Amazon Kindle (ebook thingy)

The main appeal for me right now is travel. In a few weeks I'll be in the middle of nowhere for a month, flying all over the place and with a reasonable amount of spare time on my hands. I can't lug around half a dozen books due to luggage weight restrictions. The two ebook readers I'm eyeing off atm weigh under 250g, which is less than two ordinary paperbacks, and their e-ink screens last ages on a single charge (important coz I'll have unreliable electricity most of the time).

I carry my iPod everywhere I go; I'm sitting on the toilet right now. I still have a bunch of 'books' (many, if not most, are short stories/novellas) from a Fictionwise buying binge that ended a few months ago, and I'm working through them at the rate of 30,000 words a week, a very slow rate for me--I was getting through 50,000 words during a 12-hour work shift for a while there.

http://maestro-sec.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/xbox-360-toilet.jpg

Can you explain the appeal?
Is like the difference between having CDs and having MP3s. Can do so much I can't easily with books: I can take notes and highlights and have them automatically pulled out into an index or transferred to Mac for searching/reference. Can search back through text to find first mention of characters etc. Can pull up definition of unfamiliar words with one press. Can read in the dark. Can see what other readers have been highlighting in the same text (Amazon could take this sort of stuff to amazing places. Collaborative marginalia. Author's notes and clarifications).

Also, like MP3s, now have novels I'm reading *everywhere*. In an unexpected queue or taxi? Have *all* the novels I'm reading in my pocket.

What kind of reading habits do you have?
Read a lot, daily.

What do you read?
Fiction, non-fiction and philosophy.

starting to get kind of tempted by the Kindle :/
can't afford it right now anyways but might ask for one for xmas or something

i didn't realise this thing was as cheap as it was, now i'm considering this.

make it under a hundred and i'll buy one

stet which reader do you prefer?

Don't have an actual Kindle, the ones I've played with are nice but the flash, slow refresh and keyboard bug me. On the iPad Kindle app >>>> iBooks app in nearly every way except some of the source material, which is typeset really shoddily by Amazon and better by Apple)

I agree.

I have never used a Kindle, but moving four bookshelves of books recently made me realize how nice it would be to have one.

yeah, the price is getting there. I do appreciate the physical aspect of books and piles of books taking over my apartment, but...

1. Would be nice to be able to set the type to a nice size for reading (having a harder and harder time with small type in some books)
2. Integrated dictionary, right?
3. Free, portable, access to the bulk of classic lit via Project Gutenberg etc

the price is right now (I'd prefer £99 obv but I'm not going to begrudge that extra £10) as is the form (much more attractive/less unseemly looking now)

srsly considering buying one

apparently the magazine subscriptions (economist eg) aren't great value for money tho, which is disappointing

Meh, I think I read two "books" on the Kindle. I have an ipad but doubt I'll read books on there. I prefer to read actual books to be honest.

I bought a Kobo and I'm stoked. Using it daily. Already churned through 1.5 books (not counting half of Under the Dome because it was rubbish). Obv I'll read paper books again but the reduced weight and having the option to read stuff I can't get hold of in the shops is wonderful.

Took ipad on holiday and it was superb compared to my old case o' books. IPad screen is shit in sunlight though, so might just get a Kindle after all.

Not aimed at you stet but why do people refer to Apple products as though they were people? 'I am using iPad', 'I left iPhone on the bus', 'I have pushed iPod Shuffle up my bottom' etc etc.

I was just being lazy there, but it's also official Apple style - you see it in all their copy, it's very rare to see "The iPhone is", it's almost always "iPhone is". Started with iPod.

hah that grammar directive actually comes directly from Apple itself. apple views i-N as strong, proper nouns so they don't need articles or possessive pronouns.

xp

I see the point you're both making but it's more than a little bit creepy.

oh it definitely is

Tonight some bloke ran headfirst into me and sent my Kobo flying. At this stage I don't know which will die first, my Kobo or this bloke when I find him.

