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Kindle for the Good Woman
MegaMan001
CRNARochester, MNRegistered User regular
CRNARochester, MNRegistered User regular
I'm planning on getting a Kindle for my live-in girlfriend (we've been together for almost three years, positive, healthy relationship) because she loves to read is constantly buying books, etc. I think she'd really like it.
Any thoughts on what Kindle is superior? I don't have the money for the Fire or the DX so my options are basically the Kindle with Offers, Kindle Touch, Kindle without Offers.
I've heard from a lot of people that the 'offers' have actually essentially paid for the Kindle itself over time, other people think it's awful.
Any thoughts to which is superior?
Any thoughts on what Kindle is superior? I don't have the money for the Fire or the DX so my options are basically the Kindle with Offers, Kindle Touch, Kindle without Offers.
I've heard from a lot of people that the 'offers' have actually essentially paid for the Kindle itself over time, other people think it's awful.
Any thoughts to which is superior?
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http://www.tested.com/quick-look-at-the-amazon-kindle-touch-3g/47-622/
http://www.tested.com/quick-look-at-the-amazon-kindle-4th-generation/47-547/
I'd probably go with the Kindle without special offers. A friend of mine likes them because over time he's gotten a lot of discounts on Amazon gift certificates, but if you have to spend money to save money, what's the point?
I'd go for the Touch if you think your lady might want to use it for music or audiobooks at some point. If she's into reading, she might dig OTR, and a Touch would allow her to carry that around as well.
Also you can apparently pay the price difference to remove the ads.
Wait, what? It's the same price as the new ones unless you get a used one.
I'd try to go over to a Best Buy/etc and play with the different versions... for some reason, I really didn't like the Touch - I found it much less responsive than even something like my phone, and thus it wasn't worth spending more to have something more annoying. Since it's just a book reader, and not really a multimedia device, unless you (i.e., she) will actually like the touch controls I don't think it really takes away from the book-reading experience to have the basic 'next page/previous page' buttons and that's it.
I wound up buying one of the keyboard ones recently, but that was because it was on sale for the cost of the base model... I didn't really think there was a huge difference between any of them, though (obviously if being able to buy things over 3G is an advantage then that's a good idea, but as my gf is just going to use it around the apartment there wasn't much point in 3G over wifi)
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If you live near a Barnes and Noble, the free in store support is a great value.
I'm not sure how your gf is, but I don't need all the extra touch/3G/whatever stuff. I have my phone for that. I want to be able to read comfortably, and that's exactly what this device does.
Didn't Barnes and Noble just declare bankruptcy and close a ton of locations?
Pretty much this. The offers are totally worth it.
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You should break up with--whoops, force of habit.
The Nook Simple Touch seems generally better regarded than the Kindle Touch, which has input lag issues. But if the classic is what you're looking at the Kindle seems universally loved.
Whatever you end up getting, be sure to check out www.ereaderiq.com. It keeps track of deals and has an up to date list of free books available for whatever e-reader your heart desires.
I do prefer the keyboard model to the others. I don't use the keyboard at all, but it gives a good place to hold the thing. It also feels a little better constructed than the newer models, though that could just be my imagination.
Nope, you're thinking of Borders.
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I think with the public domain stuff I picked up at least 200 books before I even spent any money. And amazon support is amazing. I originally got an unlighted cover for my kindle, but there was some sort of issue with the contacts or something and it was causing the kindle to reboot. So i called them about it, they sent me out a lighted cover free of charge, and i got gift certificates too.
It has been absolutely brilliant. And now that I'm in new Zealand, I see books that I want and I go to the bookstore and they're prohibitively expensive, but I can get them for at least 60% less on Kindle... I just can't see the logic in not getting the kindle copy (although cookbooks are items that just do not work on Kindle, and some reference type books with lots of footnotes are also rather difficult because flipping back and forth is just not simple).
In closing, LOVE IT. But I have no idea what this 'special offers' thing you guys are talking about?
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Can anyone confirm whether or not you are able to do the immediate dictionary look up option for words with the non-Kindle Touch? That is a feature that she would absolutely, absolutely, love.
Also get a black one unless she REALLY wants the white one, they get dingy pretty quickly.
