E-Book reader, anyone?

[ATeam]

Good for you, Phil.....you're going to love that thing more each and every time you use it. I see only one problem in your near future and that is the use of your term "our" Kindle. I don't see it as something that is very easy to share....I see another Kindle on your truck shortly.

You see well. For the same reason we have his and her laptops in the truck, we will have two Kindles. The leather cover Amazon sells is very nice and I am pleased to see they come in black and red. That will make it easy for us to tell our Kindles apart.

I don't see Kindle replacing all the books we own or even bumping out all printed book purchases. There are some books we will want to have as printed books. I do see new free space opening in our truck as the number of printed books shrinks.

 

[TeamCaffee]

What I really like about having my e reader is the fact when I hear of a book I want to read I can at the spur of the moment down load it and start reading in the evening.

I have no clue why some books I prefer to listen to and others I like to read.

I have found I carry less books than I used to, but I still have some books I keep in hard copy. I have also found after listening to a book I enjoyed it so much I will order the book in hard copy and keep it forever.

 

[ATeam]

There are some good websites for ebooks that post the free books available on a daily basis as well as other good information.

The Amazon.com Kindle Store has a section, Free eBook Collections. It lists places where free books can be found. Not all of them will be in the Kindle format so a couple extra steps may be needed to move the text files into your Kindle.

Amazon offers thousands of eBooks for free. Open Library offers over 1 million, Internet Archive offers over 1.8 million. That will keep even the most active readers busy for a while.

The social implications of this are profound. Any high school student with a Kindle or other e-reader can access, in an instant and for free, any piece of classic literature the teacher or home school parent approves for a book report. The kid can live across the street from the New York Public Library or in the middle of the desert in New Mexico. It doesn't matter. The great works are instantly available for free.

It's already changing Diane's and my behavior. I don't need to go to a bookstore to preview a recently published business book. I can preview it instantly and for free on my Kindle. Bad news for book stores. Good news for me.

 

[dieseldiva]

I have found I carry less books than I used to, but I still have some books I keep in hard copy. I have also found after listening to a book I enjoyed it so much I will order the book in hard copy and keep it forever.

I don't see Kindle replacing all the books we own or even bumping out all printed book purchases. There are some books we will want to have as printed books. I do see new free space opening in our truck as the number of printed books shrinks.

Both of the above, true and honest book lovers. Some books you just have to have in hard bound copy.....in your hand!! I'm just nerdy enough to admit that I love the way a book feels in your hands and the smell is like no other. (bring on the comments)

The social implications of this are profound. Any high school student with a Kindle or other e-reader can access, in an instant and for free, any piece of classic literature the teacher or home school parent approves for a book report. The kid can live across the street from the New York Public Library or in the middle of the desert in New Mexico. It doesn't matter. The great works are instantly available for free.

Not to mention that with the Kindle, that same student can take notes, that used to be exclusive but I'm not sure if that remains so.

Also in the academic realm, when Amazon brought out their larger Kindle DX over a year ago, they donated these to five different universities for trials, one of those being Case Western in Ohio. What a blessing for college students to be able to purchase their text books in this format. I never heard what the outcome of this trial was but I still hold out hope for my grandchildren's college years, one of them having started University of Cincinnati a couple of months ago.

One last thing, you can read your Kindle library on your computer if need be and there's apps for iphones ipod touch, and android so you can pretty much read your books anywhere, in any situation.

 

[dieseldiva]

It's already changing Diane's and my behavior. I don't need to go to a bookstore to preview a recently published business book. I can preview it instantly and for free on my Kindle. Bad news for book stores. Good news for me.

On the board that I linked earlier, there are those that giggle about going into the bookstores to check out the book physically and order it on their Kindle on the spot!

Also some that so enjoy the peace and tranquility that they'll take their Kindles to the bookstore, order coffee and sit there and read. Not a bad idea for those of us that just want to get out of the truck for a little while and relax with our books.

 

[ATeam]

I'm just nerdy enough to admit that I love the way a book feels in your hands and the smell is like no other. (bring on the comments)

The leather cover we bought with the Kindle absolutely gives it the feel of a book in your hands. It is hinged on the side and opens just like a book. It looks like a journal or calendar. The Kindle is held securely in place by clips mounted on the spine of the cover. The clips hook into holes on the left side of the Kindle. It feels exactly like a thin book in your hands, except there are no paper pages to turn.

The leather offers its its classic smell. For the paper smell of a printed book, you can simulate by attaching a Post-it note above your upper lip, just below your nose. It might get you a few strange looks in a bookstore but your fellow Kindle users will understand.

 

[LDB]

There's a site ebookgab.com that's a small semi social site and also has frequent reports on free books. It's one of my sources. The free samples are one of the things I like about the Kindle and why I like it over others.

 

[ATeam]

What I really like about having my e reader is the fact when I hear of a book I want to read I can at the spur of the moment down load it and start reading in the evening.

I have no clue why some books I prefer to listen to and others I like to read.

I like the quick access to books too. Get an idea or hear a recommendation, you can be looking at the book within minutes if you wish.

As for listening to some books while reading others, I am intrigued by how the Kindle turns the pages for you while reading the book out loud to you (text to speech feature). You can follow along reading while listening to the voice saying the words. There will be some experimentation here. Will I remember more or learn better by both reading and hearing the words at the same time? No clue now but looking forward to the experiment.

I will also experiment with the text size and line spacing features Kindle has. Will I read faster with big print or smaller, or will it make no difference? Same questions for line spacing.

