<p>I finally broke down and bought a Kindle - I’ll post a review if there is any interest.
We read somewhere on the net that there will be some sort of update/Kindle 2.0 coming out in Oct, but I have 2 big trips planned before then, so I had little reason to wait.</p>
<p>I’d love to hear what you think. My son, who will be doing a study abroad this fall, was looking at something similar by Sony. He loves to read and just like you, knows it would be perfect for a trip.</p>
<p>I too am interested in any review of the kindle. I not sure if I would miss the tactile part of page-turning,paper and holding a book.</p>
<p>Definitely interested in your assessment. Do you find that the books that are available interest you? Do you like this toy? Please post! And thanks!</p>
<p>I was given one as a gift. I don’t love it, although it is pretty convenient sometimes. Among other things, it’s way too easy to hit one of the buttons by mistake and move one or several pages forward or back.</p>
<p>i was given a sony e-reader a few months ago. i love it. it’s great for traveling. i can tuck it in my purse and have a book to read whenever i get stuck waiting in line or waiting for an appointment.</p>
<p>DD is a big reader and has one. She still reads traditional books a LOT but for ease of travel it is great. If books are available on the kindle they are cheaper than traditional. I like the fact that her bookshelves are no longer completely overflowing…if you search this forum for kindle you’ll find previous threads.</p>
<p>It took me a few posts to figure out what this is. I was thinking some sort of American Revolutionary-era tool or cooking utensil.</p>
<p>Please post review! I was thinking of asking for one for Christmas! Thanks!</p>
<p>I will get it Mon, and I already have a list of 3-4 books that I want to download. I will post a review in a week or so - I was a little too excited that I finally bought it, I’ve been looking them since Nov.</p>
<p>Also, I’m flying across country with it at the end of Sept - one reason I bought one now, and I’ll update the review after the big trip.</p>
<p>I looked at the Sony, and gave it serious thought. The wireless download is a big selling point for the Kindle, and judging by the lack of growth in offerings by Sony, content may be a problem in the future. On the plus side, the Sony is significantly less expensive, and if the travel is abroad or in Montana or ALaska, you can’t use the download, so that advantage is gone. There are many, many off-copyright books that can be downloaded free for either system, so if the owner wants to read classics, then there is less argument for the Kindle.</p>
<p>I really think the Kindle is a niche product, and it needs some real specific upgrades - you get the NY Times, but you can’t do the crossword puzzle, for example. The real problem to me though, is you buy a book and you can give it away to whoever, not with a Kindle book, I’m not sure how that notion will go over if book readers move from to a niche product to more mainstream.</p>
<p>Current popular books on Kindle are still pretty expensive, about $9.99. Given that there is no marginal production cost, no inventory to maintain, no distribution system, etc., it is VERY profitable.</p>
<p>They have lots of out-of-copyright books available for very little, but be a little careful. I downloaded a set of Shakespeare’s plays, and it wasn’t worth the $0.99 I paid. There was no table of contents, and no way of navigating from one play to another. Also, it was essentially a facsimile of a 19th century edition, complete with nonstandard spelling, textual corruption, abbreviated character names (and the dramatis personae at the END of each play, so good luck unless you knew the characters’ names beforehand). In other words, next to useless.</p>
<p>My H and my 81-year-old father both love their Kindles. My father especially loves the ability to download and read the NY Times. (For me, the inability to do the crossword puzzle on the Kindle is a deal breaker ;)) </p>
<p>I thought this article was a good assessment of the pros and cons. [Warming</a> to the Kindle - TIME](<a href=“http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1823955,00.html]Warming”>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1823955,00.html)</p>
<p>can you download library e-books on the kindle? or is it only for purchase through amazon?</p>
<p>WildChild bought a kindle and loves it. He reads books, articles and his daily newspapers on it. He is really sold on the thing. Here is a review he wrote:</p>
<p>"Since Ive now had an Amazon Kindle for over two months, its time to give the new e-book reading device a review and also proffer my predictions about its future impact on Amazon, on the e-book and publishing industries, and on us.</p>
<p>Pros:</p>
<p>Appearance: The Kindle is a beautiful device. Slim and light, it fits perfectly into my hands while I read and never weighs down my bag when traveling. I can pull it out and browse while I am standing in the subway or waiting for an order of food. The cover adequately protects the screen and gives it a bookish feel.</p>
<p>Display: The screen is equally stunning. The text leaps off the screen in such a way that the words seem almost clearer than they do on paper. In bright sunlight or under a lamp, it is as easy if not easier to read than a paperback. Never having been able to tolerate the bright screens of computers, I have long been accustomed to printing out lengthy articles, thus wasting a lot of paper and ink over the years. Now, I send any article over a few thousand words to an Amazon email address as a .doc attachment, and it is instantly converted into Kindle format. I habitually transfer long Atlantic and New Yorker magazine articles - that I know I will read anyways - over to my Kindle so I can have them on the go. That way I avoid the constant hassle of losing my place in the text and the perpetual irritation of advertisements and flipping pages - and I can leave the magazines on my coffee table at home.</p>
<p>Newspaper Delivery: The main reason I bought a Kindle was not to save money on books or even to carry a lot of books all the time - who really needs that anyways? - but rather to have a convenient way to consume the two staples - other than food and drink - of my daily existence: The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. That I can get the morning papers delivered wirelessly to my device while I sleep, regardless of where I am, is the Kindles main benefit to me. Though the pictures and stylistic formatting of a regular edition are lost, so are the annoyances of large pages, advertisements, and bulk stacks of old papers.</p>
<p>Wireless: Because Amazon pays for wireless service for life, I never have to worry about paying a monthly bill. The cost of wireless service is included in the price, so I can hook into the Sprint network as much as I want with no additional charge.</p>
