Amazon Kindle (ebook thingy)

love this guy's expression. and man does he look uncomfortable in that position.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/03/05/business/readingjump/readingjump-articleLarge.jpg

pretty sure i have that futon

ugh packing for a trip & wishing i had a kindle. i have like 4 big ass books I would like to bring for my long ass flight...

My fire is really just my quick info/surf/ilx device at this point.

Can anyone recommend a good case for the Kindle (in this case, a keyboardless Kindle 4)? The Amazon ones are expensive and the cheaper ones mostly have good reviews but the bad reviews are still putting me off because it's a gift for my mother, again.

Like, if I get dye smears on my own Kindle that's no big deal, if the clasp magnet (why do they all have either clasp magnets or flimsy elastic which covers the buttons?) ruins the screen then that's annoying but I am prepared to shout at customer services and hope for a replacement, but I'd feel bad about getting something that did either as a gift for someone.

By "case" I mean cover, ideally like the leather covers where you can read it when it's still in, but tbh my old Kindle just has one it lives in when it's not in use instead of getting dusty, and it's been fine for me

So you're looking for more of a folio-style one than a pouch to store it in? I have a padded pouch that I got at Target that I quite like.

Yeah, I was thinking a folio-style cover seems... smarter, somehow? Sorry for lack of clarity, have spent so long today typing "kindle" + synonyms of "cover" into Amazon/Google in the hope of finding something perfect which I'd previously missed that I forgot to use the most helpful one in my post

I guess they are always on it so it's more protection of some sort, but I think adding anything to the device while actually using it is a waste, unless it makes propping it up or holding it easier in some way. I think my mom has one of the folder things for iPad and it just seems like a huge pain in the ass

clasp magnets ruin the screen? shit

Sorry for alarmist post! I have seen like 500 positive reviews for clasp magnets and 2 reviews saying theirs damaged the screen pretty much instantly, so I think if that hasn't happened you're fine and maybe two people were unlucky and got one with a freakishly super-strong magnet. BUT I get paranoid when gift-buying...

I got this, very cheap and does the job and so far hasn't killed my screen

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BLACK-LEATHER-CASE-COVER-WALLET-AMAZON-KINDLE-4-4TH-GENERATION-2011-/270841270074?pt=UK_iPad_Tablet_Accessories&hash=item3f0f65cf3a

thanks onimo and mh! An ILXor's recommendation is worth 500 crazy people on Amazon.

(plus I know you've had it a while and used it, whereas I guess I worry that internet customer review writers open the box and immediately sit down to compose their review based on approx 3 seconds of viewing. maybe not Amazon so much but Argos customer reviews drive me crazy because half of them start "bought this today it looks good" and I would rather know whether it fell apart a month later)

I have Belkin case for previous generation and it has worked out OK for me.

i have this one and i like it - i'd get a darker color though because i have the light gray one and it's lookin a little grubby
http://www.myincipio.com/Amazon-Kindle-3-Cases-Accessories/Incipio-Amazon-Kindle-3-kaddy-Folio.asp

They mysteriously don't have the 4th gen-sized one on their site but I have a black one of these, I think:
http://www.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_Id=527251

Supplier sales suggest Kindle sales have fallen off a cliff http://seekingalpha.com/article/557151-kindle-sales-plunge-made-amazon-com-s-gross-margin-look-better?source=yahoo

Kindle Fire's pretty good, though

My 2nd Kindle screen died (most pixels were locked on a screensaver) in 14 months, just out of warranty, and his 3rd Kindle screen died in the same manner in two weeks. This seems fairly common.

http://cflove.org/warehouse/UserImages/IMG.jpg

Fortunately, the warranty replacement is prompt if you contact Kindle support (not Amazon service) by telephone. Still neat devices, still fill a useful niche that lcd-screen tablets cannot, but the reliability is atrocious.

