Kindle I just ordered a Kindle - am I gonna like it?

[MM 6,562]

I decided to try out one of these new-fangled thingies called Kindles (ok, they aren't that new). So I ordered the bottom of the line gadget from Amazon today. It's this one http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0051QVESA/ref=famstripe_k

 

Anyone who has a Kindle...how do you like it?

[kev0184 12]

only had mine 3 weeks but love it. much easier than searching bookstores, just log on too amazon pick the book and 1 click later it arrives to my kindle. also like the ability to increase the font size.

 

give it 8 out of 10.

[statman208 41]

MM - I've had my kindle a couple years and I love it. No more carrying books around, or shopping for them at a boodstore. I can adjust the size of the letters also, depending on the light. Good luck with it.

[keyman 1,372]

I've had mine for a couple of years too and find it's a great gadget. I've loads of books on it, many of them free. Great for flights, airports, lying on the beach/ by the pool, sitting in a quiet bar without the bulk of carrying books with you. I also have it synched with my laptop, netbook and Iphone so I can carry on reading wherever I am.

Enjoy Martin!

 

 

Keyman

[Bushcraft 2,560]

You'll really like it Martin, I've had one for a couple of months and it's the bee's knees for easily transportable reading matter. Downloads of new books take only seconds, and the library is vast.

[Big_Brian 179]

You'll like it. One piece of advice; get a cover that's at least semi-rigid, the screen is vulnerable and, if damaged, the Kindle is scrap. The way the screen is made, it has a very thin layer of glass within it's layers, a knock will easily break that. Conversely, the body is quite robust, it's not a Frisbee, but it'll handle minor knocks.

 

My Kindle is my second e-reader, I upgraded from a Sony PRS-500 to a Kindle DXG (the 9.7" model) in October 2010, my "I've read this" pile on it is now on 216 books. I can't really imagine going back to DTBs (dead tree books).

 

There are more free and pirated ebooks out there that there are movies so, unless you want to be tied to Amazon, you can get almost everything you look for fairly easily (from the same places you get movies usually) though you'll probably have to convert them to mobi format for your Kindle. There's a free program called Calibre that's excellent at doing that.

 

You can get pretty much all the advice and help you'll ever need here; http://www.mobileread.com/ though if you're simply going to buy from Amazon, you probably won't need anything other than the instructions that come with the Kindle (on it actually, they don't come in paper form).

 

I'm a serious ebook and kindle convert, and get quite evangelical about them.

[Montydog 135]

Had mine about 4 months love it.

Believe me MM after you’ve had it a week you wonder how you managed without before even if like me and a lot of Kindle converts you were a dedicated book reader and thought this was a never going to be for you.

[teelack 9,134]

My suggestion is as follows.

 

Try out the free books and also the free first chapters of best sellers. The reason that I say this is that you will either love it or just cant be bothered and you might as well find out for free. I got one at Xmas but really enjoy the book experience and have used it little.

Having said all that, if you are an avid reader you can get books for a fraction of the price of the newly published version and long before they are either in the shops or public library.

[roblytham 0]

why would you buy a kindle when there are plenty of inexpensive tablet pc's which can do more than a kindle? ie play movies, games and browse the web for about the same price

 

 

 

 

 

[Big_Brian 179]

why would you buy a kindle when there are plenty of inexpensive tablet pc's which can do more than a kindle? ie play movies, games and browse the web for about the same price

3-4 week battery life, no eye strain, can read in full sunlight, replicates the paper book much more closely than a LCD or LED screen does. A computer is a computer and I wouldn't be without mine, but an e-ink reader is far better for books.

[Gary 4,096]

I absolutely love my Kindle. I read every night until I am able to easily fall asleep. The Kindle turns itself off after about 10 minutes if you fall asleep and forget to turn it off. The battery life is very good. I have nearly 8,000 books in my computer in the Calibre program and can easily put what books I want in the Kindle from there. I got all the books free off the Internet.

 

ADDED - There is absolutely no comparison between the Kindle e-ink and a phone or computer screen. The Kindle e-ink screen is the same as reading from paper with the great advantage of being able to change the text size. I had to wear reading glasses when reading a paperback book but can read the Kindle screen easily with no glasses.

Edited April 5, 2012 by Gary

[teelack 9,134]

Gary. Can you let us know about Calibre please. Sounds interesting.

[Gary 4,096]

Gary. Can you let us know about Calibre please. Sounds interesting.

