Amazon Kindle (ebook thingy)

but but angry birds

Um that's only on Kindle Fire and not Kindle Touch isn't it?

Kindle touch has e-ink display which is why I got it over the Fire. Also it doesn't have a keyboard (which is fine).

I guess highlighting text is better with the touch, but absent that, I'd rather have the hardware page-turning buttons and a screen I don't smudge up

I'm talking about preferring this one: http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-eReader-eBook-Reader-e-Reader-Special-Offers/dp/B0051QVESA/ref=amb_link_359613542_5?ie=UTF8&nav_sdd=aps&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-1&pf_rd_r=15K4F97XYKMRZTNGZQ9Y&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1343338782&pf_rd_i=507846

I think that the Instapaper developer actually recommends it over the Touch one?

oic. Yeah looks good. I like the 3G on mine but I don't have a smartphone or any other portable thing I can access internet with so it's a novelty!

touch doesn't smudge, but then i have nice hands

Does it have hardware buttons for page flippy? That is the one thing I'd want in a kindle (other than e-ink) to make me supplement my iPad

The nook touch does the kindle & kobo do not

That kindle I linked does!

xxxp: Publishers should have done the smart thing and put together their own DRM'ed e-book store, with prices 30% lower than they offered the product for on Amazon (reflecting Amz's cut). Possibly a bit late in the game, now that that Kindle's proprietary format seems to be dominating the market.

no hardware, it's pure simple screen, as far as the eye can see

xp no content industry has ever done that. You'd think they'd learn by the mistakes of others but no.

You real book lovers may find this interesting. http://www.tuaw.com/2012/01/24/students-demonstrate-innovative-ipad-book-page-flip/

Kindle not really suiting tired late journeys home on the train. You don't mind nodding your head and letting a paperback slip through you fingers but it's more of a worry when it's a slightly expensive electronic gizmo.

The page flipping interface is an example of skeuomorphism that I can get behind. Flipping is the big advantage of paper books for me.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph)

So I finally upgraded from the cheap but hearty Skytex Primer (backlit screen, not E-ink) to the Nook Simple Touch about a week ago.

I have to say that E-ink is taking some getting used to. There are often slight differences in text darkness from the upper region of the page to the bottom region, with the top few lines a bit light and the bottom few lines quite dark. Is this kind of slight variation normal with E-ink or should be complaining to the vendor? I find that it makes me hyper-aware of the letters' existence in a distracting way...

my nook simple touch does not do that. I would get a replacement.

Flipping is the big advantage of paper books for me.

Except when adjacent pages stick together and you have to painstakingly locate an edge by which you may seperate them, which is a pita.

That trouble is what makes books a sublime and ideal form for reading.

should be complaining to the vendor?

immediately

Alrighty then. The difference is very slight, but they're frickin' letters-- their physicality must not call attention to itself.

What ereader is it?

Nook Simple Touch.

Ah good. B&N should sort it for you.

I bought it in person at the BN Union Square store last week-- I was actually gonna go to their Nook counter after work today on the faint chance that I can avoid telephone consumer service...

If they're anything like Amazon they'll do whatever it takes to keep you buying ebooks.

That trouble is what makes books a sublime and ideal form for reading.

For me, the book is the ideal form only for certain types of material--the kind I flip back and forth through and jot down marginalia in. Poetry and reference books, and more difficult academic non-fiction or experimental fiction. But anything that is meant to be absorptive--standard novels, breezy non-fiction, magazines--is ideal for e-readers.

^^^this.

i keep seeing the argument about jotting in the margins and annotating andsuch and i can't help thinking 'YOUSE FUCKING ANIMALS BUY A NOTEPAD THAT'S A FUCKING BOOK YOU'RE DESPOILING'

that may be just me tho

yeah, that's just u. marginalia is the best.

i feel appropriately marginalised

Yeah I write in university textbooks but fuck defacing a novel

even textbooks

i'm obviously mentally scarred by years of book rental schemes in secondary school

A favorite freshman comp professor persuaded me to love writing in books - notes make the text part of the Great Conversation or whatever. But before then I had the guilt of defacement instilled grade school and high school.

Not to mention margin notes are useful for reference when writing about the text and studying for tests.

i'd just correlate my notepad notes, i don't know if i could ever learn to di it any other way- possibly with the help of a dominatrix i dunno

i hate when some other idiot has written his vapid thoughts in a used book so i don't write my own out of respect for idiots down the line

The Great Conversation makes me IA.

I *love* others' interesting notes as I loath others' vapid Deep Thoughts notes.

95% of the time I can't figure out why anyone would underline the things I find underlined in used books. Mostly the notes are illegible, too.

So I went to the B&N store last night and they exchanged my Nook for a new one with little to no hassle. We'll see if the new one has the slightly variable text-darkness which was nagging me. If it does, I guess that's just where the playing field is at right now.

I wrote upthread that I was impressed by the Sony e-reader which comes with several foreign language dictionaries (by known dictionary publishers like Collins iirc) and you can just double-tap with the stylus on a word and get a translation, and I got the price wrong, it's actually £129 and not £199. But that was still too much, so I got my Mum a Kindle.

Plus I've now realised that you can highlight a word in the Kindle and get it looked up in whatever your default dictionary is, you just have to change default dictionary every time you want to read a foreign book because it won't guess the language - but apparently the Sony doesn't do that 100% accurately anyway.

But dictionaries are expensive on the Kindle, so if someone does a lot of foreign language reading in several different languages (and the person I saw with one does - she teaches 3 languages at a school and is learning a couple more for fun) I guess the Sony would be worth it.

Jonathan Franzen weighs in

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jan/30/jonathan-franzen-ebooks-values

Just as well the first released edition of Freedom wasn't "permanent and unalterable" given the well-publicised number of proofing errors in it.

fwiw I think his argument's baloney.

Plus -

Franzen said at Hay that "the combination of technology and capitalism has given us a world that really feels out of control"

None of this makes any sense to me. This is a combination that you can take back to the dawn of time, and what... you feel in control of a world without that pairing?

All the real things, the authentic things, the honest things, are dying off

quote from a fictional character, but ... I HOPE YOU DIE OFF YOU BACKWARD-LOOKING CONSERVATIVE DELUDED ROCKIST PRICK

Very unimaginative approach too.

Although it's true, I can't remember the last time I saw an authentic 'thing'.

May 2002?... damn, I guess it must have been my early twenties now I really think about it.

Wow, that is a total Jeff rage bait article.

He should seal the hold in his butt while he writes too.