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Kindle is OK

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Re: Kindle is OK

#81

Post by HSO »

frossie wrote: post #74
HSO wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it fascinating that people these days are willing to pay (a premium) for less features or less choice. It's counterintuitive, but if you look at e.g. Leica's exploding sales, or Macs, or indeed bare-featured Kindles, there's a pattern. In a perfect world (or, at least, one with perfectly consistent people) less features could never be worth more. People would do what they want and whether the device offers mor…

I find it fascinating that people these days are willing to pay (a premium) for less features or less choice. Well in this case people are paying a lot less for less choice. A kindle/nook/kobo is priced nothing like an iPad. Having access to both, I too agree eInk is far better for reading. I don't feel like I am paying to have less choice. My nook is a far better reading experience than the iPad. The iPad is a great…

Hm, let me clarify, I meant to say "either pay or even pay a premium". So yes, they are paying less but they are still paying for a functionality that could, in this particular case, for the most part also be fulfilled by the more versatile iPad. I wonder where the thin line is at which people will say "thank god, now I can pack all my gadgets into one device" instead of "X is best for x, Y for y, Z for z". Clumsy English, I realize, but I'm too tired now to try again... In any case, I still have a Sony PRS 700, expensively imported to Germany about a year ago, and can't decide whether I'll keep it around now that I have the iPad or sell it at a big loss (given my import costs and the iPad craze) on ebay.

Re: Kindle is OK

#82

Post by judofyr »

cschneid wrote: post #56

My girlfriend has a kindle 2, and I have an iphone. I've found that the iphone has one killer feature that the kindle doesn't: It's in my pocket all the time. For whatever reason, my reading happens in 15 minute spurts while waiting for someone or something. The kindle app for the iphone allows me to do that, along with all the book options that amazon provides (and synced up to my girlfriend's kindle too, so we shar…

This is what I love about Amazon: They know that they can't make "one device to rule them all", so they've simply focused on making Kindle available everywhere. Very often when people talk about Kindle vs. iPad, they actually talk about Kindle (device) vs. Kindle (on iPad).

Re: Kindle is OK

#83

Post by frossie »

HSO wrote: post #81
frossie wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it fascinating that people these days are willing to pay (a premium) for less features or less choice. Well in this case people are paying a lot less for less choice. A kindle/nook/kobo is priced nothing like an iPad. Having access to both, I too agree eInk is far better for reading. I don't feel like I am paying to have less choice. My nook is a far better reading experience than the iPad. The iPad is a great…

Hm, let me clarify, I meant to say "either pay or even pay a premium". So yes, they are paying less but they are still paying for a functionality that could, in this particular case, for the most part also be fulfilled by the more versatile iPad. I wonder where the thin line is at which people will say "thank god, now I can pack all my gadgets into one device" instead of "X is best for x, Y for y, Z for z". Clumsy En…

in this particular case, for the most part also be fulfilled by the more versatile iPad

I understand your point, but all I am saying is that in this case "for the most part" is not good enough for many people (eg. me).

I do, actually, have the urge for an all-in-one device, but I also have certain things that I don't want to compromise on. My reading experience is very important to me. On the other hand, my wish to take a quick photo/video is not a big deal. So, I carried a sub-compact camera with the iPhone 3G, but if I get an iPhone4 I won't bother - it's good enough. On similar lines, I have more or less ditched my portable game devices in favour of the iPhone/iPad. Other people have different priorities.

So I think people do want to converge on one device, but not at the expense of their convenience.

Re: Kindle is OK

#84

Post by city41 »

hugh3 wrote: post #61
jk8 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My only issue with reading on kindle like devices is the way it changes the page. I don't think I can stand that. I feel like that would bother my eyes. EDIT: That is the only thing stopping me from buying one.

How often do you turn the page? Can't you shut your eyes for that half-second if it bothers you?

How often do you turn pages while reading books? I'm going to guess pretty often.

Re: Kindle is OK

#85

Post by tedunangst »

jk8 wrote: post #59
pilif wrote: post #16

Three reasons why I personally think the Kindle is superior to the iPad as a reading device: 1) It's lighter and smaller and thus easier on your hands to hold it. My hands begin to hurt after holding the iPad for more than two hours. Reading is something I can do for hours without interruption. 2) I thought that an advantage of the ipad would be that I can read with the lights already out. I was wrong - staring at th…

My only issue with reading on kindle like devices is the way it changes the page. I don't think I can stand that. I feel like that would bother my eyes. EDIT: That is the only thing stopping me from buying one.

You quickly learn not to stare at the screen, much like you learned long long ago not to stare at the page as you're turning it. Physical books have an even slower response time, but nobody complains about that.

Re: Kindle is OK

#86

Post by tedunangst »

Encosia wrote: post #46

I often wonder how many people are actually spending much time reading outdoors in bright/direct sunlight, versus just regurgitating that well-known point in favor of eInk. I find my iPad quite a bit more readable than the Kindle or Sony reader indoors, which is where I do nearly all of my reading. It's nice not needing to find a light source too.

