Burn your books! [eReaders] are here!

Cyvros

Shen wrote: »

Now that we finally get to have what y'all have had for like a year, how much better is the Kindle Touch compared to the Kindle Keyboard?

Not a Kindle user (I am no fan of closed devices and ecosystems), but a guy whose workplace's only decent ereaders are Kindles (I like money!), my two cents' worth is that the Kindle Touch is a massive improvement. It's smaller and lighter (obvious), the keyboard is probably the best touch ereader keyboard I've used, and I think it's a lot easier to navigate without the dozens of buttons. Also, the built-in web browser is pretty polished and responsive.

Oh, and the Amazon website says it has multi-touch. I haven't had an opportunity to try it yet on our demo Touch, but I imagine it would make playing with PDFs somewhat less of a pain.

valhalla130

Have any of you ever read one of these things in a car? I assume you had to have done so by now. The ones with LCD's... how are they? I can barely see the screen on my Zune in the car during daylight hours. I love reading in cars to pass the time, when I'm not the driver. How would a lcd screen work on a Nook Color or Amazon equivalent?

Darmak

valhalla130 wrote: »

Have any of you ever read one of these things in a car? I assume you had to have done so by now. The ones with LCD's... how are they? I can barely see the screen on my Zune in the car during daylight hours. I love reading in cars to pass the time, when I'm not the driver. How would a lcd screen work on a Nook Color or Amazon equivalent?

Just like any other lcd screen, they work poorly in direct sunlight. My Kindle, however, looks fucking amazing.

Two Headed Boy

Yeah, if you're even the slightest bit concerned about reading in sunlight, I can't recommend an e-ink screen any more.

Spoit

Two Headed Boy wrote: »

Yeah, if you're even the slightest bit concerned about reading in sunlight, I can't recommend an e-ink screen any more.

I assume that you mean that you strongly recommend it, not that you can no longer recommend it

Two Headed Boy

You are correct, sir! Poor wording on my part.

valhalla130

I actually was at Barnes and Noble last night, and looked at both the Nook e-Ink and the Nook Tablet, and although it's more than I want to spend, I love the Nook Tablet. I guess I don't read that much in direct sunlight, and I do read more in bed, where lighting is an issue, so that the Tablet seemed like the better option.

JHunz

The official Kindle lighted case is pricy, but it's also the best reading light I've ever encountered. Just throwing that out there if you're worried about reading in both sunlight and darkness.

amnesiasoft

Actually, cranking the Nook Color's brightness all the way up makes it more or less readable in direct sunlight.

timspork's ghost

So B&N has released their front lit e-ink simple touch. It actually looks really good. However since Amazon has also aquired similar tech I will wait till the lighted Kindle. I will buy that the instant it comes out.

ArcSyn

Ooh, I like that lit e-ink. Haven't seen it in person, but as a person who reads in bed a lot, that's desirable.

valhalla130

I like that. but I noticed I didn't like the way the book pages looked on the Nook e-ink. They only look like half a page. When I saw a book on the Nook Tablet, it looked more like an actual page from a book. Can you adjust the size of the page or text on these things?

Centipede Damascus

Yes, definitely. The font size is very adjustable, as well as the margins.

valhalla130

I love this part of the product description for the new Nook Glow reader:

"Amazing in bed and at the beach."

Darmak

That's what sh-

oh

elevature

Any idea why a Kindle Keyboard would suddenly stop connecting to wifi? It's not my network, because everything else connects. I've tried three different wifi networks and my kindle won't connect to any of them. I've had it for about a year and never had this problem, it just started yesterday. Whenever I try it says "Unable to connect to wifi network" and "Internet connection failed".

JHunz

Just sounds to me like your wifi card has gone out. Tried talking to Amazon support yet?

elevature

JHunz wrote: »

Just sounds to me like your wifi card has gone out. Tried talking to Amazon support yet?

Not yet. I had it forget my home wifi network and then was able to connect, so hopefully it's fine now. But if it happens again I'll contact amazon.

mts

goddamnit, kindle screen broke tonight i think. one too many small drops i think.

ArcSyn

Got my wife a Kindle Fire for her birthday. Any tips/suggestions?

I was thinking of rooting it, but then she'd lose access to Prime content from what I've read. Fortunately I had an Android device and the Amazon app store for a while so I had a bunch of free apps to install for her.

Bullio

If it's for her, let her use it for awhile before rooting or suggesting root. If she likes it as it is there's no reason to mess with it.

Not really sure what type of suggestions you're looking for aside from the obvious of Netflix. You could try introducing her to comics via the ComiXology app if you're so inclined, but I find the KF still on the small side to really enjoy comics on. They do look quite nice on its screen, though.

mts

ArcSyn wrote: »

Got my wife a Kindle Fire for her birthday. Any tips/suggestions?

I was thinking of rooting it, but then she'd lose access to Prime content from what I've read. Fortunately I had an Android device and the Amazon app store for a while so I had a bunch of free apps to install for her.

you just can't have root for videos to work. there is an app called root defender or something like that that makes it one touch root/unroot and that allows you to watch VOD

maximumzero

So I'm sitting on four or so books in my Amazon shopping cart, and I just had the idea of maybe buying a kindle instead of the books themselves.

