Topic: Anyone Here Own A Kindle?

[Rogmeister]

So does anyone here own a kindle?  If so, what do you think of it?  I love my books, but I have way too many of them...as well as everything else I own.  I've been seeing the kindle every time I go to Amazon.com (which is at least a couple times a week) so I've been thinking of getting one.  I wrote to my niece in Maryland named Sarah and asked her opinion (as I know she has it) and she says she loves it.  So I went ahead and ordered it...but it's out of stock and probably won't be ready to ship for at least a month.  So if anyone wants to warn me it's a piece of crap, speak quickly or forever hold your peas...or something like that. 

[Dragonfire]

I don't have one..not sure I want one. 
I like actual books.

[kahless]

In this case I prefer printed media. Nobody could delete them after buying!  

[Alien Redrum]

I own a Sony Ebook reader and love it. Probably the best purchase I made last year. Since I ride the metro every day to work, it gets plenty of use. Plus, I no longer have to worry about finishing a book on the way to work and having nothing to read on the way home as I have hundreds of books stored on my reader.

In this case I prefer printed media. Nobody could delete them after buying! 

That is the very reason I stayed away from Kindle. I do not want to give anyone the power to take a book out of my collection or even track what I'm reading.

I don't have one..not sure I want one. 
I like actual books.

Honestly, that is the biggest reason that I struggled with on why not to buy a reader, but I got over it extremely quickly because the reader is so convenient.

I still read actual books, too, because some of what I read is not available in ebook format.

[Najemikon]

The only thing I heard against it is that the quality of the screen is fantastic for reading, but rubbish for pictures. So illustrated work is reduced to text-only.

I also prefer print, but I have an eBook reader on my HTC and it is very good an convenient. Anything that keeps people reading can't be a bad thing...

[Critter]

We have an iPad in the house. It's just everyones. It's okay for books I suppose, but really, I'm more of a fan of the printed word as well.

[Rogmeister]

I understand if you delete something, it's still available somewhere...possibly a master crypt or something.  I obviously won't be getting rid of all of my books I already have but this will be good for novels and biographies and such. 

[Tom]

The only eBook reader I had was an eBookMan then years ago. I liked it. It could comfortably be hold in one hand and scrolling was very easy with the scroll wheel on the side. Sadly the scroll wheel got broken. I had replaced the device at the time, but for some reason I stopped using it. I wonder if it's still working. If I just could remember where I put the software for it.

[Touti]

Sorry if this is gonna be a long post but sometimes there's no short ways of saying things.

Personally I would never go with a Kindle for 3 reasons.

1: What Kahless said.  Amazon takes control of your Kindle every time you connect it to their server to download new books that you purchased and sometimes they will delete books from your eReader, books that you paid for.  This is no urban legend, about 2 years ago (maybe a bit less actually) they sold many copies of George Orwell's 1984.  Later they found out that the provider didn't have the rights on it so they just deleted it from people's Kindles without warnings.

2: Kindle uses it's own format. Do not be fooled by this part of the specs "Kindle (AZW), TXT, PDF, Audible (Audible Enhanced (AA, AAX)), MP3, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively; HTML, DOC, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP through conversion." and pay attention to unprotected.  There's thousands of free ebooks available on internet that are not protected by a DRM (digital rights management) system but almost anything you pay for will be protected and if it's not in one of the protected formats that the kindle supports you won't be able to read them.  All ebook readers have this limitation on protected formats but the problem here is that Amazon uses their own instead of using the new ePub format which is becoming the standard for ebooks.  In nother words, buying a kindle is like buying any apple device, you can only purchase content from them afterward.