I don't spend all that much time at the beach, but I'm still sure as hell not going to buy a gadget for reading at the beach that can't be read in sunlight.

Re: Kindle is OK

#87

Post by ghshephard »

barmstrong wrote: post #53
pilif wrote: post #16

Three reasons why I personally think the Kindle is superior to the iPad as a reading device: 1) It's lighter and smaller and thus easier on your hands to hold it. My hands begin to hurt after holding the iPad for more than two hours. Reading is something I can do for hours without interruption. 2) I thought that an advantage of the ipad would be that I can read with the lights already out. I was wrong - staring at th…

I would add one more: battery life. If you keep the 3G off except while downloading books, you can easily get TWO OR THREE WEEKS of battery life out of the Kindle - even if you use it every night. The iPad does a lot more, no doubt, but as a straight up reading device the Kindle still wins.

Ironically, and I recognize this is more a behavior than product issue - the battery on my kindle is dead almost 100% of the time when I want to use it, but on my iPad, the battery typically has 8-10 hours of reading life on it.

As a result, I do most of my reading on my iPad, even though I prefer, all things equal, to do so on my kindle in the sun. The battery is just never charged _when I want it_.

The difference - I use my kindle for solid, long stretch reading, and may set the kindle down for a few weeks or more, and that stupid wireless always gets turned on sometimes in that interval. (It's better on the K2, but the K1 was horrible) - And I've used the wireless function a grand total of 15 minutes in the two plus years of ownership and 200+ hours of reading. Worst design flaw I've ever seen in a product, where a feature that should be off almost 100% of the time is frequently turned on, wiping out one of the key differentiators of the product - long battery life.

Now that I think of it, I didn't have really that great an experience on battery life on my K1, even without the wireless, and would typically go on a trip with multiple battery packs, and a solar charger. Better than the iPad (obviously), but a week of reading would typically require 3 or so recharges.

K2 has been better - most of a week of casual reading, and I am looking forward to seeing what the graphite will do for me.

Re: Kindle is OK

#88

Post by ghshephard »

jk8 wrote: post #59
pilif wrote: post #16

Three reasons why I personally think the Kindle is superior to the iPad as a reading device: 1) It's lighter and smaller and thus easier on your hands to hold it. My hands begin to hurt after holding the iPad for more than two hours. Reading is something I can do for hours without interruption. 2) I thought that an advantage of the ipad would be that I can read with the lights already out. I was wrong - staring at th…

My only issue with reading on kindle like devices is the way it changes the page. I don't think I can stand that. I feel like that would bother my eyes. EDIT: That is the only thing stopping me from buying one.

As one who has read about 30 novels on my K1/K2 - I can attest that your brain / eyes actually seem to go into a wait state when you change the page, such that you don't ever seem to recall changing pages while reading long fiction.

On the other hand, flipping through technical references is painful to the point of despair, and was one of the key reasons I fell in love with my iPad.

Re: Kindle is OK

#89

Post by Herring »

gamble wrote: post #23

The Kindle is best at reading straight-forward linear text with minimal formatting, like novels. You can't go wrong with a Kindle if you read plenty of novels, especially if you read outside. OTOH, the iPad is far superior for heavily formatted text and graphical content. Even the Kindle DX has terrible support for PDFs and the eInk screen is inherently bad for graphics, so for the person who wants to carry textbooks…

Yeah, it should be emphasized that it matters what you're reading.

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/mobile/07/26/ipad.universit...

>Students at Reed College complained of the slow refresh rate of e-Ink displays, problematic input, inability to load PDFs over the network, and inability to view more than one text at a time as major sticking points. Reed faculty found converting documents to work well on the Kindle to be particularly difficult in most cases.

>Students participating in the test at Darden School of Business, while loving the Kindle for personal reading, overwhelmingly felt the Kindle didn't pass muster in its current state for academic use -- about 4 out of 5 would not recommend a Kindle DX to incoming MBA students.

Re: Kindle is OK

#90

Post by WarDekar »

jsulak wrote: post #45
JoelSutherland wrote: post #4

One of the coolest things I do with my kindle is send my instapaper articles to it. It costs $0.15 per send (not per article), but it is great to have a bunch of really good, long form articles available. As an example, I read this great article about Lincoln the other night: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2005/10/lincoln-ap... There is no way I would read that on a computer.

One way to avoid kindle fees is to use USB to sync. If you're on Mac, use Ephemera ( http://goephemera.com/ ), or if you're on Windows, use Wordcycler ( http://www.wordcycler.com/ ). (I'm the developer of Wordcycler.) Another great benefit of these programs is that you can sync individual articles, not just the pre-made bundles that Instapaper provides. You can plug in your device, have the program download the artic…

I tried to get Ephemera, but it crashes on launch any time I try to open it. Unfortunate because it looked pretty useful to me. I realize you (probably) aren't the author, but thought maybe others on here were having problems with it. Gonna send in a crash report, no idea what's causing it.
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