Kindle Advice?

[Kev]

I love my Kindle, it was my favourite gadget purchase of 2010 and I went on and on and on and on and on at everyone I knew to buy one as well.


I have the 3G version. It has the advantage as Mark said, of being able to download books anywhere, so for example you can be on the beach and providing you can get a 3G signal can buy books there.

It is probably very useful abroad too, especially if you are ordering a daily newspaper digitally and the hotel you are in doesn't have Wi Fi.

How useful the 3G is will depend on how often you want to use the Kindle to buy books whilst roaming about outside.

For me, well I haven't used it at all in the past year or so, but then I hardly ever buy books. I just google the .mobi files of books I want and then download them via hotfile or torrents for free. If you are going to get most of your books that way then you won't need 3G at all unless you have a daily newspaper subscription on it and have no Wi Fi access.

They have brought out a really cheap £89 model this week that looks pretty cool. It has less storage capacity, only around 1000 or so books, but that's still plenty in practice. The biggest concern though would be the lack of mini keyboard, as that will make searching for books and typing things more cumbersome.

Again though, if you are downloading books from your pc and then dragging them over to the kindle by mini usb you won't need a kindle either.

So my summary would be as follows.


Kindle 3g: Buy if you are going to be using the Kindle outdoors a lot where there is no Wi Fi and you intend to pay for and buy books from the Amazon store with great regularity. If you go abroad a lot and subscribe to newspapers it would be useful to, if the hotel doesn't have Wi Fi. I rarely, if ever need to use 3G though, but then my bin goes out more than I do.


KIndle Wi Fi. Probably the best price/performance sweet spot. Has full capacity, the keyboard is useful. Excellent value for money.

New £89 Kindle. Not seen or used one but will likely sell like hotcakes. Has the same great screen and is actually smaller which is really cool. Same size screen, but smaller form factor and lighter making it highly portable. However battery life is rated at 1 month rather than the 2 of the others, no keyboard might making using it to search for books more cumbersome. As its a different size and worse battery the excellent leather, lighted covers won't fit, and wouldn't power the light for as long anyway.


My own pick would be the KIndle Wi Fi, plus a leather lighted cover. he cover is waaaaaaaaaay more useful than the 3G.

[Nameless]

I love my Kindle, it was my favourite gadget purchase of 2010 and I went on and on and on and on and on at everyone I knew to buy one as well.


I have the 3G version. It has the advantage as Mark said, of being able to download books anywhere, so for example you can be on the beach and providing you can get a 3G signal can buy books there.

It is probably very useful abroad too, especially if you are ordering a daily newspaper digitally and the hotel you are in doesn't have Wi Fi.

How useful the 3G is will depend on how often you want to use the Kindle to buy books whilst roaming about outside.

For me, well I haven't used it at all in the past year or so, but then I hardly ever buy books. I just google the .mobi files of books I want and then download them via hotfile or torrents for free. If you are going to get most of your books that way then you won't need 3G at all unless you have a daily newspaper subscription on it and have no Wi Fi access.

They have brought out a really cheap £89 model this week that looks pretty cool. It has less storage capacity, only around 1000 or so books, but that's still plenty in practice. The biggest concern though would be the lack of mini keyboard, as that will make searching for books and typing things more cumbersome.

Again though, if you are downloading books from your pc and then dragging them over to the kindle by mini usb you won't need a kindle either.

So my summary would be as follows.


Kindle 3g: Buy if you are going to be using the Kindle outdoors a lot where there is no Wi Fi and you intend to pay for and buy books from the Amazon store with great regularity. If you go abroad a lot and subscribe to newspapers it would be useful to, if the hotel doesn't have Wi Fi. I rarely, if ever need to use 3G though, but then my bin goes out more than I do.


KIndle Wi Fi. Probably the best price/performance sweet spot. Has full capacity, the keyboard is useful. Excellent value for money.

New £89 Kindle. Not seen or used one but will likely sell like hotcakes. Has the same great screen and is actually smaller which is really cool. Same size screen, but smaller form factor and lighter making it highly portable. However battery life is rated at 1 month rather than the 2 of the others, no keyboard might making using it to search for books more cumbersome. As its a different size and worse battery the excellent leather, lighted covers won't fit, and wouldn't power the light for as long anyway.


My own pick would be the KIndle Wi Fi, plus a leather lighted cover. he cover is waaaaaaaaaay more useful than the 3G.

