To Kindle or not to Kindle...

[Perpetual Man]

I've been Kindle-ing for a long time now and find it a lot easier to use. I still love real books and would never not buy one over an e-copy. But it is easier on the hands. When you are reading the standard whopping great fantasy epic, holding the kindle is so much easier than the book.

Of course that means that you have to effectively buy two copies of the book - unless you can 'borrow' them from Amazon's kindle library.

I wonder whether it will be long before Amazon starts offering digital copies when you buy a physical book? They currently offer free digital downloads of music when you buy a CD, and DVD's BluRay seem to come with free digital downloads almost as a standard now. Will books be following suit? It would be handy.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

If you ONLY want PDFs (Buisness) and no eBooks the Sony 13" Digital paper has been cut from $1100 to $800
http://www.engadget.com/2014/03/27/sony-13-inch-digital-paper-e-ink/
http://store.sony.com/digital-paper-system-zid27-DPTS1/cat-27-catid-digital-paper

If money is no object and Business use / PDFs is the thing, this is the largest eInk display you can buy. No use for eBooks. Sony have even axed their eBook store (they should have partnered with Booksellers?) and now their eBook readers, the PRC family. The first eBook I saw was the Sony, long before Amazon bought Mobi and brought out the Kindle.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Will books be following suit?

I hope so.
TBP (Tickety Boo Press) do.

 

[Perpetual Man]

Tickety who? Never heard of them

 

[ratsy]

I got a Paperwhite for christmas and it is awesome. I've been reading a lot of books on it, and love everything about it. I was so skeptical before but I think I have made the move. I will still get hardcovers of my favorites but I think Ebooks are the way of my future.

 

[Pedro Del Mar]

I was adamantly against them until I succumbed and bought a Kindle Voyager. I then bought an attachment that holds it in place whilst I'm in bed, so I don't even have to hold it up - I just flick it to turn the page! How lazy is that! It saves me getting arm ache from holding it up though!

I still buy books when it's something I particularly want to own but I have bought several ebooks now that I didn't really have any interest in owning.

 

[Perpetual Man]

I then bought an attachment that holds it in place whilst I'm in bed, so I don't even have to hold it up - I just flick it to turn the page! How lazy is that!

Crooksy, that is just diabolical. It takes so much effort out of it, is it even worth reading. Just put the Kindle in speech mode and you can close your eyes and do nothing.

So where did you get this attachment from anyway?

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Newer kindles don't have audio?

 

[wam]

I bought a Kobo some time ago and it made it possible to read a lot of stuff that I would have been stuck with a PC screen with otherwise. Most of the stuff I've read came as free download material (some may not be legal) either in epub or converted using calibre management. These devices are expensive for what they are - a generic 7" android tablet will cost you about half the price of a Kindle Fire or the same as a Kobo touch although the latter will give you longer battery life. I don't really see the advantage in the Fire (now rebadged as Amazon not Kindle) over the generic tablet.

 

[Pedro Del Mar]

Crooksy, that is just diabolical. It takes so much effort out of it, is it even worth reading. Just put the Kindle in speech mode and you can close your eyes and do nothing.

So where did you get this attachment from anyway?

Doesn't speech mode sound like a robot? I've never tried it but shall give it a go!

Here you go Perp..........

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00HC25CVQ/?tag=brite-21

 

[Brian G Turner]

a generic 7" android tablet will cost you about half the price of a Kindle Fire

The trouble with generic tablets is their lack of reliability - too often they are nothing more than cheap copies of popular brands and don't work properly. Additionally, their specifications tend to be much lower.

So you end up with a cheap tablet that won't always work, and is slow when it does.

And there was a story a while back about some having Chinese spyware pre-installed.

 

[wam]

The trouble with generic tablets is their lack of reliability - too often they are nothing more than cheap copies of popular brands and don't work properly. Additionally, their specifications tend to be much lower.

So you end up with a cheap tablet that won't always work, and is slow when it does.

And there was a story a while back about some having Chinese spyware pre-installed.

Specs for Android tablets changed radically between the releases of Android 4.0 and 4.4. The Kindle was priced at around the same as a good Samsung of the same date. The Chinese Spyware incident refers to a branded mobile phone.

 

[Brian G Turner]

The Kindle was priced at around the same as a good Samsung of the same date.

The past few years, Amazon have tended to do big promotions for the Kindle range. I got my Fire HDX for something daft like £89 through an Amazon promotion last Christmas. Because of that, I may tend to imagine Kindle Fires as much cheaper than their standard retail price actually is.

 

[Perpetual Man]

Doesn't speech mode sound like a robot? I've never tried it but shall give it a go!

Here you go Perp..........

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00HC25CVQ/?tag=brite-21

Thanks crooksy.

And yes speech does sound like a robot it's a rather sterile way of listening to a good novel. It is however fun when it comes to the pronunciation of certain words, especially those unusual ones that might turn up in an SF or Fantasy novel.

I'm a bit confused by wam's mention of the Fire being rebranded as an Amazon Fire as opposed to a Kindle Fire.

As I understand it the Amazon Fire Family is a growing brand.

Without the Fire name are the various black and white Kindles.

Then there is the Kindle Fire still available under that name in HD and none HD format: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00CYR6UTM/?tag=brite-21
Basically a colour Kindle with tablet functions.

