To Kindle or not to Kindle...

[Vertigo]

I don't find the map thing a huge problem as I don't read much Fantasy, which is where I find most book maps tend to reside. So the occasional printed one I can live with.

I agree it's sad Sony have abandoned this business but not too surprising. Amazon can't possibly make money on selling the Kindle; I'm certain the money is all made on selling the books. So if you don't have a major book selling site for which your reader is effectively just a loss leader then it's very difficult to compete (And Sony's book store was never a patch on Amazon). Sadly, the way things are going, the Kindle family will pretty soon be the only eReaders on the market; I'm not sure Barnes and Noble and the Nook, or the Kobo (W H Smith?) will be able to stay in competition with Amazon. And that doesn't bode well for the future of non monopolied book selling.

 

[JaimeRetief]

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!

The monochrome color not withstanding, e-ink is a lot better than any tablet display for reading books IMO.

 

[Overread]

I can only second what others have said - Kindle e-ink readers are fantastic as story book reading units. They are light, easy to hold and the e-ink is just as good as real print, it really is (plus there's no faded ink because they got cheap on the printing ). Heck if you get a paperwhite you can read in bed without having to get up to turn the light on/off.

The downsides I would say are:
1) Amazon seems to e messing with touchscreen and other tech rather than just simple paddle buttons like in the early days.

2) They don't let you set custom screensavers nor set the book your reading to the current screen saver - a missed opportunity here I think .

3) They are not good with images, they cna show them but the interface isn't up to scratch. I suspect as processors get faster and better Amazon will start making kindles faster and faster- if they can get to tablet speeds and features they'll be away

4) You can't "flip" pages.


Otherwise they are fantastic. The storage aspect is also great; you can now go on holiday with many many books and not feel any worries for packaging space; or commute on the train/bus. It's also great if your house is running out of space for more novels.

 

[JaimeRetief]

I can only second what others have said - Kindle e-ink readers are fantastic as story book reading units. They are light, easy to hold and the e-ink is just as good as real print, it really is (plus there's no faded ink because they got cheap on the printing ). Heck if you get a paperwhite you can read in bed without having to get up to turn the light on/off.

The downsides I would say are:
1) Amazon seems to e messing with touchscreen and other tech rather than just simple paddle buttons like in the early days.

2) They don't let you set custom screensavers nor set the book your reading to the current screen saver - a missed opportunity here I think .

3) They are not good with images, they cna show them but the interface isn't up to scratch. I suspect as processors get faster and better Amazon will start making kindles faster and faster- if they can get to tablet speeds and features they'll be away

4) You can't "flip" pages.


Otherwise they are fantastic. The storage aspect is also great; you can now go on holiday with many many books and not feel any worries for packaging space; or commute on the train/bus. It's also great if your house is running out of space for more novels.

I will have to aree, since I read a lot of technical litarature with various diagrams and images on e-readers, it is not impossible to use grayscale or other tricks to make the diagrams less problematic to comperhend, but my personal experience says that this is not yet the case.

Thee is this pretty interesting russian smartphone with a dual display, one is a normal display of the type you can see on any smartphone, the other is e-ink, I think that a tablet/reader of this type would be the solution for those that need to view content with embeded charts, diagrams and color images.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

since I read a lot of technical litarature with various diagrams and images on e-readers,

Have you tried the Kindle DXG? 9.7" and 212 dpi. Sold world wide still on Amazon.com

For tech stuff it's a pity the Sony Digital paper is $800 (13.8" and stylus annotation), though it was an eye watering $1200.

 

[JaimeRetief]

Have you tried the Kindle DXG? 9.7" and 212 dpi. Sold world wide still on Amazon.com

For tech stuff it's a pity the Sony Digital paper is $800 (13.8" and stylus annotation), though it was an eye watering $1200.

My old Nexus works pk for pdfs.
THe Sony DIgital Paper looks wonderful, I will definitely cosnider it, thanks.

 

[chongjasmine]

I think going kindle is a good option.
It will allow you to read ebooks.
And some of the books are only available as ebooks.

 

[Duncan]

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.

I was a big nook fan, I have most of the nook devices though I recently left it for the kindle.