No matter which one you get, look at project Gutenberg for free out of copy-write books for it, you can get a TON of classics this way.
Also, if you plan to view .pdf's on it...make sure they are formatted for it, it was pretty much the worst way to try and read scientific articles I ever found.
You can use the dictionary feature on the kindle keyboard, absolutely. The only "issue" with it is that you have to navigate to the word with the D pad. If your word is in the middle of a sentence 3/4 of the way down the page it can feel cumbersome.
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This can be locked, I think.
How is the web browsing over 3G?
I've been thinking of picking one up for reading, but having the ability to hit Wikipedia or something while I am away from wifi sounds nice.
1. It's surprisingly light - You can hold it up easily with one hand for some time, and use a thumb to turn the pages, if you need to.
2. It really does fit into the back pocket of your jeans. Well, my jeans anyway. Obviously I need to lose some weight.
3. On special offers:
a) The ad that appears on the Home screen from time to time is so small I actually just had to check if it was where I thought it was. Does a horizontal banner across the width of the kindle, maybe 5%-10% of the total height. Usually just clicking through on my way to a book/the Kindle store anyway.
b) I know someone upthread hates them, but I could care less about the screensaver ads. Mostly because the screensaver only comes on when I'm not using the device, so I'm unlikely to see it. Well worth the $50 saving, to me anyway. Might be different if you could pick your own screensaver..but on the othe rhand, I already used one of the 'Special Offers' so maybe not.
c) I really, really thought I'd hate the ads, and justified having them by knowing I could pay the money to turn them off at any time. Probably won't bother now.
4. 3g: The Touch only lets you browse wikipedia and the Kindle store using the 3g. You can access pretty much everything else using the wireless. This is a bit of a downshift from the previous version, which let you use 3g for everything...but honestly, you probably don't want to The browser is tagged as experimental, and is (to me anyway) extremely imperformant. The lack of colour is also a problem - think lots and lots of greyscale. Good if you need to use it I suppose, but you'd probably be better using a smartphone browser or something.
That said, the 3g has proved its worth for me, because it's meant I haven't had to connect to the hotel wifi to buy books on the fly. On balance, I'm iffy on if I'd spend the $50 it cost to get the 3g, but given I offset it with Special Offers (which turned out to be no hardship), I think yes.
The touch controls are actually very responsive. I have overclicked a few times and missed a few pages, but might do that with a button too. The e-ink takes a few pages to 'warm up' sometimes, but the response rate is actually very good, an almost instant refresh after a page or two.
Finally, the fact that the device saves the last page you were on in each book you are reading has removed one of the minor chores from my life - I no longer need to remember the page numbers.
Overall, I'd say go for the 3g, and get the special offers - I preferred the Touch over the Keyboard personally, but that's something you may want to try out for yourself (note: the demo Touch I tried in Best Buy had a terrible response rate and almost put me off the purchase..I have no idea what was going on there).
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No worries dude. I'm liking mine.
For what it's worth, the brief decision tree is "Get the 3g, because you can't change your mind and get it later if you just get the wi-fi, and get the special offers, because if you don't like them later, you can always remove them and be no worse off"
Like I say, it might be worth going over to <big box electronics store of choice> and playing around with the various variants, see which works for you in a hands-on way, and which will work best for her. Some people really do like the Keyboard, but the lack of hard buttons hasn't been an issue for me.
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Also, if you get yourself a Kindle at some point and you register it to the same account you can both share all the content purchased with that account. My husband and I love that feature. I believe that the Touch will play Audible books as well as normal Kindle titles, I know that the Kindle Keyboard plays Audible files.
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It does indeed play back Audible; I totally forgot about that. Even has a headphone jack.
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Have had nothing but good experiences with my Kindle 3 Keyboard.
So honestly, I do NOT like the web browsing much in general on it. But I think this is far more related to it being e-ink than anything else. It has been handy for Wikipedia, but once I switched to a phone of moderate intelligence (it can handle gps and wiki mobile...sometimes) I stopped using the kindle for that. But the speeds are ok, just remember nothing moving, no flash, pandora is not going to work etc. I would not advocate it as an internet browsing device.
So, yeah. Storage space doesn't matter.