Then there is the Amazon Fire range, which are their attempt to tap into the tablet market. Slightly bigger than the Kindle versions, they have a few more functions, and the top of the range has a nice big screen. (But basically they are Tablets with Kindle functions ).

As part of the family now there is also the Fire Phone. (Basically a small Fire tablet with Kindle functions, and phone functions - but you can also buy a version of the 8.9 Fire tablet with a sim card....)

And let's not forget the Fire TV and TV stick....

Amazon does seem to like to push their stuff though, I don't know if the promotion is still going, but at the end of last year when you bought a Fire phone, they came with vouchers for the smallest Fire tablets, that allowed you to buy one for the whopping great sum of £1.

It's also worth mentioning that all of the Fire families do indeed work on a platform that is a version of the Android O/S. The use of which is slightly different to it's parent, but easy enough to switch to. The downside is that the number of available apps is limited (at the moment) especially compared to the main Android app store.

There are legal ways around this though.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Without the Fire name are the various black and white Kindles.

The proper eReaders using eInk. The Fire = Tablet, not an eReader, it just has a Reader application and uses LCD, not even proper antiglare.

Fire TV is neither a Kindle, Tablet or a TV. It's a small format combo console / streaming device for an HDTV, better value than Apple TV (which isn't a TV). The Google TV gadget is just a wireless link (= spyware) from laptop, Android Tablet or Android phone and simply saves an HDMI cable.

Anything relying on an LCD screen is only an application, not a real eReader.

all of the Fire families do indeed work on a platform that is a version of the Android O/S

Actually even the real Kindle eInk runs a customised Android. The reason is that Amazon isn't an expert SW / HW developer. The applications are really Java. But Oracle only allows full Java for free on Desktop/Laptop. So Google "copied" the Java Virtual Machine as Davik and put their own display manager on a version of Linux. That's what Android is. A Google desktop + Google version of Linux and Google version of Oracle's Java Virtual Machine to run Apps. The "real" eInk Kindles dispense entirely with Android's GUI and have a minimal shell to run Amazon's adaptation of the Mobi Reader (originally for Palm Pilot). Amazon bought Mobi.

So Amazon has done very little HW and Software R&D on the Kindle and Fire ranges. It's mostly brought in free stuff. I suspect that is why the speech synth is like something from 1989, the MP3 player rubbish and the non-tablet Kindle Browser only good enough to buy books on Amazon! The Kindle Fire range (three tablets) is pretty close to a standard Android Tablet. Only the HD version looks like decent value (perhaps sold near cost) as the cheap 6" Android tablets are low resolution.

If you use Free version / customised Android without Google's support, then your device is deliberately blocked from Playstore. The Fire HD is only intended for Amazon's store. Sort of Amazon's version of iPad and iTunes done on the cheap.

 

[Perpetual Man]

Heh, I think you misunderstood me Ray. Obviously the Kindle Fire is not an e-reader to the same degree as one of the proper Kindle's, I was just pointing out that there still is Fire marketed as part of the Kindle range, which means that they are marketing it as an ereader.

I only mentioned the TV as it is part of the Fire range. You can do a few tablety things with it, bnut it is on the TV screen and needs a few expensive additions for it, namely keyboard... It does link very nicely with other Fire products creating quite a good interactive family.

As I said although there is no access to the Play store and to be honest a lot of apps won't run on the Fire devices, it is possible to download them and install them on a Fire device. Honest

 

[JaimeRetief]

You definitely should, it is extremely convention.

 

[Christopher Lee]

I was skeptical until I received my Kindle Fire for christmas, now I love it. You just can't beat the storage space, for one. And it's even more portable than a physical book. Paperbacks will always hold a special place in my heart (i love the smell of a nicely worn paperback), but the kindle is very convenient considering how busy I am.

Soon I'll be purchasing a REAL kindle eReader, as reading on a tablet in the sunlight can be a little irritating. Oh, I can't wait!

 

[Vertigo]

I was a moderately early adopter of eReaders and currently have an old Sony. I no longer get quite the battery life I used to but I still couldn't go back to printed books. Whenever I have to read a printed book now I get really irritated by: having to hold it open, no dictionary lookup, no ability to increase text size when my eyes get tired, no search ability, without a bookmark I lose my place... I could go on

The only things that I hate on ereaders are pictures and maps; eInk is currently just no good at displaying them clearly and it's a pain to quickly refer to the maps in particular. I confess, when reading a book with a map, I frequently print the map and keep it to hand whilst reading.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

eInk is currently just no good at displaying them clearly and it's a pain to quickly refer to the maps in particular.

The Kindle DXG is somewhat better due simply to being larger. But jumping back and forth is a tad painful, even with bookmarks. But most stories don't much need reference to images or maps. I had a kindle paperwhite and gave it to wife and got the DXG purely to have Letter / A4 size image based PDF (old scanned books, magazines and service manuals / schematics). For a book with no images the Kindle Touch is fine and best value. But if you want some images (B&W of course), some PDFs and mostly text the Kindle DXG is great.

Sad that Sony is out of eReader business. Though they have the 13.8" digital paper eInk based tablet with annotation & stylus. $800 though!