the e-books can actually be more expensive than the dead tree counterparts and that storage is an issue.

My dead tree collection may be in danger of bringing down the wall the shelves are attached to but I won't go to read one and suddenly find that the words inside are gibberish because it corrupted overnight. Storage options are getting better but the industry is too new right now. I'll probably poke my nose into them once the libraries get things sorted with e-book lending.

[Shinoki]

My dead tree collection may be in danger of bringing down the wall the shelves are attached to but I won't go to read one and suddenly find that the words inside are gibberish because it corrupted overnight.

On this same idea, I wonder how re-readings would fare? With them all in digital form you may just be accessing your latest and greatest finds. I don't know how often I have picked up a book from my shelf just because it was there and I wondered how well it aged. Would you be inclined to do the same, or even as often with all digital? Also if you have that half finished book sitting on the bookshelf reminding you that you've never finished it every time you look at it, you may be inclined to finish it. The kindle and other e-readers seem like nice gizmos, a very noble endevour, but I still like the sliced dead tree versions.

[epocalypse]

attention iphone users: there is a free official kindle port app, although it does not hook up the hitchiker's guide deal quite as well.

[Woland]

It all comes down to the "1984" thing for
me. They have the legal right to take away things that you have already paid real money for in exchange for a refund that you never agreed to and were not informed about in advance. Basically the people running this thing are from some crazy backwards dimension where ownership is a "good idea, in theory". Fortunately the only way for these people to have control over you is to give them money, which is a bad idea from the get-go, and only gets worse the more you think about it. It's kind of like how poisonous animals are brightly colored to warn off potential predators. Think of the Kindle as an arrow frog, it's monotone screen as a bright yellow stripe, and it's Terms and Conditions Agreement as a contract with
The Devil.