These e-readers are a game changer on many fronts.

 

[dieseldiva]

The leather offers its its classic smell. For the paper smell of a printed book, you can simulate by attaching a Post-it note above your upper lip, just below your nose. It might get you a few strange looks in a bookstore but your fellow Kindle users will understand.

Well the post-it notes do come in many colors and could be coordinated daily with your clothing.......but they might hurt like a you know what when you have to rip them off your face!

 

[ATeam]

In the sleeper of a moving truck,
in the middle of the night,
in the middle of the Mojave Desert,
in less time than it takes to tell it,

I downloaded onto our new Kindle e-reader a free two-week trial of a business magazine, a thorough preview of a business book I am considering for purchase, a free copy of a literary classic (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes), and a version of The Holy Bible for which I paid $9.95.

I then went to bed and commenced to reading. I am absolutely thrilled with the Kindle. It is lighter and easier to handle than printed books. The print on the page is cleaner and more crisp. You can be reading several books and periodicals at once, shifting between them according to your mood or needs. Whatever item you open, it opens exactly where you left off.

The device can hold 3,500 books. It's unlike anything I have seen before. When you want to read, you don't decide on a printed book and then go hunting for where you left it lay. You pick up your Kindle to read and then choose your book or material from the collection you have on it. It does not matter what you want to read or when, if you have your Kindle, you have your reading material.

The Amazon Kindle web site lists several sources where over a million free e-books can be downloaded. This is amazing! For the price of a Kindle, all of the great works and a whole lot more are available for free.

I am hardly an e-book pioneer. The reason so many great books are so freely available is because visionary and technically competent people saw the possibilities years ago. But being new to the e-book world, it's my turn to be amazed, and amazed I am!

 

[davekc]

I am thinking of getting one of these for the wife. Since I know nothing about these, how do you get the books on it? Directly from the Kindle or are they downloaded from your computer?
Before I forget, does it do audio for everything, or just certain ones?
Have to agree. Could be a game changer in many ways.

 

[dieseldiva]

I am thinking of getting one of these for the wife. Since I know nothing about these, how do you get the books on it? Directly from the Kindle or are they downloaded from your computer?
Before I forget, does it do audio for everything, or just certain ones?
Have to agree. Could be a game changer in many ways.

You register your Kindle with Amazon (it's their product) and set up an account with them. The Kindle comes with two choices...one has wifi only, the other wifi and 3G. You can shop Amazon directly from the Kindle or from your computer and when you make your choice, with one click the book is sent directly to your Kindle. You don't have to plug it into the computer, you're using your wifi or 3G to download directly. It literally is within a minute or so.

KINDLE

 

[davekc]

Thanks,
I think she will like this.

 

[greg334]

Dave,
I would also look at the Nook from Barnes and Noble. It does about the same thing but the catch is that you can take it to one of their stores and get any book for free to read while in the store. For some who travel around, especially in a van, you can kill a day reading a book, drinking coffee while in the store and only have to pay for the coffee.

You can also share books and much of what the Kindle does, the Nook does too. They have a color version of it which I don't like, the E-ink version is easier on my eyes. I like the web browser on the nook a bit more. It of course is a different physical format, and touch screen.

The drawback to the Kindle, at least for me is the Adobe acrobat reader, it does not seem to scale well and does not allow me to save a form.

 

[movercash]

In bed.
3am
Need new book.
Nook
I love mine!!!

 

[dieseldiva]

In bed.
3am
Need new book.
Nook
I love mine!!!

LOL......yep, no need to run out in the cold when you have one of these things.....great, isn't it!!!

 

[davekc]

ok....thanks....will have to compare the two. Appreciate all the advice as I know nothing on these things.

 

[greg334]

Dave, these are not the only two out there. The Sony reader and other brands are good too.

It all depends on your needs.

If it is just reading and you have a PC, then a lot of other units are out there and work well but if you are traveling, then maybe one of these two, Nook or Kindle will work out for you. Prices have dropped and I expect they will continue to drop in the future.

 

[LDB]

I considered the Nook but went with the Kindle 3 with 3G so I can get content almost anywhere. I thought the read any BN book was a cool idea but then who wants to spend forever sitting in a BN store just to read books that will vanish as soon as you leave the store? There are several good ones but they are all late comers compared to the Kindle and all seem to be in varying degrees of catch up. The K3 is such a huge improvement over the original I'm sure I won't consider a new one until at least K5 and maybe later.

 

[ATeam]

Diane and I made our selection at a Best Buy store where the Kindle, Nook, Sony and at least one other e-reader are on display side by side in a special display placed at the front of the store.

We could hold each device in our hands to guage the look and feel. We reviewed the product comparison chart Best Buy provides. We talked with a very knowledgable and helpful young man about the devices. After we decided on the Kindle, I asked the man which items are selling best. He said the Kindle is the first choice of most customers. They can't keep them on the shelf. The Nooks start moving when the Kindle is out of stock, he said. The Sony is a distant third choice.

One of the reasons we stayed away from the Nook was the financial condition of Barnes and Noble. While we spend many hours in their stores when laid over, we are not sure their brick and mortar (physical buildings) approch will do well in the years ahead. Also, the company just put a costly shareholder battle behind it which drained much cash.

Don't believe Barnes and Noble can go out of business? Notice what happened to Blockbuster after Netflix offered movies by mail or download. Amazon has never had stores. It started as an internet company and is well positioned to lead the market in e-books. When buying an e-book reader, we went with the e-book leader; not to mention that the Kindle had the better look and feel in our judgement.