E Book Readers

hamer

I want to buy the missus an Kindle or similar product as she has always got her nose stuck in a book.
The problem is she never buys new books, opting to pay just a few bob from charity shops/book swop places and the like.
So, the problem is, will it be worth it cos she won't be paying pounds for best sellers or, are there any free or very cheap e books available to download from the Kindle site.

Thanks,
Hamer

Enterprise_1701C

Most libraries these days do ebooks, and if you search on here for free ebooks you will see that there is often voucher offers on various sites that give you free books, the threads are too numerous to link to. You can get a lot of classics for free too.

I believe some libraries are considering doing books for kindle, but most do pub and PDF, this being the reason why I went for a Sony reader, also might be worth looking at the kobo (which I would have gone for had it been sold in the UK at the time.

Do not expect to get new books for free though, they are sold for ridiculous prices online.

nearlyrich

I get an email every day that tells me what's free on Amazon I have downloaded hundreds of free books this year already..

hamer

Thanks for the replies.
Took it a step further today and went to the local Curry's store and had a good look at the Kindle and Kindle Keypad models. The sales assistant approached with the inevitable "can I help you" spiel. The result being no, she couldn't. She was as much use as a chocolate fieguard. She tried to explain the pro's and cons of each model but kept contradicting herself so I came away without asking her any questions, even my wife commented that she didn't know what she was talking about.
Anyway my questions are :-
As Kindle Keypad model has free 3G, can it send and recieve e mails
Is there any web browsing facility on it.

Hamer

McAzrael

There isn't an e-mail client, but you could use the built in browser to access webmail. There is a browser (natch), but it's on an e-ink screen which is black and white and has a ridiculously slow refresh rate. Perfect for books (you've probably already gathered how easy on the eye it is and how the battery lasts forever) but no good for browsing. Use it on holiday to check the weather forecast in English or to check a Wikipedia article in an emergency, but that's about all it is good for.

hamer

Hi, I'm back again with another querie.

Is it possible to download the popular newspapers and womens mags to Kindle such as Daily/Sunday Mirror/Express etc and Chat, Bella, Best etc.

Bella_b

In WHSmith they sell the Kobo for £89 I think. On their website too.

As for the Kindle, I think you can download newspapers but remember the kindle is not a colour device. They have released a color version in the USA but not here.

Badger_Lady

hamer wrote: »

Hi, I'm back again with another querie.

Is it possible to download the popular newspapers and womens mags to Kindle such as Daily/Sunday Mirror/Express etc and Chat, Bella, Best etc.

Newspapers definitely... Amazon do a subscription service which I find a bit pricey, but if you download Calibre (free), you can set it to 'collect' the daily news using the publicly-available websites. I currently get two 'newspapers' - The Guardian and BBC News. It's perfect for reading articles and even looking at the black-and-white pictures... I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work for magazines, should be OK.

The only downside to that is you have to sync the Kindle to your computer to get that day's news. But it's better than paying

Badger_Lady

Here's the thread "Cheap eBook Readers": https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/3069952

hpsaucey

you can buy ebooks on cd from ebay cheaply. I bought an ereader off there too which has everything the kindle has for half the price. and then dowloaded 50 books for £3. all good authors. you can pick your author from the lists on there and then transfer them to you ereader[daughter did it for me caus i am a bit thick] wanted mine just for hols next year, mine is also colourscreen and can dowload dvd's etc but no internet. 4gb memory which can be increased to 8 with card. good buy

cheepie_2

Hi I have a kindle 3g and lurrvve!! it :T ive had it since feb and it does get hammered i use it for about 4 hours a night and more at weekends , i charge it up every week but it always still has charge on it, kindle has loads of books on for a few pounds, you will find that about 95% of the books for free are from 1900 or before i think its because before then there were open copyright laws, so most are "classics", there are sites like free-ebooks.net which have more modern books on though most are by self published authors, lots of sites come up when you type in free ebooks

the kindle format for ebooks is mobi, but as has already been mentioned you can download "calibre" and it will convert books from other formats such as pdf, epub etc to mobi, its easy to do

I have used my kindle abroad to look at news and other general sites it can be slow to load depending on the connection but still great for free