The map issue is a non-issue on recent Kindle devices. You can now open images from within the ebook and pan and zoom them. If the ebook supports the X-ray indexing in kindles you can easily refer back to it as well. Even if it doesn't just bookmark the page and you can easily bring up the map quickly no matter where you are. At this point the eInk kindles are superior to paper books now. Kindles are now the superior eink device for users.

 

[BAYLOR]

Call me old fashioned, but I prefer paper books .

 

[Vertigo]

I was a big nook fan, I have most of the nook devices though I recently left it for the kindle.

The map issue is a non-issue on recent Kindle devices. You can now open images from within the ebook and pan and zoom them. If the ebook supports the X-ray indexing in kindles you can easily refer back to it as well. Even if it doesn't just bookmark the page and you can easily bring up the map quickly no matter where you are. At this point the eInk kindles are superior to paper books now. Kindles are now the superior eink device for users.

I'm still on my original Sony, however it does allow zooming on images. The problem is that most of the images (maps) are of too low a resolution to be worth zooming in on. I'm not sure if the problem is with the publisher/author providing too low a resolution image in the first place or whether the ePub process reduces the resolution of the image to the display resolution and that is what is then zoomed. Either way the resulting image is invariably low resolution and if the start point is low then there's nothing any kind of zooming can do to make it better. You just end up with a bigger blur!

 

[SilentRoamer]

I prefer paper but I own a Kindle HD. I generally use the Kindle for reading out of print or really difficult to obtain books.

Oh and I also use it as a game emulator and for watching things on the go.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Kindle HD.

Amazon now market those as Fire, as they are NOT eInk, they are tablets.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

the problem is with the publisher/author providing too low a resolution image in the first place

Yes.
Both ePub and Mobi (all eBooks) are really just web pages in a single file paginated by the viewer. So HTML, javascript, images, CSS, optional database are all in reality however specified. There are severe limits on all the aspects compared to a web browser.

 

[SilentRoamer]

Amazon now market those as Fire, as they are NOT eInk, they are tablets.

Yeah I am aware of that - I actually work in the IT industry so get a lot of exposure to this sort of thing (although admittedly less than I do network infrastructure.)

I personally find the tablet a better reading experience than the paperwhite. Although you are correct about the e-ink it is not just the e-ink technology that prevents getting tired eyes, it is also because the paperwhite is frontlit and not backlight.

Agree with regards to maps, I suspect that bad (low resolution) images are provided, which are probably the same base art sent to traditional publishers.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

The Touch (no front light) is better. The front light is only use when too dark to read a book. The lamps best set to minimum otherwise on a Paperwhite. It's not worth the extra money.

find the tablet a better reading experience than the paperwhite

Try reading for 4 hrs straight, or a week away from charging.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I personally find the tablet a better reading experience than the paperwhite.

I agree - I don't use my old Kindle at all now, as the Fire HD is so much more versatile.

 

[SilentRoamer]

Try reading for 4 hrs straight, or a week away from charging.

Personally - and this is obviously anecdotal. I spend more than 4 hours a day almost every day whilst at work reading from an LCD backlit monitor. In honesty I would have no problem whatsoever with reading for 4 hours straight on a Kindle Fire - I actually find reading on a Kindle Fire in lower light to be a more pleasurable experience. As I live in the UK it is not often my Fire has to compete with direct sunlight

With respect to battery life - that is indeed an issue, it does take a considerable amount of extra power on the Kindle Fire but I generally have mine in Airplane mode and can get a good amount of time out of it. I can charge it on a PC, in the car or in a plug and have just never had issues with it. Generally the Wireless trying to connect to anything in range drains the most battery life - but this is pretty standard behaviour for tablets.

I personally feel that the benefits of a Fire HD far outweigh the drawbacks, the HDX I find a bit too large though.

 

[Nerds_feather]

I can't stand reading off an LCD screen. Much prefer my Kindle Voyage.

 

[Michael Coorlim]

Until they make a Kindle Submersible I'm going to stick to paper, otherwise I just know I'm going to drop the thing into the bath.

 

[BAYLOR]

Until they make a Kindle Submersible I'm going to stick to paper, otherwise I just know I'm going to drop the thing into the bath.

It's Kindle Submersible, The first kindle you can take on a deep dive to the Marinas Trench .