I've had mine (2nd gen) for over 3 years now without a single problem. My stepmother just replaced her 1st gen one a month ago - it's still working fine though, she just wanted one with wifi.

http://craigmod.com/journal/hack_the_cover/

good thing

it sure is easy to publish kindle book

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0089N21OS

as I am an amazon prime member, I will be reading this for free soon

I recently got an iPad and I am enjoying reading e-books on it, and I want to be more staunchly in favor of them but it's bothering me that you can't borrow and lend so many of them! A friend has a book I'd like to read and she'd like to lend it to me, but it is impossible and that irks me.

piracy for sure

There's money to be made for someone who knows how to set up a system whereby you can buy US-only ebooks from outside the US: they buy them from Amazon for you, and then send you the file in your electronically fenced-off third world country like Australia

It's called BitTorrent iirc

I think most of the drm is crackable. I could only find a book on google's bookstore and was able to strip drm and put it on my kindle.

Having some weird issues recently with unwanted JUMBO FONTIFICATION. Can sort of fix it by going forward and backing up or going to footnotes and back again.

http://craigmod.com/journal/hack_the_cover/

― markers, Thursday, May 24, 2012 2:48 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Great article!

Best Selling Kindle Titles:

Fifty Shades of Grey (Kindle Edition)
by E. L. James
Kindle Price: £3.09

Fifty Shades Darker (Kindle Edition)
by E L James
Kindle Price: £3.09

Fifty Shades Freed (Kindle Edition)
by E L James
Kindle Price: £3.09

Fifty Shades Trilogy (Kindle Edition)
by E L James
Kindle Price: £9.89

why is the trilogy more expensive than if bought them all seperately?

I know how to crack the DRM, it's not that: it's that if you're in Australia and you look for certain books on Amazon or other ebookstores, they won't show up. If you virtual ISP it you can see them but you can't buy them unless you have a credit card with a US address. It sucketh.

And these books aren't on bittorrent, and also I'd quite like to give the authors $

Got a kindle for my birthday, and it's great, really enjoying using it.

But I think there's a weird part of my reading brain that does something like cross-referencing the nature of the words I'm reading with the externals and physical aspects of a book.

Maybe it's not that weird - I knew I did this already: the bleached, brown-edged pages of The Myth of Sisyphus are as much a memory of reading that book as the content, or to take another example, I can clearly visualise the wide leading, spacious margins and heavy boards of the library copy of In a Glass Darkly by le Fanu that I first read.

I'm reading some Thomas Ligotti on the kindle at the moment (My Work is Not Yet Done) and enjoying it, but I've had a weird sense of taking in its aesthetic without an anchor - it takes a moment to get my bearings and relocate the sensation of the specific work whenever I pick it up.

I don't record this as any failing of the e-reader, but an example of a psychology scrabbling at the transition between different abstract surfaces.

Gibbon, on the other hand, seems to like being on the kindle very much. There's a new-found lightness to him perhaps ill-served by the multiple darkly-bound Victorian volumes from within which he usually finds himself discoursing. (Tho as I've said elsewhere the formatting of the footnotes is useless).

That's definitely a common feeling, in fact there are studies about it: http://healthland.time.com/2012/03/14/do-e-books-impair-memory/

i only seem to be able to read throwaway, story-led content on my kindle. but that's p much all i seem able to read these days anyway, so..

It was the opposite for me. Put a 500+ page book on the Kindle and you'll never miss carrying it around

(carrying the book, that is)

heh, my throwaway reading tends to come in fantasy epic sized portions tbh, so that aspect isn't lost on me

the footnotes on the kindle gibbon are really a problem; in the print copy i have they appear in the huge margins right next to their tags and it's so so beautiful but ugh you can't carry that thing around.

i feel like i should read it standing at a plinth.

A future third-party accessory, let's hope

Wait, I thought about this Gibbon on Kindle thing a little while back but I couldn't figure out which version to get.

The free one

B-b-but sometimes it is worth 99 cents to get a decent index or table of contents.

http://healthland.time.com/2012/03/14/do-e-books-impair-memory/

horrible article

Jakob Nielsen, a Web “usability” expert and principal of the Nielsen Norman Group, believes e-reading does lead to a different type of recall.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/aug/27/why-switch-off-kindle-takeoff-landing

can anyone recommend an e-reader with a larger screen that won't cost the earth? my dear old auntie loved my kindle but thought the 6-inch screen too small.