To Kindle or not to Kindle?
I’ve been considering purchasing an Ebook reader for a while now. I have been reading all the reviews, doing my research, watching the prices, but until just last week couldn’t make up my mind. In the end it came down to two likely candidates, the Amazon Kindle or the Barnes & Noble Nook. Both had features that I liked.
The Amazon Kindle has been around for a while and enjoys high popularity. The hardware features are good, I liked the built in hardware keyboard, albeit small, it works quite well. Most of the readers today use the same E Ink screen. These screens although not back lit, but have excellent resolution and are readable at almost any angle and in any light that you could read a normal printed page. I used a friend’s Kindle for a little test drive and found it to be quite user friendly.
The B&N Nook had a couple of features that were very appealing to me. First was the 802.11 Wi-Fi connectivity. Both of these readers use AT&T for the wireless connection for downloading books and I knew that AT&T coverage here at the house is spotty at best. So, the ability to use my own wireless internet connection here at the house would assure that I had the ability to quickly download any books that I wanted to read.
Second, the Nook has the capability to expand the memory with a Micro SD memory card. Rule of thumb of any computing device is you can’t have too much memory. That must be one of Murphy’s Laws, like you can’t have too much chrome, too much horsepower, or two much money!
Similar to selecting a computer or computer operating system, when I think about an electronic book reader I think the most important feature would be the media that is available. That decision out weighs the hardware. You’ve got to have access to a large inventory of books, periodicals, blogs, and so on to make a Ebook reader worthwhile. After doing some searching on the B&N and Amazon websites for some books I would like to download, I found that Amazon had more titles I wanted and slightly better prices.
So I decided to go with the Kindle. Because I already an account with Amazon it was a snap to purchase the Kindle using their one click ordering and overnight shipping. I had the Kindle the next day and was downloading books. I now have a considerable backlog of reading.
I guess I better get off this computer and get to my reading!
I haven’t made that plunge, yet, but have been reading ebooks for over 10 years. I started carrying a Palm Pilot back in 1997 or so, and pretty early on got the (in those days) the Peanut Reader. I thought of that as the Killer App for the Palm from the get-go. As the Palm models got more advanced over the years, the reader stayed, and I have a decent collection of books. I would prefer to never buy another print book for general reading (trade paperback stuff) – for technical stuff and learning, books are still hard to beat.
Last December, when we decided to get iPhones, the first thing I moved from my old Palm to the phone was the eReader. They were very easy to deal with, no charges for any of it, and it’s still there.
The issue I have with Kindle is the way they removed books from Kindles that people had bought and paid for, when some sort of IP squabble happened. With ink on paper, you’d have to break into my house to do that. I have not heard those stories about the Nook. I have also heard they sniff your Kindle’s butt every time you connect to get a book loaded – for more marketing info.
I now have the Apple book reader that ships on the iPad, and with a $10 gift card I had here, bought one book for it. (Gawd – I’m starting to sound like an Apple fanboy). Jury is still out on that one for me. There may be a Kindle in my future, but I’m not sure.