There seem to be many about and the case seems to be pretty important too. I’ve seen some with built in lights! Any advice?

cheapest IMO

just load it up with a load of books

i ‘dont get’ these kindle things ? wots the point in them ? its just another tablet gadget…..books are books as they,ve always been…end.
or is : people just love gadgets 😉

EA, i regularly go to Australia to visit family. Between my wife and I we would take 10+ books and share them between us. This was a massive pain in the arse! Now we both load up 20 or more if we want on the kindle and have them easily to hand in our carry on bags. It is amazing. That is all, really!

edit, and the battery only needs charging once on the entire trip, pretty much. which is also pretty awesome.

i ‘dont get’ these kindle things

I didn’t either, until I played with one. Hundreds of books in the space one would take up, as easy on the eye as paper, tremendous battery life, and keeps your page when you fall asleep.

There seem to be many about and the case seems to be pretty important too. I’ve seen some with built in lights! Any advice?

the questions are “do you need a keyboard” and “do you need 3G”; I’d suggest the answer is probably “no” in both cases.

Some cases have a built-in light, but the price will leave you with a sore bottom. I’d just get a cheap head torch myself. (-:

I’d say cheapest too. I have the most expensive one and now I very rarely use the expensive bits (keyboard and 3G).

As far as why a kindle goes, it’s funny. I love books and I still prefer sitting down with a book rather than my kindle. That said, the kindle has it’s place, namely when travelling by train, air, on holiday etc. It’s nice to have lots of books in one small place.

Some cases have a built-in light, but the price will leave you with a sore bottom. I’d just get a cheap head torch myself. (-:

At this range the price of the case is not really an issue, better to get the ‘right’ one.

What would i need a keyboard for? And if it was 3g would i need to stick my phone card in?

And if it was 3g would i need to stick my phone card in?

Nope. Comes with it in. Free.

Keyboard makes it easier to do searches, cant see the point in the 3G thing not for and extra 50 squids, and don’t they stealth charge you for download conversions or something?

You can get the version 3 keyboard new on fleabay still without the 3G thing for a ton. Got one for a chrimbo pressie last week came boxed in amazon package, supposedly have better battery life than the v4 ones too.

The main advantage of a Kindle for me is that I can buy and start reading a book immediately. So if I think ‘oh yeah I fancy such and such’ or someone tells me about something that sounds good, I can buy it there and then. Otherwise, I’d make a mental note, lose it, and then go into Waterstones that weekend and aimlessly mill around an intimidating selection of books wondering what it was that I meant to get.

Which brings me to another huge advantage – the ‘you might also like’ bit. You can finish a book, and some of the suggestions look good so al you have to do is clicky click and you can get stuck into something else good. Magic.

All the other stuff like the dictionaries*, wikipedia access, sharing bits etc etc is cool but doens’t really change the way you read, whereas those two things do (or have for me). I’ve read far more better books since having one. Sometimes I like gadgets for their own sake but not this. It’s a tool that enables so much, and I became instantly very fond of it and the Amazon book store.

* When reading, you can move a cursor over a word and you get a definition. I bought a newer Kindle for my Mum the other day and she bought a French book. Move the cursor over a word and you get a definition IN FRENCH. It has multiple languages in it, and they don’t even advertise the fact. How frickin cool is that?

Oh yeah, re cases – the Amazon ones are expensive but so much nicer than the others. They must’ve patented the clips that hold the thing in or something because none of the other cases use the same clips and as a result you have to have crummy straps holding the thing in.

If I couldn’t bring myself to part with the cash for an Amazon case I think I’d probably get a neoprene case and read it naked.

ok, an amazon case it is then!!

so…
this
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0051QVF7A/ref=sv_kinh_0

and this
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kindle-Lighted-Leather-Cover-Purple/dp/B004SD213O/ref=sr_1_1?s=fiona-hardware&ie=UTF8&qid=1322613428&sr=1-1

whats that about needing a power adaptor?

It comes with a USB cable for charging – the power adaptor is for when you don’t have a USB port available. The lighted cover just takes power from the Kindle.

I’ve got the small one, other half has the keyboard one. Mine is better – you rarely need the keyboard and it take up a lot of space.

ok, that’s the one i link to right? and i assume the plug in usb carger will be interchangeable with the one i use for my phone and my sat nav, right?

Look up http://www.ereaderiq.co.uk/
Sign up to their newsletter and you get regular emails listing free kindle books. I have the kindle app on my phone, and I must have twenty or thirty books now that I wouldn’t have found before, and all free. They had a whole list of cookery books last week.

re: the cases

I have the Amazon one and my missus has the Dura Gadget

I much prefer hers TBH, it fits better and the little fold away stand is very handy, it’s well over a year old now and still as good as new

Look on amazon for their ‘refurb’ models, wifi+keyboard for 79£, 3G for 115£-IIRC.
If you travel, get the 3G – no questions. If not, the keyboard version is far superior to the 89£ option with the central click button… Totally archaic method of control,esp when entering text!
Cases overpriced rubbish, amazon one breaks it’s clips, 7dayshop 3.50£ version just as good!

Another Luddite who got one and really like it. I have a proper book by my bed and my Kindle (the new little one for £89) comes everywhere with me. Fits in a jacket or jeans pocket. Can’t imagine why I’d need 3G, maybe if you really travel a lot but hotels all have wifi now and you can load up before you go surely.

remember to turn wifi and 3g off when you’re not using them too. If you do this the battery lasts months!

Cheapest unless you’re travelling a lot.