I purchased a Kindle Wi-Fi for under $150 US, and Kindle with Calibre is freaking fantastic. I dream of something that I can read Comics and PDFs on (Kindle's PDF support is still meh), but I can carry a library of a couple hundred books with me wherever I go. It's changing my consumption habits in almost the same way my first iPod did. There are so many wonderful-and-free-and-legal books available, and with Calibre it's trivial to put whatever you want onto your Kindle. The eyestrain caused by trying to read books on computer (or iPhone, iPad or DS) is no joke, but the Kindle (and I assume the Nook, Kobo, and Sony eReader) just don't have those issues. Have read probably 20 books on the thing so far, and have only owned it for a couple of months. I'm a complete convert.

100%. I used my Kobo on a load of dusty bus rides through southern Africa and found it immensely pleasurable. Also saved me the weight of the books I read (I was already nudging the luggage allowance as it was).

Very much anticipating the book sharing feature for Kindle that starts sometime next year, and wondering if it will work between international users.

my brother got me one of these

i'v ebeen using it all weke and i really like it!

and i've clearly become illiterate.

what is the point of calibre

Calibre allows you to manage a library of books, converting ebook formats, and putting documents and books onto a Kindle without going through Amazon's silly emailing service that costs $$. Free ebooks come in a variety of formats, and any given e-reader only uses a few of them. Calibre integrates with almost all of them, and with almost all e-readers as well. The interface is a bit unpolished, but for versatility, it's shockingly great.

Can you put books on to the Kindle app for iPad, do you know?

well i can put books on my kindle via USB, and it seems to read most formats, so...

can i put books that i already own, onto my kindle library, for free?

future readers + books need some sort of free download code type thing like vinyl does with mp3s.

can i put books that i already own, onto my kindle library, for free?

― F-Unit (Ste), Wednesday, November 17, 2010 9:08 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

if you can be bothered to type them out

"Can you put books on to the Kindle app for iPad, do you know?"

Well, I purchased some books. I think if you connect your account to your ipad maybe you can do the others you bought before? Haven't tried.

I fucking LOVE my ipad. Absolutely amazing. I use it mainly for internet and my knitting (store my patterns on it). FUCKING LOVE IT.

i just ordered the velocity cruz e-reader for my wife. cant afford ipad....sigh.

Can you put books on to the Kindle app for iPad, do you know?

The Android app only lets you access books in your archive from the Kindle store at this point - I'd assume the iPad app is the same.

Slocki, you should check out Calibre. It's open source and free, so if you don't like it, it's no harm no foul.

I did and found it useful for conversions! Tho it seems to use a weirdly large amount of horsepower

It also sports the worst UI in history.

ya i was gonna say, i have NO idea what these icons are supposed to mean. oh i get it, the recycling icon means "trash." cuz it's a book. yeesh.

Not to mention the fact that the giant icons and other useless shit produce so much clutter that the book list YOU KNOW THE BIT THAT PEOPLE ACTUALLY USE gets about 10% of the window allocation.

totes

Well, I did say that the interface was a bit unpolished!

Got a color nook for my birthday. So stoked. I've had a few days to play with it and love the hell out of it so far. Needs a wider selection, but I'm not exactly wanting. One of the highlights of this is going to be reading magazines again - don't have to carry a floppy, dog-eared thing around in my bag all day, don't have to remember to dig it out and recycle it after it's been sitting in there for two months and I'm totally done with it. Once again, the magazine selection is pretty slight, but I'm hoping it'll get better.

Has anyone bought a copy of Infinite Jest for ereader? I'm wondering how they handle the endnotes.

I did and found it useful for conversions! Tho it seems to use a weirdly large amount of horsepower

Found this exactly.

Someone remind me and I'll post the photo from last Christmas with my Dad, a kindle, and a puppy.

Just ordered one of these for my mom for her birthday next weekend. I think she's going to love it.