Yes to Amazon and B&N. They both use proprietary formats that only their reader supports. The rumor is that B&N is going to switch to ePub, like Sony just did, so in theory they should be compatible with each other, but there's probably a DRM clusterfuck between them that would make that impossible. I'm really glad Sony is moving away from this proprietary bullshit, and I hope B&N does, too. It'll be best for everyone once the industry settles on a standard. The differences in hardware don't really matter to me, what I'm most concerned with is the differences in what books are offered.
Yeah, that's why I was wondering. Hm... that's a bit crappy...
Don't suppose you or anyone else in the thread has any experience with foreign language texts, by chance?
Nope. I'm willing to bet support is crappy, since the various readers are designed almost exclusively with the US in mind. Maybe if you exported things as a pdf, it would work? I'll try a file out if you can point me towards something primarily in a foreign language.
So if you buy an eBook from Amazon or B&N, do you have to use their reader for it? I think B&N had an eBook store before the Nook, so I'm guessing not from them?
Yes, but that doesn't necessarily mean a Nook or a Kindle. They both have iPhone apps that let you read their books, and they both have PC & Mac software that will let you read on a computer.
Does anyone have any experience trying to find texts from specific translators? For instance, I read a lot of philosophy texts from ancient Greece all the way through the middle ages, most of which aren't written in English. As is the case with these things, some translations are rubbish and some are fantastic. Most of these texts are public domain these days, but is there any way I can go about finding specific translations? Even if some translations aren't public domain, is the selection wide enough that I can be a little picky or am I probably stuck with one?
Yes, actually. I busted my head against the different stores while I was testing them out. They're all uniformly terrible at noting translations. Most listings contain no mention at all of translation, just the original author. I checked a bunch of famous novels and works of poetry, and I actually specifically checked a bunch of philosophy texts. They're all pretty dismal, but if I was going to rank them, B&N is the best of the three I tried, with Amazon just barely scraping bottom, and Sony being the worst. "Best" in this case is a relative term, since they all suck.
edit: And B&N only scored points because they incorporate Google Books into their searches. On their own they're the worst of the three. You'd get the same results if you started at Google and bypassed the B&N store entirely.
Well that's unfortunate. That could seriously limit the amount of reading I'm able to do on an ereader. I guess I at least have a sizable chunk of post-Renaissance English literature.
So if you buy an eBook from Amazon or B&N, do you have to use their reader for it? I think B&N had an eBook store before the Nook, so I'm guessing not from them?
Yes, but that doesn't necessarily mean a Nook or a Kindle. They both have iPhone apps that let you read their books, and they both have PC & Mac software that will let you read on a computer.
True, but I'm looking specifically at the eReader market. If I wanted to, I could read books on my cell phone here, but that would be terrible for my eyes.
I was doing a little reading and stuff I was reading implied that if I buy a book from B&N in ePUB I could read it on a Sony reader? Or is that still not going to work?
I'm at work at the moment, but I could drop a link when I get home tonight.
Any specific format in mind?
Probably just PDF or .txt. I've got an older one that can only handle those or Sony's old proprietary file type. So even if I can't read it, a newer one or one from another company might.
About B&N and Sony cross-compatability, once they're all in ePub they technically should work. I can't find any concrete information about DRM, though. I think the fact that they're so tight-lipped about it shows they know it might turn away sales. I'll try that out too if I end up getting a Sony reader.
Oddly enough Sony has the most open eReader of the big brands. They don't force you to use their store. Which is part of the reason I'm going to buy one of theirs when I can afford it. I also need the option for SD card use which the kindle does not have at all.
I'm at work at the moment, but I could drop a link when I get home tonight.
Any specific format in mind?
Probably just PDF or .txt. I've got an older one that can only handle those or Sony's old proprietary file type. So even if I can't read it, a newer one or one from another company might.
About B&N and Sony cross-compatability, once they're all in ePub they technically should work. I can't find any concrete information about DRM, though. I think the fact that they're so tight-lipped about it shows they know it might turn away sales. I'll try that out too if I end up getting a Sony reader.
Here's some song lyrics I tossed up onto an uploading site.
Does anyone here get the Economist on their Kindle? That is kind of a draw for me.