I have a 3G but that was bought just before a 4 month trip and the premium was worth it to me. I subscribed to a newspaper and could connect after 7am UK time and it would just download in the background to read. I picked up quite a few books that people I met recommended or mentioned in conversation. The browser isn’t great at all but was OK for quick emails or checking news, even managed to book train tickets on it in a pinch. It connected fine everywhere I tried that had phone signal, even remote bits of India and Malaysia.

Since I got back it’s purely a book-reading device and the wireless generally stays off unless I need to get new books on there. Using it like that the keyboard is redundant really – the note-taking is clunky and the soft keyboard good enough to find a book in the store (although I tend to just buy from Amazon’s site on a proper computer, then the book just appears on the Kindle). I’d be perfectly happy with the cheapest base one now if I had to replace.

The amazon cases are pricey but nicely made. I’d been using a cheap neoprene sleeve for ages but picked up a lighted case in amazon’s recent sale which is rather good.

Oh yeah, re cases – the Amazon ones are expensive but so much nicer than the others. They must’ve patented the clips that hold the thing in or something because none of the other cases use the same clips and as a result you have to have crummy straps holding the thing in.

Get the Amazon case, great piece of design – it shares the same battery as the Kindle, the built in light works perfectly, and the feel and quality is great too.

The only downside is that it doubles the size of the Kindle, but it’s a price worth paying.

I’ve got one of the lighted cases- contacts wore pretty quickly between the case and Kindle, to the point where the Kindle would just fall out, and the light was intermittent. Amazon replaced it no questions asked- I suspect it might be fairly common.

Free samples are great- while a way a few minutes browsing stuff, helpful for cheaply weeding out stuff you know you’ll never finish as well.

I’ve got a similar dilemma. Wife has offered to get me a Kindle for Christmas, but not sure if it’s worth waiting for the Fire to be released in the UK.

I like the way the cases on the Sony ereaders use magnets to hold them closed.

You could wait for the color kindle to go on sale over here – it is on sale in the states.

I am starting to get hacked off with how Amazon are only selling certain Kindles in the states, like the DX for example.

Fire’s a tablet with a backlit screen, not an ereader.

Could be waiting a long time as well- Amazon doesn’t have the downloadable content available here that it does in the US- without the sales revenue from it there’s no point in selling the Fire here.

The Fire seems to be both an e-reader and a multimedia tablet, so would be great for traveling by having a decent e-reader and something to play music and films on one device. I don’t want to put it off then find out next year it’s going to be another 6 months away at least.

The Kindle does one thing very well indeed

I reckon the Fire will compromise it as a reader

Am I right in thinking the display isnt backlit? Thats a major omission if you need a light building into the case. Or have I missed something?

Am I right in thinking the display isnt backlit? Thats a major omission if you need a light building into the case. Or have I missed something?

You’re right it isn’t backlit. The point is that the e-ink display is like the page of a book, and just as easy on the eye.

Am I right in thinking the display isnt backlit? Thats a major omission if you need a light building into the case. Or have I missed something?

I wouldn’t buy a reader with a back light now

It’s one of those things that you really need to try in order to get it I think

Yes, it doesn’t need or want a backlight. It means the battery can last a month or so of daily reading, as opposed to a few hours, and you can read it in full sunlight. It does mean that you need a light to read it in the dark, but hey, so do books.

Btw my Mum is a complete and utter technophobe, gadgets mean nothing to her and she still has not stopped raving about her Kindle’s wonderfulitude.

I bought a non-3G version, but wish I’d gone for the 3G, it’s so much easier if your abroad than messing on with data roaming. If I never left the UK, i’d probably go for the non-3G.

It baffles me why anyone would need 3G. The thing can hold like a thousand books, if you run out of reading material on holiday then that’s not really a technology issue.

About the only reason I can see is the newspaper thing someone mentioned, which whilst a nicety perhaps doesn’t seem to be worth a fifty quid price hike.

It depends on how much time you spend away from home really. Wifi is all over the place but often not free and it means faffing about with codes and login pages and the like. With a 3G one, you stick wireless on and as long as there’s a phone signal where you are, it’ll connect just fine.

If your foreign travel is one week by the pool somewhere then yeah, it’s a waste of time – load up before you go. If you travel often for work it can be a godsend – a mate spends weeks at a time in India and it saves him a fortune on data bills.

The other good thing that 3G is for is keeping your place in books synced up. It’s great when you’re sat in a waiting room or on a train platform to fire up the kindle app on your phone and just pick up where you got to last night.

Cheers Cougar, i’ll get my kids to plan better next time we go on holiday.

It works as emergency 3G when you’re in dodgy places.
We were on a train travelling through Switzerland and I’d gathered that while pretty much everything about Swiss trains is excellent, one failing is that it’s pretty much impossible to understand what the lady is saying over the tannoy and because I only had our destination name and nothing else I didn’t know when to get ready to get off.

So I turned on 3G on my kindle, found a swiss train map and worked out what the station before ours was, thus providing me with the information I needed.

So in that very specific circumstance it was great!

I got the Wife one from Tesco the other day, for Xmas. Its stashed in the man cave.

Any tips on the best place/method to get the “books” to go on it ?

Any tips on the best place/method to get the “books” to go on it ?

Anything from Amazon .azw files
Any .mobi files

Any .epub or .lit files will need converting with something like Calibre

As with most digital media, there’s loads of places legal or otherwise

So the 3g is free globally? Cos my phone 3g is free in this country, but very expensive abroad. Which network does it use? And how is that paid for?