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My holiday recommendation for an ebook reader
November 1, 2009 | 9:55 am
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By Paul Biba
To those who are contemplating giving an ereader for the holidays, the choices must be a bit bewildering. The market has suddenly become flooded with possibilities. I thought I might give you my own personal recommendation based on units I’ve seen or handled.
I would go for the Kindle 2. I’ve used a number of the Sony units, a Kindle 1 and 2, have seen the Nook close up and played with the Astak 5" before I sent it over to Chris Meadows for review. Plus, I handled a number of other units at BookExpo America earlier this year. Here are my reasons for choosing the Kindle:
1. Wireless: once you become accustomed to the free wireless on the Kindle you may very well find it becomes indispensable. It is just so convenient. For example, when I went into the Nook press conference I was sitting on the ferry going across the Hudson and saw someone reading a book I was interested in. I fired up my Kindle and downloaded the book before I reached the other side. Once you can do this you will be amazed at how many books you end up buying. Of course the Nook has wireless too, but for reasons mentioned below I prefer the Kindle implementation.
2. Browser: the Kindle has a built in browser. It’s not very good, but it is important because it enables the Kindle to be a far more open platform than its wireless Nook rival. With the browser you can download from the vast catalog of Gutenberg and also get books from MobileRead, Manybooks, and Feedbooks, among others. At the beach and want to read Dickens? You can on the Kindle. I have even used the Kindle to send email when I’ve been stuck in areas with no AT&T service. The Nook will only connect to the B&N store and this is too limiting for me. I wish Sony had released its wireless unit in time for this little article but no luck so far.
3. iPhone: Having the same reader on the Kindle and the iPhone is an incredible convenience. I really prefer reading on an e-ink screen, but I regularly read on the iPhone in places where it would be inconvenient to carry the Kindle. I have 8 pages of books on the Kindle and I have them all on the iPhone and they, like the phone, are with me 100% of the time. That’s a screen shot of some of the books on my iPhone, above.
4. Price: I have generally found, although I have not made a real study of it, that Kindle book prices are usually cheaper than those from Barnes & Noble.
5. Wireless subscriptions: I really love having my latest issue of The Economist delivered every Friday. I also get Analog delivered monthly.
So that’s my choice. There are no bad readers out there, at least as far as I have seen, so I don’t think you’ll go wrong no matter which one you choose
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Comments:
I would wait. Game changing stuff coming middle to late next year.
I must admit that I’ve been very impressed with my Kindle 2 (International). Of course, not being in the US, the free wireless isn’t so free.
On a side issue: I also have a subscription to Analog (& Asmiov’s), but through Fictionwise. I’d recommend this rather than having it through the Kindle store for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, it’s a little cheaper. A lot cheaper if you happen to buy the two-year subscription during a sale.
Secondly, with a subscription through the Kindle store, your past issues are not permanently available. You can only re-download the past three or four months. At Fictionwise all the issues you’ve bought are available for re-download, and in multiple formats.
It’s funny but I dislike almost everything you like about your choice.
1. Wireless? Not useful for me because I have well over a hundred unread ebooks already on my Sony. If I can’t find something to read from that TBR pile, then there is something wrong with me. The impulse buying without thinking aspect is also not for me (or my wallet).
2. Browser? Sorry, I want to use my e-reader to read books, not surf the web or send email. Again, I have a lot of unread books so I won’t need to track down one wirelessly from the beach.
3. iPhone? Got calibre and if I had an iPhone, then I could use calibre to get my books on iPhone. The syncing of the Kindle and iPhone app is better though.
4. Price? You can almost always find a close price by searching via ebookpriceinfo or other mass search sites. As well, you have to think about the fact that you are buying a specific DRM’d product that can never be legally converted in the US (but if you live in other countries, format shifting may be legal).
5. Wireless subscriptions? I use calibre and get many free newsfeeds fetched for free. Like Paul Durrant said, the analog subscription from fictionwise is cheaper as well.
There are other reasons why I think the kindle is not the best, but these only apply to my reading lifestyle. I think the best thing is that there are so many units out there now so that people can usually find one that works for them. In the end, all that matters is that we are all having a good time reading.
Not going to argue with any of Mr Biba’s points.
Do remember, though, that Kindle Reader is coming to PC this month. it adds value to the Kindle ecosystem plus it makes netbooks and tablet PCs and UMPCs into viable Kindle store outlets.
There are no truly awful mainstream ebook readers out there but by the same token there isn’t a single great, clear-cut, must-have product either. Most range from usable to adequate.
My recommendation for ’09 is simple; the less tech-savvy you are, the less you want to play around with PC software and hunting the web for bargains, the less you care about DRM, the happier you’ll be with Kindle. It is eminently adequate and “adequacy is sufficient” as Adam Osbourne used to say.