Sentry on
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
wrote:
When I was a little kid, I always pretended I was the hero,' Skip said.
'Fuck yeah, me too. What little kid ever pretended to be part of the lynch-mob?'
To weigh in on yesterday's eink vs lcd debate again. Now that I've got an eink device and I've used it in my most common reading situation (in bed with a dim lamp vs in BestBuy with bright lighting), I'm going to say that imo LCD is superior for both readability and eyestrain.
I'll be comparing the Smart Q7, Asus T91MT and Sony PRS-600. Some points about each - again this is my opinion
PRS-600 weight - slight advantage over the smart q, huge advantage over the asus build quality - noticably better than the asus(which itself was good, way better than the smart q(which is acceptable) battery life (this assumes that the approximately two weeks I've read is true) - slightly better than the smart q which lasted about a week for me, far better than the asus boot speed - the sony wins hands down since it has a usable standby that doesn't drain the battery, basically instant power up to the book touch screen - fairly sensitive, unlike the smart q, and also accurate, unlike the asus
annotations - beats the smart q easily, wins over the asus only because the srcreen is accurate reading formats - beats the smart q only because of DRM* but only supports a few file types, loses to the asus on all fronts size - way smaller and thinner than asus, slightly smaller and thinner than the smart q but the smart q has a 7" screen vs the sony's 6" page turns - all three devices tie, the sony flips pages very, very fast for an eink device(nearly instant)
T91MT reading formats - being a windows 7 machine this supports everything and wins, hands down, on DRM* and file types readability* - ties with the smart q, beats the sony. Alreader2 allows adjustment of EVERYTHING, supports full justification on all formats. The only problem here is that Alreader2 doesn't support DRM'd* files, leaving you stuck with the readers supplied by the various stores that do not allow as much tweaking but still more than the sony misc - it's a computer so you can do anything on it, beats the both of the others handily annotations - if the touch screen wasn't so shitty *sigh* this would be the clear winner
Smart Q7 (WinCE and Ubuntu) weight - loses slightly to the sony, kills the asus readability* - ties with the asus since Alreader2 is available on both with the same options, fully adjustable backlight, colors, fonts, etc reading formats - supports almost as many file types as a full pc, DRM'd* files are limited to Mobipocket and eReader(and that's not going to last) as far as I know battery - sure it's about half the quoted life of the sony but recharging once a week(real world, not quoted) isn't a big hassle misc - does lots of other stuff but you won't mistake it for a full pc, still it'd not a single purpose device and that's nice
Lots of other stuff that I'm probably not remembering because I haven't slept.
*On readability and DRM - These issues are closely tied to each other for me and probably for alot of other avid readers. I like my books formatted just so. Seriously. Paragraphs have to have a nice indent and they need to be clearly seperated. On the other hand lines within paragraphs can't be spaced too far apart and the font size has to be just right too.
If the font is too small it's hard to read. If it's too big then I'm flipping pages too often. I like just the right font too. Something thick, bordering on bold. I also like my italicized font to be completely different than the regular so it's immediately obvious that I've hit italics.
The reason that this all ties in with DRM is that, to make all the adjustments that I consider necessary, I've got to strip the DRM for all three devices. On the smart q and asus I have to remove the DRM so I can read in Alreader2. On the sony it has to be stripped so I can convert to epub in Calibre and use the Droid serif font at 14.5 pts with a 16.5 pt line height and 3.5 em ident size. That means inserting custom CSS, etc and Calibre can do all that - except it doesn't work with DRM'd files.
So, um, I should make some points here. First, I think that my reading habits are fairly typical for an adult over the age of, say, 25 in the US. I read mainly fiction and mainly in bed. For that, a lightweight ARM device like the smart q wins.
All of that said, I'm keeping the PRS-600. I like to take classes at the local college every now and again, the sony will be superior for that - being smaller, lighter and better for notes. Also my wife's eyesight isn't perfect so I'll let her use the smart q since it's easier to read.
It has slightly reduced contrast due to the touch layer. That does not affect the fact that it's a thousand times easier to read a dimly lit backlighted device in a low light situation.
It has slightly reduced contrast due to the touch layer. That does not affect the fact that it's a thousand times easier to read a dimly lit backlighted device in a low light situation.