<p>Cons:</p>
<p>Price: The Kindle, like the first iPhone, is too expensive for most people to justify. Whereas a consumer may save five or ten dollars on every book, it takes a long time to make up $359 for all but the most avid readers. Unless you put a very high price on convenience - as I do - the Kindle is not eminently affordable.</p>
<p>Speed: The dictionary feature allows you to define every word on a given line, but what definition is worth ten seconds of my reading time? I am better off jotting the word down and Googling it later. Also, turning the pages takes only a fraction of a second, but it happens to take a fraction of a second too long. If you read all the way to the end of the page and then press the next page button, you are sure to spend a few too many milliseconds waiting around. To be sure, this complaint is a minor quibble, especially given the amount of time we spend turning the pages of regular books, magazines, and newspapers.</p>
<p>Page Numbers: If I am going to reference a passage in a book, how is someone with another Kindle or a regular paper edition supposed to know where it is without page numbers? There needs to be some frame of reference to find out exactly where I am in the text.</p>
<p>Highlighting: The highlighting feature is really cool, as it allows me to record large amounts of text for later perusal in a short period of time. However, the Kindle puts the text that I block off in a format that is difficult to rearrange and transfer to other mediums. For a future edition, I would suggest a word document format with bullet points. I need text that I can cleanly and easily copy and paste into documents, emails, blog posts, and instant messages.</p>
<p>Blogs: The most ridiculous flaw of the Kindle is that you have to pay two or three bucks a month to read a blog, and even then you can read only what they have available. I will pay for a lot of things, but free internet blogs are not one of them. The iPhone edition of Google Reader has the Kindle trounced on instant mobile blog access anyways - in both function and form. If the Kindle wants to compete for title of all-around reading machine, it needs to get with it on blogs and come out with a sleek, easy to read format for free reading.</p>
<p>Color: Nice color pictures would be nice, but the technology for that type of E-paper display is reportedly several years away. We can deal with that for now.</p>
<p>Now, on to my assessment. We are witnessing a tipping point for e-book readers. With the buzz generated by the Kindle - and the many benefits which have finally made it worth buying for many thousands of consumers - it is clear that the e-book reader is here to stay. The e-book industry is poised to morph into a multibillion dollar industry within a few short years. Though I still maintain that the library will not disappear in my lifetime, the bookstore probably will. I am a voracious reader, but I rarely ever step foot in a bookstore to purchase anything other than a textbook for school. Publishing and bookstore companies are going to have to adapt to the new technologies of a changing world or suffer the same fate as the recording industry.</p>
<p>The possibility of the Kindle - and of other e-book readers - to transform the way we read and interact is immense. Except for the color screen, the flaws I listed can easily be fixed within a year, for the technology already exists. There are countless other ways that the Kindle experience can be improved. It would be nice if I could use my Kindle as I use Google Reader - as a device for social networking and intellectual discussion. When I read an interesting post using Google Reader, I can share it with friends and include a comment with it. Imagine if everything we read on the Kindle could be shared with other Kindles. Imagine if you could share an article or a passage instantly and others could respond.</p>
<p>The fate of the Kindle device depends on how quickly Amazon adapts to these potential consumer desires. The e-book reader in general will get there - the only question is when and who will be the first to deliver it.</p>
<p>My husband bought me a Kindle for our anniversary. I am not a gadget person and was not excited about the gift. I set it up to appease him, downloaded a book and within ten minutes I was hooked. I love my kindle!</p>
<p>Thanks, MOWC for WC’s review. There are some copyright issues raised by e-book readers that are even more thorny than music downloads. Such as sharing one copy of a book, then the newer issues he raises of discussing passages real time, or transferring them into blogs or e-mails.
I’m silly, but I worry about the book’s demise and how will we survive the collapse of civilization???</p>
<p>Of course, if everyone in the ancient world had had a Kindle, then maybe there never would have been a Dark Ages after the fall of Rome and the destruction of the Library of Alexandria. We might have more than a few hundred lines of Sappho’s poetry (and we might know that, really, she liked guys).</p>
<p>Lots of the Kindle’s shortcomings relate to publishers’ desire not to suffer the way the music industry has from easy downloading and file transfer. Kindles are pretty good as reading devices, and ridiculously stunted as text management devices. Not enabling them for .pdfs was a horrible, anti-consumer decision.</p>
<p>Something that I find ironic is that Amazon has really made a killing off of the “long tail” – books that don’t sell enough for any physical store to stock economically, but that will sell a few hundred copies a year somewhere, one at a time, if it’s quick, cheap and convenient. The Kindle is the opposite of that: Unless a book is going to sell a bunch, it doesn’t make sense to offer it in Kindle form. The generic bookstore in any mall is better stocked than the Kindle Store.</p>
<p>Got a Kindle a couple of months ago. It is very convenient, especially when travelling. On our family vacation, we shared it and save a lot of space on packing. I like the ability to be able to read one handed. The ability to download books wirelessly is a great feature as I downloaded two books while sitting in my backyard. </p>
<p>We are still a little bit ahead of the curve but I am hoping that school districts will start to adapt this type of delivery process for text books in the near future. Text books should be obsolete. I think that the text book publishers have their heads in the sand like the encyclopedia folks did. School districts are not the most forward thinking group either.</p>
<p>“Unless a book is going to sell a bunch, it doesn’t make sense to offer it in Kindle form. The generic bookstore in any mall is better stocked than the Kindle Store.”</p>
<p>— JHS, interesting. So, in other words… if you tend not to read bestsellers a kindle isn’t that great to have?</p>