thoughts on the kindle...i read a lot and wonder

pippa93

I have just sold my Sony PRS-505 on eBay and my Kindle is coming soon.

The main reasons for this are: price of eBooks and speed of getting them onto your eBook reader.

Whilst the Sony reader looked very nice, metal and hard wearing, even me, an avid reader, hardly ever used it. The reason for this is that the eBooks for any modern book (which you pretty much had to buy from Waterstones) were about £7 :mad:. On Amazon, the paperback is £4-ish and the Kindle edition about £2.50. This was simply too large a gap for me to want to buy the eBooks for the Sony reader. It is OK saying that you have to buy Kindle books from Amazon, but remember that there aren't that many places to buy eBooks for the Sony and they're more expensive.

Also, you had to use Sony's clunky and difficult to use software to get them on to the eReader and a cable. Amazon claim that it takes less than 60 seconds to get their books onto your Kindle via Wifi which means no cables, though obviously I haven't had to opportunity to test this. The Kindle also has a longer battery life (1 month without wifi ) and much more storage (3,500 books vs 160 although you can expand the Sony with a memory card.)

However, when I did use the Sony Reader I found it easy to use, no eye-strain occured and it did feel like a quality product. It was just too expensive to buy the books.

Both have advantages in different areas, but I think the price difference with the Kindle will really give it the edge for me. There is the issue with the library books, but my local library won't be doing this any time soon I don't think!

S0litaire

It takes an average of 40 seconds from ordering to delivery on my Wi-Fi with my kindle ^_^

Also no software is required to get books onto the kindle. Your PC sees it as a external drive. just drag and drop (if they are in the correct format that is!) lol

Steve-o

pippa93 wrote: »

Whilst the Sony reader looked very nice, metal and hard wearing, even me, an avid reader, hardly ever used it. The reason for this is that the eBooks for any modern book (which you pretty much had to buy from Waterstones) were about £7 :mad:. On Amazon, the paperback is £4-ish and the Kindle edition about £2.50. This was simply too large a gap for me to want to buy the eBooks for the Sony reader. It is OK saying that you have to buy Kindle books from Amazon, but remember that there aren't that many places to buy eBooks for the Sony and they're more expensive.

There are lots of places on the web to buy ebooks from, with prices comparable (or cheaper) than Amazon. The problem is that you have to not mind shopping round the different book stores to get the best prices. You can even use the Amazon Kindle book store, although you need to de-DRM and convert the ebook after you've bought it. I've never used the Waterstones website myself, because the prices are higher than in other online bookstores.

The Kindle is an easy one-stop solution, because of the integration with the Amazon bookstore.

pippa93 wrote: »

Both have advantages in different areas, but I think the price difference with the Kindle will really give it the edge for me. There is the issue with the library books, but my local library won't be doing this any time soon I don't think!

There are very few libraries in the UK that do ebooks at the moment, sadly. There's an Essex library (I think) that you can join on line, but the number of books is low. About 50% of those ebooks are PDFs too, which is not a good format for the e-ink readers to render very well.

Steve-o

A lil reminder: for anyone reading books on electronic devices (of any sort), the Mobileread website and forums are a great source of information (and free books).

http://www.mobileread.com

Steve-o

A picture of the new Sony PRS-350, which has just started shipping. I'm not sure if I like the styling on the icon strip. It looks a bit....bleh.
http://thekindle.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/kindle3vssony350bookcovers.jpg

Link to main article: http://ireaderreview.com/2010/09/10/kindle-3-vs-sony-350-photos/

Enterprise_1701C

I am so glad I did not wait for that Sony to ship!!

As for very few libraries doing e-books, maybe we should start a list - I know Surrey and Hampshire do them as I am a member of both (I live on the border), but I do know you have to physically visit a library to become a member and be able to borrow them.

june.elizabeth

I download my books from Norfolk Digital Library and the title lists are getting bigger all the time. I "borrow" for 21 days and can download 3 books at a time. I love my Sony

MountainMan101

Aside from all the other reasons to choose between the Kindle and Sony, the issue of file formats :

Amazon has a proprietry format with DRM
Sony supports the open format ePUB but books bought (or lent through these digital library schemes) have DRM.

Books in ePUB format that are open (eg out of copyright) can be converted to MOBI format that the Kindle support.

So really, if you have free books you can use either. If you've paid for books you're stuck with whichever you paid for them for. If you've got a Sony reader and books from Waterstones then you're no free-er than someone with a Kindle and books from Amazon. In fact, you could consider the Amazon to be free-er as they don't require you to buy an e-book reader, there are Kindle apps for PC/Android/iPhone-Pod-Pad. I think Waterstones are developing one themselves.

With the caveat that you can "crack" the DRM and move books. I think Amazon DRM is easier (certainly more on the web) than Adobe DRM (the common type for ePub).

Technology wise, the Sony isn't even a match for the Kindle. The real Kindle competitor in the US is the Nook - which we don't get over here. Personally I'm going for the Kindle but not until Christmas so I'll have time to change my mind if the market moves on :-)

Aiadi

Can someone tell me what happens to your ebooks if the device breaks. Also what happens to the device itself when its battery comes to the end of its life?

S0litaire

The battery can be replaced, it's held in by 2 screws (you need to pop off the back to get at it!)

Your books are held in flash (like a usb stick) so loss of power should not mean you loosing books.

Also they can be downloaded to your desktop or direct to your kindle via the Amazon site at any time.