True, but I bought the 600 and then bought a kindle to compare. The 600 is a lot more than slightly reduced. It's damn near unreadable with a night lamp, whereas the kindle is readable anytime a physical book is readable, which is what I want.
I think it's hard to appreciate how easy on the eyes a dimly lit LCD is until you've actually tried one that is also decently sized. A typical laptop/desktop LCD will not get nearly as dim as the screens on both the Smart Q and T91MT(which would not get as dim as the Smart Q). Having 100 levels of brightness adjustments is a nice feature. And while you may have a cell that will adjust to be around the same dimness, that still leaves you squinting at a 3" screen vs a 7" screen.
Also, if anyone wants to know why I'm fussing about how awesome Alreader is, grab the windows version here then get the very roughly translated exe that I made here. No installation required, just unzip it then put my exe in the dir and run it. Being able to perfectly format your book is a hard thing to give up.
Well, I ordered my Kindle today. This thread convinced me to take the plunge. I'm excited and... yes, a little scared.
Sentry on
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
wrote:
When I was a little kid, I always pretended I was the hero,' Skip said.
'Fuck yeah, me too. What little kid ever pretended to be part of the lynch-mob?'
I'm at work at the moment, but I could drop a link when I get home tonight.
Any specific format in mind?
Probably just PDF or .txt. I've got an older one that can only handle those or Sony's old proprietary file type. So even if I can't read it, a newer one or one from another company might.
About B&N and Sony cross-compatability, once they're all in ePub they technically should work. I can't find any concrete information about DRM, though. I think the fact that they're so tight-lipped about it shows they know it might turn away sales. I'll try that out too if I end up getting a Sony reader.
Here's some song lyrics I tossed up onto an uploading site.
It couldn't read it as a text file, it just showed white boxes where the characters were. I converted it to pdf and it worked fine, though. So depending on what format most of your stuff is in, it might be ok. I'm thinking it would probably be ok if it was in a better format than .txt. Maybe a Kindle person will test it out, newer readers probably have better support for that kind of stuff.
edit: Ok, on interoperability of books, it sounds like by the end of the year B&N and Sony books will be readable on anything that supports ePub, which is pretty much everything.
Google Books And Kindles: A Concentration Camp Of Ideas
When I hear the term Kindle I think not of imaginations fired but of crematoria lit. And when I hear the term "hi-tech" I think not of helpful androids efficiently performing household chores or light-speed rockets gliding seamlessly through space but of the fact that between 1933-45, modern technology was used to perform in ever more efficient ways the mass murder of six million of my people. The instruments of so-called progress, placed in the hands of the modern state, disappeared six million Jewish men, women and children, into a void from which they will never return and in which a majority of them remain forever unidentified. This was done in the name of progress by means of technology for the creation of a better world.
The Nazis often were, by their own lights, well-intentioned idealists working for a better tomorrow. And their instrument was modern technology, aspects of philosophical and aesthetic modernism and the old religious concept of supercession implicit in the Christian notion of progress. Jews were outmoded, useless, they said. Most high level Nazis, like Himmler or Heydrich or Eichmann, did not feel visceral hatred towards the Jew. Rather, they looked upon them coldly as something that simply needed to disappear so that the new life could get on its way. And the means by which they sought to do so was first through a propaganda campaign that portrayed Jews, in Wagnerian terms, as a drag on the visionary energies and bursting vigor of the new Aryan man, and then by the implementation of this decision to eliminate Jews through ever more sophisticated state corporate and scientific technological means. And yet, during the war crime trials at Nuremberg, while Nazi Jurisprudence was tried and hanged, Nazi technological attitudes were not put on trial.
The victorious Allies did not mandate that technology, which had been turned to such murderous ends, must pass an ethical standard review from an international body, like a UN of technology. No such body of decision came about. To the contrary, even while the war crime trials of Nazi chieftains were in session, American and Soviet governments were recruiting high-level Nazis to their intelligence services, military armaments industries, and space programs. So that, while in jurisprudence terms Nazi social and political values were delivered a blow, the Nazi fascination with technology merged seamlessly with that of their conquerors: us.