Conversely if you’re tech-savvy and confortable with web technology and CSS and tweaking PC software and running your own file conversions and removing DRM with abandon, you’ll be happier with the non-Kindles.
At the very extreme, you’ll be happiest with either an UMPC like the Archos 9 or an OpenInkpot-compatible reader.
The issue isn’t really what’s best but rather what is simplest; and Kindle is, at present, the simplest, lowest “maintenance” option; it is the least annoying to non-techies and because of its high profile it is the most comforting buy for folks looking for their first ebook reader.
Setting aside features that may or may not be useful (e.g., I don’t own/use an iPhone so it doesn’t matter whether a device can or cannot sync with it and the very last thing I want is to use a kludgy device to send e-mail {BTW, Paul, you may have been where AT&T doesn’t give service, but my experience is that AT&T provides more coverage than Sprint so that is not exactly a plus — and what will you recommend when Amazon switches away from Sprint?]), the most important reason NOT to buy a Kindle is that it encourages Amazon to not offer ePub and become more open to other ebooktailers.
Whenever anyone asks for my recommendation, I tell them that I am very happy with my Sony but that they should check out MobileRead for varying opinions and checkout other devices, because it is a big investment. I also tell them that the only device I would not recommend is the Kindle because it is the one major device that does not accept ePub, which is rapidly becoming the industry standard format for ebooks and will enable you to decide which bookstore to buy ebooks from.
Where I live in Canada there is no cell phone service so wireless is useless. Ended up buying the Sony 505 so I could load many books on at once from netbook. I love reading on the road or camping and the long life of the ereader battery is a bonus. I tried reading books on my netbook but quite because of battery life and headaches. Also found all the things I can do on the netbook distracting.
I have a tv for television and movies; telephone for talking to people; computer for news, games, email, web browsing; why not an independent devise for reading which is comfortable on the eyes.
I have placed my order to buy a Nook as an insurance policy. I have close to ten years of reading on various Palm devices with the eReader or similar applications. I also have an iPod Touch which supports eReader. My thought is that for less than $300 I’m getting a device that will support the elibrary of over 400 ebooks that I already own. It doesn’t exist in the Kindle cloud, it resides on my MacBook Pro and is backed up on my iDisk which I can access from any of my Macs or iPods/iPhones.
I’m also finding that the Barnes and Noble access to many older books is very easy to use and I’ve already downloaded over seventy books of interest. I’ve transferred them to my older Palm TX which has given me over four years of service. There will undoubtedly be many new devices in the next few months, but right now I’m interested in preserving the eBooks that I already own in the next generation environment.
Although I haven’t actually played with the other devices, I have read enough about them to have a fair assessment of what they can and cannot do- and the Kindle is still the best, by far!!
1) Largest bookstore at best prices.
2) Wireless downloads INCLUDING Gutenberg et als, PLUS some web surfing.
3) Text to Speech.
4) Dictionary, fonts, notes, etc (some others have some of these features).
5) Amazon Customer Service.
The lack of “Openness” is complete hogwash. As long as the other stores (B & N, Sony, etc) use DRM, (WHICH THEY DO AND WILL) there is no openness. Epub is irrelevant in that context, and apparently isn’t that great anyway. Besides, you can easily convert Epub to Kindle.
So. the Kindle is CLEARLY the best. And, I’ll bet, it is going to be improved shortly even further.
Doesn’t B&N have an iPhone app?
Richard, you’re forgetting library books. Every major E-Book reader except for the kindle can read ebooks checked out from your local library. I think that the prospect of a steady supply of free recent commercial ebooks to be a heavy weight in the favor of the Kindle competitors. And, while I dislike DRM, the adoption of the Adobe form of it by both EReader manufacturers and EBook retailers DOES provide for more openness and competition than the company store model followed by Amazon. I’m not bashing the Kindle; I own one in addition to a few Sonys and a Cybook Gen3. The browsing aspect is useful for checking email or facebook and for accessing books from manybooks or mobile read. But the other devices aren’t chopped liver, especially when you take into consideration the availability of the library books.
I think the point of the “openness” a given format is not the fact it has DRM wrapped around it. (which is the decision of the publisher…no retailer really wants DRM as the costs are incurred almost entirely by the retailer)
The real issue is that the format of the ebook itself should not be controlled by a specific company. This will become much more important over time as the format of the ebook itself morphs.
It is not in the interest of the public to have one company act as the retailer (own the customer), publisher (own the creative) and the delivery of the creative (software/DRM/format)
Clint Brauer
http://www.cyberread.com