Kindle Advice?

[Kev]

How much are they running these days? I want one.

And is the Kindle the best of all the eReaders or does it just have name-brand cache?

The cheapest model over here is £89, then I think £109 and £149.

The mid range £109 is probably the best bet.

I've never used an alternative reader but I think the Amazon experience makes it the one to get. The biggest range of books, easiest book purchasing set up.

I would recommend the Kindle over anything else for pretty much everyone. That said, you might be a special case in a way in that many of the books you want might be academia based and research tools rather than purchasable books from their Kindle store, so a reader that has a library loan facility might be better for you. I have no experience of that though but if you think you might be accessing university and academic papers etc it's probably worth checking first to see if an alternative might be better for that specific case.

[CFH]

How much are they running these days? I want one.

And is the Kindle the best of all the eReaders or does it just have name-brand cache?

The cheapest model over here is £89, then I think £109 and £149.

The mid range £109 is probably the best bet.

I've never used an alternative reader but I think the Amazon experience makes it the one to get. The biggest range of books, easiest book purchasing set up.

I would recommend the Kindle over anything else for pretty much everyone. That said, you might be a special case in a way in that many of the books you want might be academia based and research tools rather than purchasable books from their Kindle store, so a reader that has a library loan facility might be better for you. I have no experience of that though but if you think you might be accessing university and academic papers etc it's probably worth checking first to see if an alternative might be better for that specific case.

I'd just be using it for regular reading, so I think I'll look into the Kindle.

[Kev]

For regular reading t can't be beat imo. The whole experience is excellent. When it arrives it will already be switched on and linked to you so it will welcome you by name. You can start buying books literally right away with one click. Actually it's so easy I accidently bought a couple just browsing the store and had to ring up to get them refunded and taken off!

It's very neat. Your kindle has its own email address and so you can email stuff straight to the device so we could email books to each other and they will just appear on the kindle next time you go online.

Just when you get it, set it up to download emails by Wi Fi only as Amazon charge for their whisper net 3G to transfer books that way (buying them from the store is always free though), not much but it would mount up if you were receiving a lot of stuff. Once you have ticked to receive by Wi Fi only though it's all free of course.

I wish more people had them so I could share stuff with people that way. I'm the only person I know in real life who has one, even though they are supposed to be massively popular now...

[CFH]

For regular reading t can't be beat imo. The whole experience is excellent. When it arrives it will already be switched on and linked to you so it will welcome you by name. You can start buying books literally right away with one click. Actually it's so easy I accidently bought a couple just browsing the store and had to ring up to get them refunded and taken off!

It's very neat. Your kindle has its own email address and so you can email stuff straight to the device so we could email books to each other and they will just appear on the kindle next time you go online.

Just when you get it, set it up to download emails by Wi Fi only as Amazon charge for their whisper net 3G to transfer books that way (buying them from the store is always free though), not much but it would mount up if you were receiving a lot of stuff. Once you have ticked to receive by Wi Fi only though it's all free of course.

I wish more people had them so I could share stuff with people that way. I'm the only person I know in real life who has one, even though they are supposed to be massively popular now...

That sounds pretty cool. How much do books generally run and is it fairly easy to download them by less scrupulous means without getting caught? If I buy a book and 'share' it with, is there any charge associated with that transaction?

[Kev]

For regular reading t can't be beat imo. The whole experience is excellent. When it arrives it will already be switched on and linked to you so it will welcome you by name. You can start buying books literally right away with one click. Actually it's so easy I accidently bought a couple just browsing the store and had to ring up to get them refunded and taken off!

It's very neat. Your kindle has its own email address and so you can email stuff straight to the device so we could email books to each other and they will just appear on the kindle next time you go online.

Just when you get it, set it up to download emails by Wi Fi only as Amazon charge for their whisper net 3G to transfer books that way (buying them from the store is always free though), not much but it would mount up if you were receiving a lot of stuff. Once you have ticked to receive by Wi Fi only though it's all free of course.

I wish more people had them so I could share stuff with people that way. I'm the only person I know in real life who has one, even though they are supposed to be massively popular now...

That sounds pretty cool. How much do books generally run and is it fairly easy to download them by less scrupulous means without getting caught? If I buy a book and 'share' it with, is there any charge associated with that transaction?

Book prices vary wildly. Some are really cheap. 0.49 p or 0.99, others cost the same as the regular paperback versions. Generally a big new release will cost around the same to buy on Kindle as it would to buy the actual book. I will only pay this for non fiction titles that I can't find on the net.

All the latest fiction is put up online. You can download from torrents or places like hotfile, rapidshare etc.

The risks are probably considerably less than downloading music and films. There is no MPAA equivilant in the publishing world and I've never heard of anyone being pursued for downloading books.

Sites like hotfile and filesonic etc would be totally safe as the files themselves are so small they wouldn't arouse any suspicion on an ISP network at all. If you are regualrly downloading 4 gb files for example clearly that's videos, but a 33kb file could be anything, just a tiny document so nobody would care.

If you like classic books, there are book collections available very cheap on amazon. It's like £2 or something for Charles Dicken's complete works, with indivdual books completely free.