That is why today we drive Volkswagens, which were invented by Hitler, and use space heaters from companies that may once have manufactured crematoria and why Werner Von Braun, the Nazi father of the V-2 rocket became an American space pioneer hero studied in public schools. Nazi Technology and corporate methodology was folded handily into American feel-good Capitalist culture. That is the very point of the brilliant satire, "Dr. Strangelove".
So that now, sixty four years after the Holocaust, the Nazi disdain for the book has become the feel-good Hi-Tech campaign to rid the world of books in place of massive easily controlled centralized repositories of book texts downloadable on little hand-held devices and from which a text can be dissapeared with the click of a mouse: in Nazi terms, a dream come true.
How grave was Nazi contempt for books? As response to the book burnings in Germany, in the May 11, 1933 issue of Chicago's Daily Worker, (and years before the first fully operational death camps opened their furnace doors), a grim cartoon entitled "Altars of the Nazis" portrayed two smoking crematoria of equal size, placed side by side, one marked "Nazi Victims" and the other "Condemned Books". The link between contempt for books and mass murder could not be more clear.
President Roosevelt, recognizing the threat of Nazi attitudes to the book, launched a full-scale government campaign, and declaring it part of the national war effort, said: "...books...embody man's eternal fight against tyranny. In this war, we know, books are weapons."
In World War II, people died to produce and protect books. Anti-Fascist organizations, American Jewish Groups and writers, editors and journalists launched massive demonstrations in defense of the book, including, on March 10, 1933, the largest march, to that date, in the history of New York City: 100,000 people turned out to express outrage at the burning of books and other events in Germany. In its coverage of the Berlin book burnings, Newsweek used "Holocaust" as its headline.
Today's hi-tech propagandists tell us that the book is a tree-murdering, space-devouring, inferior form that society would be better off without. In its place, they want us to carry around the Uber-Kindle.
The hi-tech campaign to relocate books to Google and replace books with Kindles is, in its essence, a deportation of the literary culture to a kind of easily monitored concentration camp of ideas, where every examination of a text leaves behind a trail, a record, so that curiosity is also tinged with a sense of disquieting fear that some day someone in authority will know that one had read a particular book or essay. This death of intellectual privacy was also a dream of the Nazis. And when I hear the term Kindle, I think not of imaginations fired but of crematoria lit.
I've owned my Kindle for a couple of months now and I've never wished I had a backllight. I mean, I don't tend to read in the dark. I'll just, you know, turn the light on.
I've owned my Kindle for a couple of months now and I've never wished I had a backllight. I mean, I don't tend to read in the dark. I'll just, you know, turn the light on.
Like I would reading any book.
This. the only time I've wished I had a backlight is while reading on car trips, which has happened all of two times since I've had the thing, and would be the exact same situation were I reading a normal book.
I'm at work at the moment, but I could drop a link when I get home tonight.
Any specific format in mind?
Probably just PDF or .txt. I've got an older one that can only handle those or Sony's old proprietary file type. So even if I can't read it, a newer one or one from another company might.
About B&N and Sony cross-compatability, once they're all in ePub they technically should work. I can't find any concrete information about DRM, though. I think the fact that they're so tight-lipped about it shows they know it might turn away sales. I'll try that out too if I end up getting a Sony reader.
Here's some song lyrics I tossed up onto an uploading site.
It couldn't read it as a text file, it just showed white boxes where the characters were. I converted it to pdf and it worked fine, though. So depending on what format most of your stuff is in, it might be ok. I'm thinking it would probably be ok if it was in a better format than .txt. Maybe a Kindle person will test it out, newer readers probably have better support for that kind of stuff.
edit: Ok, on interoperability of books, it sounds like by the end of the year B&N and Sony books will be readable on anything that supports ePub, which is pretty much everything.
Sorry for the late response! I was away from computers for the weekend.
Good to know pdf should work! Thanks for the info and for trying out that file for me!
That Huff Post article calling Kindle the next Nazi book-burning movement just amazes me. The faulty leaps in logic, the blatantly stupid premises, the hysterical tone of an article that's hyperbole at its best... I'd find it funny except I'm a little worried that this guy was actually giving a pedestal from which to speak.