You'd make a good seller at these for sure and it is something you'd enjoy to do plus, imagine all the pretty girls you could meet

On another note, Kindle did release their first tablette, looks quite unexpensive, half the price of an Ipad and doesn't look bad at all. Did you pay an eye about it? I think it comes with all the functions of the traditional kindle on top of it.

[Kev]

Yeah, the Kindle Fire it's called. Not on sale yet, but I am definitely interested depending on how much Android app functionality there is.

Since Dec 2004 I have been sorting my finances and charting my fitness training on an Ipaq 4700 PDA. I love it, the greatest gadget I ever bought and still used daily today.

But it's ancient now, 7 years old and won't last for ever and I want to switch to a tablet when it dies. I am idealogically opposed to Apple, mainly because my best mate is a disciple for them, so my tablet options have been limited.

The Kindle Fire might be ideal. I don't care about playing games and watching movies on it so processing power and tons of memory is not needed at all, thus the Fire represents something far more practical, providing the Amazon stuff doesn't totally take over the device.

I am very interested though.

It's not an ebook reader though, so should not be considered as a replacement for a proper Kindle.

[Saddo]

got the wife an ipad2 she loves it and there is a app that you can add to it for kindle books.... some people torrent free books and i find that shocking

i'm sure you can pick up an old ipad 1 for much the same price a a kindle on ebay... worth a look mate.

[Kev]

got the wife an ipad2 she loves it and there is a app that you can add to it for kindle books.... some people torrent free books and i find that shocking

i'm sure you can pick up an old ipad 1 for much the same price a a kindle on ebay... worth a look mate.

ipads are rubbish for reading books though. You dont want to have to read on a screen, it hurts your eyes. The battery only lasts for a couple hours and you can't read it outside on the beach in a sunny day.

The Kindle only needs to be charged about once a month, there is no screen and it looks awesome in the sunlight, the brighter the sun the better it looks.

[Saddo]

got the wife an ipad2 she loves it and there is a app that you can add to it for kindle books.... some people torrent free books and i find that shocking

i'm sure you can pick up an old ipad 1 for much the same price a a kindle on ebay... worth a look mate.

ipads are rubbish for reading books though. You dont want to have to read on a screen, it hurts your eyes. The battery only lasts for a couple hours and you can't read it outside on the beach in a sunny day.

The Kindle only needs to be charged about once a month, there is no screen and it looks awesome in the sunlight, the brighter the sun the better it looks.

never knew that... thats pretty cool as it goes.

the ipad aint that bad in the sun (better than a laptop and usable) and the battery life is 10 hours

[Kev]

got the wife an ipad2 she loves it and there is a app that you can add to it for kindle books.... some people torrent free books and i find that shocking

i'm sure you can pick up an old ipad 1 for much the same price a a kindle on ebay... worth a look mate.

ipads are rubbish for reading books though. You dont want to have to read on a screen, it hurts your eyes. The battery only lasts for a couple hours and you can't read it outside on the beach in a sunny day.

The Kindle only needs to be charged about once a month, there is no screen and it looks awesome in the sunlight, the brighter the sun the better it looks.

never knew that... thats pretty cool as it goes.

the ipad aint that bad in the sun (better than a laptop and usable) and the battery life is 10 hours

It's still staring a screen though. I just can't read a book that way. When my Kindle arrived I spent 5 minutes trying to work out how to peel the Kindle welcome page sticker off the screen, so I could switch it on and look at it. Then I realised that it already was turned on when it arrived and that that was the screen! It's amazingly impressive when you first see it and once put in a leather case just feels like reading a book, the device itself just disappears and you completely forget about it.

There is no backlight at all so just like a real book you can't read in the dark as it gives off no light or heat. So you need a lighted leather cover that attaches to the Kindle, making it look and feel awesome and then pull out the reading light on the side so you can see.

It's ace.

The ipad of course can a million and one things the Kindle can't so if movies, music, internet, multi media and games are your thing then an ipad is still awesome but for reading books for long periods the Kindle cannot be beat.

Last week I read The Sense of an Ending in one single night with a couple of tea breaks, that would awful to do on a screen.

But the Kindle does literally nothing else at all, the internet experience is labelled beta and is beyond shit, and there is no colour or video or any software at all.

It's purely a book reader but a brilliant one. I have about 300 books on mine now.