What's the purpose of a touch screen on the Kindle Touch and a Keyboard on the Kindle Keyboard?

Bullio

maximumzero wrote: »

So I'm sitting on four or so books in my Amazon shopping cart, and I just had the idea of maybe buying a kindle instead of the books themselves.

What's the purpose of a touch screen on the Kindle Touch and a Keyboard on the Kindle Keyboard?

Accessibility. Old people like keyboards.

maximumzero

Bullio wrote: »

maximumzero wrote: »

So I'm sitting on four or so books in my Amazon shopping cart, and I just had the idea of maybe buying a kindle instead of the books themselves.

What's the purpose of a touch screen on the Kindle Touch and a Keyboard on the Kindle Keyboard?

Accessibility. Old people like keyboards.

But what would I need a keyboard for? I'm reading a book, not writing one.

mts

you can make annotations and stuff. though i have never done that. touch screen is for turning pages and moving through menus/selecting books

sir_pinch-a-loaf

it also has a web browser, so the keyboard/touch screen is used for navigation in there.

timspork's ghost

I've owned the Kindle 3 since it came out and honestly I can count on one hand the number of times I've used the keyboard. Right now I'm just waiting for the Lighted Kindle to come out.

Centipede Damascus

maximumzero wrote: »

Bullio wrote: »

maximumzero wrote: »

So I'm sitting on four or so books in my Amazon shopping cart, and I just had the idea of maybe buying a kindle instead of the books themselves.

What's the purpose of a touch screen on the Kindle Touch and a Keyboard on the Kindle Keyboard?

Accessibility. Old people like keyboards.

But what would I need a keyboard for? I'm reading a book, not writing one.

Sometimes you need one to search for things in the book store if you're browsing on the go, or for inputting wifi passwords, or for making notes on books as you're reading.

Two Headed Boy

I've used my keyboard several times looking up keywords in books I'm writing an essay on, but the physical keyboard is far from necessary in that case. Still, I like the extra space so my hand isn't covering any of the screen.

maximumzero

Eh, just ended up buying the books instead.

Dashui

Half a year later, I'm still loving my Nook Simple Touch. It seems like half the books I want to read, though, have extra spaces between each paragraph. Apparently this is a personal preference for a lot of people or occasionally a publisher conversion error. Regardless, I can't stand the extra spaces. My eyes can't adjust to it. But I just discovered Calibre and its "remove spacing between paragraphs option." Thank goodness. I didn't want to read those ebooks because of those spaces. I've also encountered some ebooks with a ridiculous amount of spelling errors. Come on, publishers, get your shit together.

ArcSyn

I finally broke down and bought an eReader! I saw that Qualcomm cancelled their development of Mirasol so color eInk isn't coming anytime soon. I got a Pandigital Novel 6" because it was cheap, and I've got Calibre loaded on my PC to get my wife's Kindle books onto it and I've got a few ePubs transferred over. It's got a link to the B&N store, but I'd like to try and stay as platform agnostic as possible. I know Project Gutenberg has a lot of free books, but what are some good stores out there?

Centipede Damascus

Well, besides Amazon and B&N, you can also buy platform-agnostic books off of Google and Sony. They sometimes have good deals.

Fiskav

Centipede Damascus wrote: »

Well, besides Amazon and B&N, you can also buy platform-agnostic books off of Google and Sony. They sometimes have good deals.

+1 for Google's bookstore. I've never tried Sony, their books always seemed a little expensive compared to similar Amazon/Google offerings. Then again, I haven't visited for a while, so things might've changed.

Elin

ArcSyn wrote: »

I finally broke down and bought an eReader! I saw that Qualcomm cancelled their development of Mirasol so color eInk isn't coming anytime soon. I got a Pandigital Novel 6" because it was cheap, and I've got Calibre loaded on my PC to get my wife's Kindle books onto it and I've got a few ePubs transferred over. It's got a link to the B&N store, but I'd like to try and stay as platform agnostic as possible. I know Project Gutenberg has a lot of free books, but what are some good stores out there?

If you read sci-fi and fantasy Baen has a great store. They have some great older books that you can't find on some other stores and they're getting other publishers signing on with them. They also have a decent selection of books for free, popular ones at that. Baen was the company that released CD's of free books with their hardcover books.

ArcSyn

Cool, I'll check that out. Thanks for the link Elin! And thanks for the recommendation of the Google store, Centipede. I didn't even know they sold books!

electricitylikesme

So if I wanted an eReader that was not a Kindle, what would I be looking at?

I love the Kindle with the keyboard model, but I got very frustrated with the obtuseness of the search function and it's insistence on indexing all the books on the device itself (rather then say, letting my computer take care of that in like 1/1000th the time).

ArcSyn

Nook, Sony, Pandigital. There's a bunch of different companies out there with eReaders. You looking for eInk still?

Corvus

It's old and clunky by now, but my old Kobo has been a very durable device.