I highly recommend reading the comments on that article. Alan Kaufman actually gets into it with a commenter named "BCarruth" and you get the lovely sight of watching Kaufman's argument change: From "Oh dear God HiTech is getting our children addicted to devices they have complete control over so they can keep us from reading!" (never mind that DRM is a technology where the latest innovation is circumvented by the masses in a matter of weeks, as BCarruth points out) to "Oh dear God HiTech just wants our money!" Then he uses the nuclear arms race as an example. Hyperbole is to this man what water and air are to us.
I will give Alan Kaufman one point: He is correct that Amazon's ironic deletion of 1984 (which was since reversed after the explosive furor) was pretty scary. Amazon can't just promise that won't happen again; they need some sort of way to show customers that it CAN'T happen again.
In other news, Amazon/B&N/etc need a way to regulate sale of books in a DRM-free environment. They've taken a massive step forward in allowing books to be read on computers and iPhones, but if they're not careful, people will get pissed at the regulations and we'll devolve into a situation like the music market, where the music industry has pretty much lost the war against illegal music sharing.
Reviews are coming in for the Nook. They're mixed. The consensus seems to be that the user interface is not there yet--slower, buggier, and more complicated. But most also acknowledge that the device is cooler (it's that color touch screen they're referring to, I think; to my mind, a downside) and has more potential.
In the end, the Nook is an intriguing product launched by a powerful force in the world of booksellers, but the initial offering feels long on promises and short on delivery.
In fact, if you have to pick one right now, stick with the Kindle. It's a tough call, because I see a lot of potential in Nook that might not be in Kindle, but damn if the Kindle hasn't grown to comfortably inhabit its e-ink skin.
My zombie survival life simulator They Don't Sleep is out now on Steam if you want to check it out.
0
Options
WulfDisciple of TzeentchThe Void... (New Jersey)Registered Userregular
edited December 2009
Getting a Kindle DX tomorrow... err Friday, just in time for a week long business trip. Very excited to try this puppy out, and think I'm going to use it as a Dark Tower delivery device. Right into my eyeballs.
Looking at the dimensions though, I can't imagine anyone wanting a device with any larger profile than that. It's stretching the limits of being portable vs. being a very expensive tablet that I worry might snap in half in my briefcase. Maybe I'm alone in that line of thought?
Yeah, the DX looked too big for my taste. But it's true, I don't really use the portability of my regular K2 much, I pretty much just read in my bedroom like I would with a paper book. Still, it's nice to be able to read comfortably in a variety of different positions. I'd want a stand if I had a DX.
OremLK on
My zombie survival life simulator They Don't Sleep is out now on Steam if you want to check it out.
The DX looks nice for the big screen and reading things like textbooks and journal pdf's, but I think I can manage with the K2 if read it in landscape. Portability isn't a "major" issue, but I would like to tote the sucker around in my book bag between home and work, not to mention reading on the can.
Starfuck on
jackfaces
"If you're going to play tiddly winks, play it with man hole covers."
- John McCallum
I'm so tempted to pick up a Nook...but it seems like it's just a bit too soon yet. I'm going to wait a little while, let some of the problems get ironed out, then move in.
The nook is really interesting, but it's still first-gen hardware, and with a strong field of competitors there are better alternatives, based on what I've seen.
I think I've decided on a Sony product over the Kindle, based mostly on the fact that I already own a number of Sony books, and it looks to be the more open platform in the future. Now I'm just stuck between the touch and the pocket. The pocket has a considerably better screen, but the touch beats it in everything else. I'll probably spring for the pocket, since readability is my top priority, and the bells and whistles that both the touch and the kindle have don't really interest me. I've played around a lot with both, and the touch is definitely tempting because of a much better UI and faster refresh rates. I'm not sure what the deal with the screen is, it's like Senjutsu said, it's milkier. I guess it's whatever they did to add a touch screen. I'm not sure if I could get used to it or not. It's tough because that's really its only disadvantage, but it's a big one.
Posts
Yeah, that's why I was wondering. Hm... that's a bit crappy...
Don't suppose you or anyone else in the thread has any experience with foreign language texts, by chance?
Any specific format in mind?
Yes, but that doesn't necessarily mean a Nook or a Kindle. They both have iPhone apps that let you read their books, and they both have PC & Mac software that will let you read on a computer.