3: That's very personal and has nothing to do with technology but I don't like the way Amazon screws everyone by trying to prevent other makers from selling other formats.  Two years ago they bought "Mobipocket" who started selling ebooks long before the Kindle was even invented.  They pretty killed the mobi format and after that they changed their licenses in a way that forbids ereader manufacturer to support any protected format alongside theirs.  A european maker (I forgot who) actually makes 2 OS images available to their customers, one with support for Kindle books and one with support for ePub books.  People who paid 500$ or more for their high-end ebook readers now have to flash a new operating system every time they want a book that's in the other format than the one they currently have in their reader.  I can't support that so I'll never buy a Kindle.

I spent a lot of time learning about ebook readers before buying one and finally I decided to go with a Sony which I felt was the best for me.  Obviously that doesn't mean it's the best for you.

eBooks, just like any other new media, started a format war and at the end we, the customers, are getting screwed again because there isn't one single reader out there that supports all the formats.  Before making a decision on a make and model you should spend time shopping for ebooks and see where you're most likely to find what you like and what format they use.  A Kindle would be useless if most of the books you're interested in are on Sony's ebook store and vice-versa.

I would also recommend that you take the time to register on the MobileRead forum and dig around, it helped me a lot in making a decision.

[Rogmeister]

Whew...that's a lot to digest    Thanks for the input...I'll have to think about this for a bit...

[Alien Redrum]

Very well said, Eric and I agree with you on all counts.

I also suggest the calibre software. Made my life converting formats much easier: http://calibre-ebook.com/

[Touti]

I have Calibre and used it a few times, it is good but I didn't want to mention it because I felt I was already overloading Rogmeister's brain with information, I didn't want to add the "pleasures" of converting formats into it......at least not right away

[Dragonfire]

Ok...stupid question here.  I know nothing about these reader things and haven't really thought about getting one.

Anyway..
The different ones - like Kindle, Sony, etc - all use different formats?  So like if I got a Sony one someday, I couldn't get the ebooks from Amazon or Barnes & Noble?

[snowcat]

Well... If im gonna read an ebook I read it on my ipod :p but personally i prefer a book and I think ebooks are over priced anyway.... a real book goes down in price and ebook stays full price

[Touti]

Ok...stupid question here.  I know nothing about these reader things and haven't really thought about getting one.

Anyway..
The different ones - like Kindle, Sony, etc - all use different formats?  So like if I got a Sony one someday, I couldn't get the ebooks from Amazon or Barnes & Noble?

It's not the readers Marie, it's the books that come in different formats.  For any given book you need a reader that can read this format.

Let me see if I can explain this clearly (assuming of course that I know what I'm talking about ).  First lets talk about the formats, there's 2 large categories, open (or public) and proprietary. Open is a format that doesn't belong to anybody and that anyone can use without having to pay a license to anyone.  The most popular formats for ebooks, in no particular order, are:

doc: Windows word files
mobi: Mobipocket.  Proprietary format owned by Amazon since they bought the company that created it.
txt: Text files
epub: Electronic publication (Open format)
pdf: Portable data file (or is it portable document file ??)
bbeb: Sony's proprietary format
azw: Amazon's proprietary

Now some of those formats only come in unsecured files, these are files that don't contain any DRM protection.  They can be copied and shared without limitations.  Files in other formats can be unsecured or secured.  An unsecured ePub, mobi or pdf file can be opened in any ebook reader (let's call it eReader for simplicity) that supports the format. 

Secured (or DRM protected) files however can only be opened in the eReader for which they were purchased.  When I buy a book from Sony's ebook store, it has to be activated for a specific device before it can be opened and once I've done that, it will only work on that device.   So unlike printed books, DRM protected ebooks cannot be passed along to friends and family once you're finished reading them.

Now that we got that cover, we can talk about the eReaders.  Most of them will support the most used unsecured and secured open formats along with their own proprietary format if the manufacturer has one.  The only exception I know of is the Kindle which does not support ePub when almost every other brand does.  The licenses on proprietary formats are made in such ways that 2 of them can't be supported at the same time in a eReader.

Note that Sony decided to stop using their BBeB format, all the books sold on their ebook stores are now in ePub format.