Viewing 17 posts - 1 through 17 (of 17 total)
  • Need some ebook opinions.
  • sunnrider
    Free Member

    Fed up trying to order, wait for and eventually not receive books in English delivered here in Spain.

    So, I´ve decided to get an ebook reader/tablet.
    I´ve narrowed it down to either a Kindle Touch, Sony PRS T1 Reader and a Galaxy Tab/Asus Eee Pad. I don´t want an ipad, it´s overpriced.

    I don´t see much between the Sony and the Kindle, prices are similar too.
    The Galaxy/Asus tabs offer the advantage of being able to read mags etc in full colour but I´m not sure how good the screen would be for books.

    Any advice?

    IA
    Full Member

    I don´t want an ipad, it´s overpriced.

    At risk of starting a troll-fest, it’s not overpriced – it’s just too expensive for your budget (I assume). It’d be overpriced if there were equivalent devices for cheaper.

    Anyhow, tablets are crap for long form reading compared to an e-reader. The choice comes down to:

    Easy to buy books, but you have to buy from amazon: get the kindle.

    Bit more effort to get books, but can shop around, access to some digital lending libraries: get the sony.

    FWIW I have a kindle*.

    (*and an iPad, and a work android tablet… I am commenting from a position of experience here)

    jota180
    Free Member

    The basic Kindle just works, I’ve not tried the Touch but I can’t imagine it can improve it as a reader.

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    BigButSlimmerBloke
    Free Member

    My mum’s Sony story – she got a Sony ereader and loved it. More choice of formats (IIRC) and better support from local library. However, after a couple of years, it stopped holding a charge. Accepting it was out of warranty, she returned to the Sony shoppe, where one of the “experts” (still PMSL) told her the battery was gubbed and she would have to buy a new ereader because the battery in integral to the circuit board and cannot be replaced. Obviously not happy with this and with the thought that she might have to buy another one in another couple of years, she bought a Kobo, more later. that wasn’t as good as the Sony in terme of support from the library, something to do with digital rights which allow the library to send you a book which will self-delete after a couple of weeks. She was moaning to me about it, I said that (the “expert”/battery bit) sounded like bollocks and to give me the Sony. Lo and behold, a huge number of screws, and UNCLIP the batery and CLIP IN the new one (£20 IIRC) and woohoo, working Sony. gave her it back, she’s happy. She gave me the Kobe because she doesn’t use it anymore. So battery issues notwithstanding the Sony seems to be pretty good, and you never know, you might pick up a cheapie that just needs a new battery.
    I’ve never really wanted an ereader, but now I have the Kobe, I like it. The page quality is excellent, so is the battery life. The screen has a few light marks on it, so may be fragile, but a couple of quid on a case should protect it. In epub you can’t magnify images (I’m ereading Game of Thrones and there are maps of Westeros that are difficult to read, so zooming in would be useful). Also, no backlight, good for battery life, but crap for reading in bed at night. Case bought from Amazon was about £10 and came with clip on light, bulky but ok.

    EDIT – and I understand that you can use non-Kindle readers to read kindle books bought from Amazon, bit it’s a bit of faff.

    z1ppy
    Full Member

    I don´t want an ipad, it´s overpriced.

    LOL so overpriced, no one is able to offer an alternative that significantly cheaper?

    EDIT: Damn beaten to it..

    Anyways back to your main question… My partner wanted a kindle, but I suggested also checking out a Nexus 7 before deciding. Great bit of kit, lovely in use (well to “play with” in the shop), a great screen & size for using as a ebook read but also nice an portable for travelling. She ended up with the kindle though, mainly due to her own lack of interest in using the device for anything other than an ebook reader (she just steals my ipad for her intermittent browsing) & also and mainly due to the screen. All of the tablet are rubbish when it comes to screen glare, simply the kindle excels in those environments where you’d struggle to read with any other tablet. I’d love to suggest otherwise but my ipad and iphone (obviously less so) are a struggle to use in bright (glaring) conditions.
    Since last week she read 3 books on it already and won’t take it out of the box (even to use it!) until her cover arrives (Curries covers prices are silly compared to the net). I believe she is thoroughly taken by it, and being an avid reader she had no issues ‘converting’ over to it and ‘ahem’ I can locate free content very easily….

    My mum (past away now) had an earlier sony reader, she seemingly couldn’t locate the content “she wanted” to use it (I have no idea how difficult it is to convert files to use with one) & didn’t like the device. Though this may also have been a personal preference for real books.

    craigxxl
    Free Member

    Kindle +1

    I’ve read more books since buying a Kindle than the whole of the last 10 years. Simply to use, very easy to read from I prefer it to paper. Enough weight to let you know it’s there but not heavy enough to make you want to put it down. Great battery life, search and dictionary are useful functions too.
    Used the Ipad but not the others. Ipad doesn’t compare to the Kindle for reading.

    sunnrider
    Free Member

    OK, I tried out a sony reader and the ipad in a shop today. No kindles available
    Despite what most people think, I still think the ipad is overpriced, isn´t it basically just a stopgap between a phone and a laptop without the features of either? Anyway, it´s just too big to be portable for reading.

