Kindle / Nook / other eReader, anyone?

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Anyone have a Kindle or Nook or something similar? I'm wondering if I should get one. Is it easy to read using them, from an eye strain perspective? Truthfully I don't think I read enough now to justify the purchase, but I can't help but think if I had one, I'd be inclined to read more which is something I always mean to do but never seem to manage. So for that reason I wonder if it might be worth it. On the other hand, if the screen isn't a lot better than a usual LCD in terms of eye strain, its not gonna work for me.

The screen is awesome compared to LCD. It's almost exactly like reading on paper. I have a Nook and I love it, but it's still a first-gen device and needs some work.

Kindle. It's the first of the digital book readers. Several generations later it's a solid device. You can get the offline version which you have to plug into a internet connected computer to get books, or you buy the version with whispernet and buy and download books directly to your kindle.

I have the Kindle 2 and love it.

I have an iPad. No eInk display though.

I have tried to get into ebooks but find the market hostile to consumers at present in comparison to the online music or videogame market. It has yet to mature to the same state where those markets now are at.

With music, most online distributors sell music DRM free. You are free to make copies of your own purchased tracks and you can play the music on multiple devices, which do not have to be specifically designed to play content from that distributor. In addition, most modern music is available online. It's very rare that music released on a physical medium is not released digitally online.

With videogames, the same is mostly true. The major online game distributors don't use DRM and games that do include it usually include it at the publisher's discretion, not the distributor's. Also, games do not have to play on specialised hardware. You don't need a Steam or Stardock branded PC to run games sold by either distributor.

No ebook retailer has emerged as a major player yet, in the same way iTunes and Steam have become dominant in their respective markets. There are hundreds of ebooks retailers, many with exclusive deals with publishers. The bigger distributors such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble still have extremely limited catalogues compared to a brick and mortar bookstore. Additionally, most of the major distributors include DRM. This is not up to the publisher but comes down to the distributor. This DRM is far more inconvenient than the DRM typically used for videogames and music, because books from most major online distributors will only work on hardware or software designed specifically to show content from that distributor.

Anyone wanting to replace their book collection with an ebook collection will have a much harder time that say, someone wanting to replace their CD collection with an online purchased music collection. It is very likely that multiple programs/devices would have to be kept just to own all the books you'd want. That would get annoying very quickly. When you'd want to read one book, you'd go to open it in a Kindle reader. Another book may be exclusively distributed by Barnes and Noble though, so to read that you'd have to go to your Nook reader to read that. A third book may require a third e-reader. Have fun managing that collection.

I'll stay away from ebooks for now and wait for the market to gain some sense and become more friendly to consumers. It took a long time for the online music and videogames retailers to sort out a decent business model, so I'm not expecting the ebook market to do so for a while, given that it's still a fairly new market and arguably more niche.

Thanks Enigmatic Oddity - you've given me a pretty compelling reason to hold off. Yes, I don't want to muck about with DRM or be left stranded if I ever decide to switch devices.

I'm tempted to get a Kindle to read books off Project Gutenberg. I liked the screen on the e-reader when I saw one, but can't remember what sort it was.

My husband and I have Kindles and we love them. Check out http://www.truly-free.org/#terms if you get one--they have tons of books that aren't on Gutenberg.

I have one and have been getting stuff for free (from amazon they have this thing where if some books were published before 1923, you can get them for free). But, I'm going to have to exchange it. There are 2 dead pixels that I can see and that sort of thing just drives me nuts.

Oh, yah, I've got a kindle, and I really like it. The batter life is terrific. You can get a lot of free books in kindle, as well as Sony and Nook format, off archive.org or manybooks.net. Its mostly out of copyright stuff.There's even more sources to get PDF books from. In that case, I just use calibre to format it into .mobi so I can read it on my kindle, which is also compatible with Sony and nook. That's the program that's been the most functional for me so far anyway. There might be something better. AutoKindle is just terrible.

I'm looking into getting one.

Can anyone tell me what formats it takes? Can I load my PDFs, html, word, .lit, and text files that I didn't purchase through Amazon into it, and does it connect to a computer via USB? I really love the idea, and they are getting into an affordable price range... I do have a lot of ebooks, and I can't really hack too much reading at the PC.

I just ordered a kindle/lighted case and I can't wait for it to arrive!

For me, the reason to get a dedicated book reader is for the e-ink screen. I simply cannot tolerate reading 100s of pages of text on a backlit lcd.

Another major reason to get a reader is for FREE books. As others have mentioned, there are thousands upon thousands of titles available from places like Project Gutenberg, manybooks.net, Gutenberg Australia, etc.

I'm not really worried about DRM on current titles. Digital editions of current books will run about $10, but you can almost always find a used hard copy for much less.

I guess if you're mostly interested in current, bestsellers an ebook reader has pros and cons. However, if you just want good stuff to read, ebook reader can open the way to a wealth of GOOD FREE BOOKS!

I love classic adventure, satire, history and pulp...

My current kindle reading list:

The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare

Treasure Island

Decline and Fall of The Roman Empire

The History of Rome (Livy's Rome)



When I'm done with these I'll move to Caesar's commentaries and the works of Edgar Rice Burrows and Robert E. Howard...

If you google something like "free kindle (your subject of interest here)" you can find tons of good stuff!! !

I have a nook. I love it. For me, it's easier than a paper book where I'm constantly fiddling with the page as I'm reading and it's a little clearer to see than paper. The books are cheap...everything I've seen has been 9.99 or less. And you can also read PDF's on it if you download some books as well.

Note: I have the original nook with e-paper. I wasn't interested in getting a tablet sold as an e-book. If you want a tablet: get a Samsung Galaxy Tab or, better yet, wait a couple months for the Motorola tablet to come out.