 

It's a great program and it's free. You can do most anything with ebooks and converting their formats.

 

http://calibre-ebook.com/

[BillWilson 10]

Kindle rocks

I have quite a few amazon books and almost 10,000 yes Ten Thousand books I downloaded FREE from Internet.

 

Easy to do

Easy to put selective books on kindle

[sparkydave 7]

Had mine for 2 Years now and love it, i have got about 11 thousand books for it and a libary programe that helps keep track of them.

 

Martin i am back again on 26th June and if you want i will bring my colection of books out on a stick for you, if you dont get them before then that is

[bigmick 840]

Can anyone show us some pictures of what you have

[BillWilson 10]

What we have?

The drip?

Herpes?

Hot GF?

 

Kidding

 

Will try to post some screen shots

[keyman 1,372]

Can anyone show us some pictures of what you have

 

 

Click on the link in the first post. It shows exactly what is being discussed.

 

Keyman

[MM 6,562]

My Kindle (shown below) arrived last week, and I loaded it up with about 1500 books.

 

 

 

I was in the middle of reading a Vince Flynn novel, and since I now had his entire bibliography on the Kindle, I decided to finish the book with the new gadget.

 

It's great. The Kindle is small enough to fit in my back pocket. I'm hoping I don't forget it's there and sit on it.

 

Initially the battery life was considerably less than the 10 hours they claimed, but after I turned off the wifi interface (which just gets you into Amazon's book selling site), the battery is quite good. I've not measured it, but I suspect I could read all day.

 

Reading outside in the sun is a breeze. The letters are crisp black against a white background, and easy to read.

 

The manual controls (buttons rather than touch screen) take a bit of getting used to, but it doesn't take long to get used to clicking forward.

 

The software is generally a piece of shit, and it doesn't recognize any directory structure for organizing books...there is some software I've tried to make "collections", but it doesn't seem to work very well. I don't think I really need to manage a library of 1500 books anyway, so I'll probably empty the device of all but ones I plan to read in the coming months.

 

So, there you have it. I'm happy as can be, because now I can get all the books by authors that write series and read them in order, rather than reading them in the order I happen to find them in a second hand book shop.

 

I figure it'll pay for itself in a month or two.

[jacko 8,722]

I didn't want to jump in just after you ordered but I coincidentally saw a review (on Fox News I think it was) that seemed to rate the Barnes and Noble 'Nook' a little better than the 'kindle'.

Glad you are happy with it.

[Big_Brian 179]

Adding a lot of books at once is a bad idea on a Kindle, they're prone to lock up. A hundred at a time works fine. Also, they index all the books, including all words bigger than "the", on mine that takes about an hour per hundred books and it will eat battery life while doing it, so it's best to leave it plugged in until it finishes.

 

If I have one moan about the Kindle, it's indexing. I don't want it, I don't use it, but I can't turn it off - and the index for an average book is about 50Kb. OK, so once indexing is done you can search for a word or phrase across all the loaded books, but as a leisure reader I don't need that. If I was using it for work or study yes, but that's not me - or I think most users.

 

Collections - you can make those on the Kindle itself, no software needed. Remember though that they aren't folders, more like an index of tags. A book can be in multiple collections, or none, and deleting a collection won't delete the books.

 

Series - hell, yes. I read mostly F&SF, the bulk of which is written in series - I did read some complicated royalties/publisher based reason for that, but I can't remember it now. Personally, now that I read exclusively on the Kindle, unless it's a series that I've been following, I only download completed series, then read them one after the other. I've just finished the Wild Cards series that's currently on 21 books, that took a few weeks.

[MM 6,562]

Good info, Brian. Thanks.

[Montydog 135]

Glad you like it MM, welcome to the future

[MM 6,562]

Glad you like it MM, welcome to the future

 

LOL. I've been there, and I came back.

 

Re Big_Brian's post, he gave an explanation why loading up a ton of books without complaint from the Kindle, and then the initial battery short life occurred.

 

Now, whenever I open a book, I get a message that I don't have enough storage.

 

It's that damned indexing. I cursor down a page and it gives me a definition of "the".

[voracious 31]

If you're an Amazon Prime user, you can *borrow* many of the latest books for free, thus adding to an already huge selection of free books. I'm an iPad2 user, and love it, but have considered getting the same kindle you bought, just because I'm already an Amazon Prime user and the free books are tempting.