The Kindle Monologues

knowyourapi:

So… since I’m studying I spend much time on the subway. Most of the time I spend listening to music and/or reading (mostly books or lecture notes..). I find it really annoying to carry around heavy loads of books or notes, though.

Because I don’t own a magical bag of holding - and probably never will - I considered buying a kindle. It seems to be lightweight, small and because the newest version supports PDFs I could read most of the scripts and lecture notes with it, without having to carry a bunchload of folders and waste unnecessarily huge amounts of paper.

But I’m not quite sure yet! I’m not this kind of “I need a real book in my hands to be happy”-person but I personally don’t know anyone who has a kindle and have a hard time deciding whether I should buy one or not…

So.. can anybody with Kindle-Excperience (Especially with this version) tell me whether it’s worth the money or not?

[If this were Reddit, you’d get an upvote for the D&D reference]

My personal opinion? Of all the Kindles on the market, the third Generation models are the best - and not just because that’s the version I own! They rock the same screens [the 6” Pearl E-ink models] as the newer models, contain a decent amount of memory, and have the “hidden” goodies that the newer models don’t - such as the mp3 player, ability to read comics [well - public domain comics, of course.] and physical navigation buttons.

PDF support is a lil sketchy imo [that’s true of all the e-ink eReaders, be it any of the Kindles, Nooks, or Kobos’] but they’re passable - and if you experiment around with an Application called Calibre [Website] you can convert them to a format that best suits you needs.

As for the whole “touchy, feely” part - to each his / her own. I never had that relationship with my phsyical books, so it’s not something I’ve missed. Even before the days of putting right “real” booklovers like Jonathan Franzen and Ray Bradbury, I  personally never understood the need to fetichise the physicality of books.

If the whole “touchy feely” thing is, genuinely, a big part of how you read, I’d recommend taking an eReader out for a “test drive” before committing to one - find a brick and mortar store with a 30 day no question return policy, buy one, load it up with some PDFs / eBooks, and have a play with the device.

Most people know within a few hours - a day at the most, if the devices are for them or not.

That way, if you decide it’s not quite your cup of tea, you can just return the device.

Edit: Forgot to add - if you can find a third generation model without the 3G, pick one of those up. The 3G really isn’t all that useful, as the web browser [basic webkit] isn’t all that usable, except as a last resort.