Kindle - I'm converted

McSack

McSack

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Being a reading addict of note(and an old fart to boot ) I'd been holding out on going the whole Kindle route for ages. Excuses ranged from "it's just a fad" to "I'll miss the smell of real books" but eventually I broke down and bought a machine each for the wench and I.

Since then I've been pretty impressed with the ease of use and the selection of books available (both free and not so free) and I've landed up reading a few books that I might never have thought of trying.

What really made me realize how much I enjoy the device though is when someone gave me the Feist Demonwar saga as a gift ... IN HARD COVER

Seriously ... I don't miss "real" books anymore ... at all
 
I am a long time Kindle convert..

But I still enjoy my "real" books on occasion.... at least from a collection point of view.
 
I'm planning on getting my wife one for her b'day... yet another gift I think I know she'll like...
 
I'm actually planning on replacing mine with the newer generation one sometime in the not too distant future.
 
Are there chargers for kindles or are you forced to use laptop to charge? Quite annoying not being able to plug in a charger, and needing to have the laptop on and standby mode disabled just to charge. And can you read while charging?
 
I'm quite curious about the battery life on the Kindle's and if the claims of nearly a month (with wi-fi off) are even plausible. Anyone got some data for me?
 
wayfarer said:
Are there chargers for kindles or are you forced to use laptop to charge? Quite annoying not being able to plug in a charger, and needing to have the laptop on and standby mode disabled just to charge. And can you read while charging?
Click to expand...

Yup, mine came with a charger. American plug, though, but you should be able to find an adapter. You can read with the charger and you can also read while connected to the PC - just "Disconnect" the removable storage but keep it plugged in.
Love my Kindle - and the international 3G access comes in very handy when you're travelling abroad (Wikipedia access, basic GMail etc.)

Battery Life: My Kindle 2 International with 3G off can easily last 2 weeks with an hour or 3 reading every day. 3G on changes things a bit, though.
 
No collection will ever look as good on a Kindle as it would, neatly in a row, on a shelf. But that very same collection wouldn't fit in a small backpack on holiday, and you can't lookup the meaning of words so easily as on the Kindle. Also, I've made the letter size on the Kindle a bit larger than it is in the standard book: makes for very easy reading.
 
MajorProblem said:
I'm quite curious about the battery life on the Kindle's and if the claims of nearly a month (with wi-fi off) are even plausible. Anyone got some data for me?
Click to expand...

My battery easily lasts a month if I don't use wifi or the kindle cover light. Of course it depends how much you use it - as with anything with a battery!
 
Are there any good Kindle deals around.If it comes with some pre-loaded books all the better.
What's the maximum storage capacity on a kindle?
 
BOYAH said:
Are there any good Kindle deals around.If it comes with some pre-loaded books all the better.
What's the maximum storage capacity on a kindle?
Click to expand...

The best deal is to buy it from Amazon - they will ship it to you and the combined cost of the device and shipping will be cheaper than the local prices.

In terms of storage, I think it has 3gig or slightly more on it.
 
I've enjoyed using it. Its amazing what articles you can find via sites like longreads, longform, thebrowser etc. I use instapaper to convert them to kindle format. A couple of sour points: quite a few of my wish list books are available in kindle format in the us/uk etc, but not here in SA; also, a number of firms tried to use the Amazon site's functionality to start up sites aimed at matching lenders and borrowers of kindle-format books, but Amazon seems to have closed the door on those.
 
wayfarer said:
Are there chargers for kindles or are you forced to use laptop to charge? Quite annoying not being able to plug in a charger, and needing to have the laptop on and standby mode disabled just to charge. And can you read while charging?
Click to expand...

The kindle uses a standard mini-USB port and any charger that have such a port should be able to charge your Kindle. Case in point : Blackberry phone charger will charge your kindle (that's how i charged mine the last year). most likely any phone that uses a standard mini-usb port's charger would work.

And yes you can read while charging, as long as your Kindle have enough power to start up...
 
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Wonder if there will ever be a public kindle library like you have for paper books? Somehow I doubt it.
 
BOYAH said:
Are there any good Kindle deals around.If it comes with some pre-loaded books all the better.
What's the maximum storage capacity on a kindle?
Click to expand...

A comment from the Amazon forum :

... , some of these are advertised "with 100 FREE books ££££ value" - though when you look more closely its one modern one and a bunch of classics you can get for free, but the mugs buying it don't know that.
Chances are high its on one of those shopping channels at the usual overpriced rate of 1.5-2x what you can buy it for elsewhere, plus 20% more on the cost as "P&P".
Click to expand...

Not worth buying it other than from Amazon directly.


Internal memory is expanded to 4 GB, with approximately 3 GB available for user content.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Kindle
 
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