I have been slightly interested in Amazon's Kindle since it first came out, but I prefer to read from a real book rather than from a screen. However, the second generation Kindle has piqued my interest with the built in PDF reader. The reason being is that I find many great older books on Google Books (GB) or the Internet Archive (IA) that I would like to read and reading on the Kindle sounds a bit more appealing than reading from my laptop.And now I have noticed that the Internet Archive is offering many of it's books in a Kindle format. That seems like a great benefit and again has me thinking about buying a Kindle. But I thought I would see if any of our readers here own a Kindle and what their opinions are.
I am specifically interested in anyone's experiences with using their Kindle to read books off of GB or IA - is it worth owning a Kindle primarily for that purpose? Is the Kindle useful for more research-type use (highlighting/notes) or really only suited for casual reading?
You should jump in the chat room and ask Dr. White. He LOVES talking geek-technology stuff.
ReplyDeleteI am a Kindle lover. It is suitable for ANY kind of reading. However, if you are interested in the PDF support primarily, you do not want the Kindle 2. The PDF support in the Kindle 2 is not native but some kind of simulation. The Kindle DX on the other hand has native PDF support and the ability to go into landscape or portrait modes is invaluable.
ReplyDeleteI bought my DX thinking it would be primarily for the scholarly purposes, which it does do, but it also made me fall in love with casual reading all over again. Also the ability to download in an instant free samples of books from Amazon makes buying decisions as easy as if you were in the store.
The only thing that I would ditch my Kindle for is a similar device from Apple since I am a hopeless Apple fangirl. But until then, I can definitely recommend the Kindle Kool-Aid. It is teh nice.
Feel free to email or ask me any questions. This is Dee Dee from TheologyWeb.
He LOVES talking geek-technology stuff.
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid I couldn't hold up my end of the conversation.
Dee Dee,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the review!
That's weird, the Kindle 2 says it supports native PDFs, but apparently not. I don't think I'm willing to spring the extra bucks for the DX at this time. May have to wait for the price to come down a bit.
Carrie, maybe something has changed since I owned a Kindle 2. Now even though the support wasn't "native" - at least at that time - I never had any problems with opening pdfs, though I read some people did. But the smaller screen was a problem. You see, with books in Kindle format (and other e-book formats I am pretty sure), you can change the font size. With a pdf you can't since it is an image file. And on the smaller Kindle 2 screen, unless you are a teenager, older eyes just can't handle the pdf. With the Kindle DX, the screen is larger and you can put in landscape mode which is much easier on the eyes.
ReplyDeleteBTW, Amazon offers a TON a free books, not just public domain stuff. And quite a bit of good Christian titles from time to time. I probably have gotten well over a hundred recent free books from them with about 25 being theological in nature.
And though I don't use it, some people like the text to speech feature and the ability to download audio books from places such as audible for that. I use my iPhone (yay Apple!) for my audio book needs.
Hey Carrie, check out this deal I just found. It might be of interest to you.
ReplyDeletehttp://thekindlenationblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/if-you-like-audiobooks-too-you-can-save.html
"You just quoted one - new Calendar vs old Calendar. Sheesh. What does it take, a sledgehammer? "
ReplyDeleteThat's not a division! What's it going to take for you to get that, a sledgehammer?
Also, some of us build basillica style churches, some of us build neo-byzantine churches, and others still hold church in garages. That's not a division either.