    I think the e-ink is going to swing it for me, I read quite a bit for hours at a time.

    IA
    Full Member

    isn´t it basically just a stopgap between a phone and a laptop without the features of either?

    No. I could say “isn’t a laptop just a bulky iPad with less battery life, a low res screen and clunky keyboard attachment”? But to some extent I’m trolling with that 😉

    it´s just too big to be portable for reading.

    Yup, don’t buy an iPad if you want to read books. It’s why I have a kindle too.

    If you get a kindle associated with a UK amazon account, it’s a very easy experience buying books. You can lie in bed, and have a new book with a few clicks. Yes, you pay for the convenience, but if you enjoy reading, what a convenience it is! Unlimited books on tap, no cluttering up your house with books.

    avdave2
    Full Member

    and I understand that you can use non-Kindle readers to read kindle books bought from Amazon, bit it’s a bit of faff.

    Use Calibre a free bit of software to manage your libary which will read all formats and convert them to the right format for the device you have attached to the pc. It’s simple, free and completely does away with format issues. Brilliant.

    One thing to note on the kindle is that they are pretty fragile, it takes very little to flex the unit and crack the screen, it happens with normal use, you don’t have to drop it or sit on it to break it. If I replace mine it’ll only be with the cheapest one or I may look at the Sony though I’ve no idea if it’s any more fit for purpose than the kindle.

    CountZero
    Full Member

    Yup, don’t buy an iPad if you want to read books. It’s why I have a kindle too.

    That was a significant reason for buying mine. Because there are authors whose books I read, and whose ebook versions are spread across various sources, I have the complete works of William Gibson, but spread over Kindle/iBooks/Stanza. Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons books, which I love and still read, are only available from iBooks. Kathy Reich’s Tempé Brennan books are spread around, because of stupid geographical copyright issues.
    (See William Gibson. And others).
    Sadly, Stanza, which has a whole bunch of books in, has been cut loose by Amazon who bought it to kill it, is barely working now, and I can’t get my books into Caliber to convert to iBooks.
    Someone wrote a little app to do it, but by the time I needed it, it doesn’t seem to be downloadable.
    Bugger; twenty or thirty books, and it looks like I’ll have to buy them all over again because of bloody Amazon!

    Cougar
    Full Member

    OH was keen to buy me a Kindle after I bought her one a couple of years back. I was ambivalent to the whole thing (I had the app on my phone).

    Now that she has, I wouldn’t be without it. It’s a truly awesome piece of kit, wholly different from a tablet other than a vaguely similar form factor.

    mogrim
    Full Member

    Kindle all the way for reading, a tablet just doesn’t come close.

    One thing to note: in Spain you’ll be using amazon.es, but they sell English eBooks. You’ll just get all the buybuybuy emails in Spanish 🙄 Not sure if they’re selling amazon.com or amazon.co.uk versions of the books, though the difference isn’t that important.

    (And if you get your books from somewhere other than Amazon, this isn’t an issue of course!)

    willard
    Full Member

    I use a cheap, generic 7″ Android tablet as an e-reader and it works reasonably well for that purpose. However, it does have a couple of shortfalls compared to a kindle, battery life and screen legibility in bright light being the two most important ones. I really cannot fault e-ink for making books easy to read in daylight. The kindle/kobo/etc are also very light.

    However, I can also watch films and listen to music on it, so that sort of makes up for the shortfall, and it was only 70 quid so nothing really to lose.

    Look up the Ployer ms009 android tablet on Amazon. Might be worth a punt.

    MrFart
    Free Member

    I’ve got a Sony PRS350 that I take everywhere with me ( including the beach ). It’s great for ‘normal’ books but is terrible at displaying pdfs and tends to mess up the formating of epubs if that’s important for you ( ie. code snippets in programming textbooks are all over the place ).

    IA
    Full Member

    One thing to note: in Spain you’ll be using amazon.es

    Not if they get a uk kindle tied to a uk account though.

    z1ppy
    Full Member

    IA – Nope, my partner got one last week, and it was tied to the US shop/account as default and all the books were originally in dollars. We had to convert her kindle account(?) to a UK account, no doubt you can probably specify a spanish account too without much trouble.

    HoratioHufnagel
    Free Member

    Kindle for reading books.

    If you want to read magazines, or PDF’s, a 10″ tablet (anything less just a bit too small IMO)

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