Well that's unfortunate. That could seriously limit the amount of reading I'm able to do on an ereader. I guess I at least have a sizable chunk of post-Renaissance English literature.
True, but I'm looking specifically at the eReader market. If I wanted to, I could read books on my cell phone here, but that would be terrible for my eyes.
I was doing a little reading and stuff I was reading implied that if I buy a book from B&N in ePUB I could read it on a Sony reader? Or is that still not going to work?
Probably just PDF or .txt. I've got an older one that can only handle those or Sony's old proprietary file type. So even if I can't read it, a newer one or one from another company might.
About B&N and Sony cross-compatability, once they're all in ePub they technically should work. I can't find any concrete information about DRM, though. I think the fact that they're so tight-lipped about it shows they know it might turn away sales. I'll try that out too if I end up getting a Sony reader.
Here's some song lyrics I tossed up onto an uploading site.
http://www.megafileupload.com/en/file/163172/-txt.html
I would love to, but it is not currently available to Canadian customers
edit: Is there anything like a Dover Press for ebooks? I'd love to look at some older math texts
I'll be comparing the Smart Q7, Asus T91MT and Sony PRS-600. Some points about each - again this is my opinion
PRS-600
weight - slight advantage over the smart q, huge advantage over the asus
build quality - noticably better than the asus(which itself was good, way better than the smart q(which is acceptable)
battery life (this assumes that the approximately two weeks I've read is true) - slightly better than the smart q which lasted about a week for me, far better than the asus
boot speed - the sony wins hands down since it has a usable standby that doesn't drain the battery, basically instant power up to the book
touch screen - fairly sensitive, unlike the smart q, and also accurate, unlike the asus
annotations - beats the smart q easily, wins over the asus only because the srcreen is accurate
reading formats - beats the smart q only because of DRM* but only supports a few file types, loses to the asus on all fronts
size - way smaller and thinner than asus, slightly smaller and thinner than the smart q but the smart q has a 7" screen vs the sony's 6"
page turns - all three devices tie, the sony flips pages very, very fast for an eink device(nearly instant)
T91MT
reading formats - being a windows 7 machine this supports everything and wins, hands down, on DRM* and file types
readability* - ties with the smart q, beats the sony. Alreader2 allows adjustment of EVERYTHING, supports full justification on all formats. The only problem here is that Alreader2 doesn't support DRM'd* files, leaving you stuck with the readers supplied by the various stores that do not allow as much tweaking but still more than the sony
misc - it's a computer so you can do anything on it, beats the both of the others handily
annotations - if the touch screen wasn't so shitty *sigh* this would be the clear winner
Smart Q7 (WinCE and Ubuntu)
weight - loses slightly to the sony, kills the asus
readability* - ties with the asus since Alreader2 is available on both with the same options, fully adjustable backlight, colors, fonts, etc
reading formats - supports almost as many file types as a full pc, DRM'd* files are limited to Mobipocket and eReader(and that's not going to last) as far as I know
battery - sure it's about half the quoted life of the sony but recharging once a week(real world, not quoted) isn't a big hassle
misc - does lots of other stuff but you won't mistake it for a full pc, still it'd not a single purpose device and that's nice
Lots of other stuff that I'm probably not remembering because I haven't slept.
*On readability and DRM - These issues are closely tied to each other for me and probably for alot of other avid readers. I like my books formatted just so. Seriously. Paragraphs have to have a nice indent and they need to be clearly seperated. On the other hand lines within paragraphs can't be spaced too far apart and the font size has to be just right too.
If the font is too small it's hard to read. If it's too big then I'm flipping pages too often. I like just the right font too. Something thick, bordering on bold. I also like my italicized font to be completely different than the regular so it's immediately obvious that I've hit italics.
The reason that this all ties in with DRM is that, to make all the adjustments that I consider necessary, I've got to strip the DRM for all three devices. On the smart q and asus I have to remove the DRM so I can read in Alreader2. On the sony it has to be stripped so I can convert to epub in Calibre and use the Droid serif font at 14.5 pts with a 16.5 pt line height and 3.5 em ident size. That means inserting custom CSS, etc and Calibre can do all that - except it doesn't work with DRM'd files.
So, um, I should make some points here. First, I think that my reading habits are fairly typical for an adult over the age of, say, 25 in the US. I read mainly fiction and mainly in bed. For that, a lightweight ARM device like the smart q wins.
All of that said, I'm keeping the PRS-600. I like to take classes at the local college every now and again, the sony will be superior for that - being smaller, lighter and better for notes. Also my wife's eyesight isn't perfect so I'll let her use the smart q since it's easier to read.
Personally, given that I stare at LCDs all day, when I finally do some reading at home, I like to give my eyes a break.
True, but I bought the 600 and then bought a kindle to compare. The 600 is a lot more than slightly reduced. It's damn near unreadable with a night lamp, whereas the kindle is readable anytime a physical book is readable, which is what I want.
Backlights are a complete Do Not Want for me.
Also, if anyone wants to know why I'm fussing about how awesome Alreader is, grab the windows version here then get the very roughly translated exe that I made here. No installation required, just unzip it then put my exe in the dir and run it. Being able to perfectly format your book is a hard thing to give up.
It couldn't read it as a text file, it just showed white boxes where the characters were. I converted it to pdf and it worked fine, though. So depending on what format most of your stuff is in, it might be ok. I'm thinking it would probably be ok if it was in a better format than .txt. Maybe a Kindle person will test it out, newer readers probably have better support for that kind of stuff.
edit: Ok, on interoperability of books, it sounds like by the end of the year B&N and Sony books will be readable on anything that supports ePub, which is pretty much everything.
I guess we're all Nazis.
Alan Kaufman, huh? People actually pay him to write this shit? God. That was one of the most ridiculous articles I think I've ever read.
"The link between contempt for books and mass murder could not be more clear." Yes, clearly, he has hit the nail on the head.
Like I would reading any book.
This. the only time I've wished I had a backlight is while reading on car trips, which has happened all of two times since I've had the thing, and would be the exact same situation were I reading a normal book.
Sorry for the late response! I was away from computers for the weekend.
Good to know pdf should work! Thanks for the info and for trying out that file for me!
I highly recommend reading the comments on that article. Alan Kaufman actually gets into it with a commenter named "BCarruth" and you get the lovely sight of watching Kaufman's argument change: From "Oh dear God HiTech is getting our children addicted to devices they have complete control over so they can keep us from reading!" (never mind that DRM is a technology where the latest innovation is circumvented by the masses in a matter of weeks, as BCarruth points out) to "Oh dear God HiTech just wants our money!" Then he uses the nuclear arms race as an example. Hyperbole is to this man what water and air are to us.
I will give Alan Kaufman one point: He is correct that Amazon's ironic deletion of 1984 (which was since reversed after the explosive furor) was pretty scary. Amazon can't just promise that won't happen again; they need some sort of way to show customers that it CAN'T happen again.
In other news, Amazon/B&N/etc need a way to regulate sale of books in a DRM-free environment. They've taken a massive step forward in allowing books to be read on computers and iPhones, but if they're not careful, people will get pissed at the regulations and we'll devolve into a situation like the music market, where the music industry has pretty much lost the war against illegal music sharing.
http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/07/barnes-and-noble-nook-review/
http://gizmodo.com/5420216/
Looking at the dimensions though, I can't imagine anyone wanting a device with any larger profile than that. It's stretching the limits of being portable vs. being a very expensive tablet that I worry might snap in half in my briefcase. Maybe I'm alone in that line of thought?
http://calibre-ebook.com/ does some of that, I think. Don't know if it will munge them into a single file or not
"If you're going to play tiddly winks, play it with man hole covers."
- John McCallum
I think I've decided on a Sony product over the Kindle, based mostly on the fact that I already own a number of Sony books, and it looks to be the more open platform in the future. Now I'm just stuck between the touch and the pocket. The pocket has a considerably better screen, but the touch beats it in everything else. I'll probably spring for the pocket, since readability is my top priority, and the bells and whistles that both the touch and the kindle have don't really interest me. I've played around a lot with both, and the touch is definitely tempting because of a much better UI and faster refresh rates. I'm not sure what the deal with the screen is, it's like Senjutsu said, it's milkier. I guess it's whatever they did to add a touch screen. I'm not sure if I could get used to it or not. It's tough because that's really its only disadvantage, but it's a big one.