ebooks

[Jim Hawkins]

Thinking about buying a Kindle. What's the point of the keyboard on the Kindle 3 ? What does it enable you to do ? Send emails ? Write margin notes ? Edit books and documents ?

Jim Hawkins

[Clive George]

Write margin notes, type stuff into the search, order new books, enter passwords, stuff like that.

There is a web browser on there, and my wife can read her email and possibly facebook, but it's not great.

I think you can push content onto a kindle without using the keyboard, so for just reading the new one will work fine.

"Kindle has an easy-to-use 5-way controller, enabling precise on-screen navigation for selecting text to highlight or looking up words. No on-screen fingerprints."

Tr: we've not got a touch screen, which would be a better way of doing things, but we'll pretend that's not a problem.

(we've got the 3G ones, and are quite pleased for their intended use, which was books while cycle touring. Smaller than the real books we'd carry for a 1-2 week holiday, (much smaller than the real books we'd like to carry for the same holiday :-) ), and can do a little bit of web browsing to find stuff out if necessary.)

[Moonraker]

I thought of it, but as I don't do a lot of travelling I cannot see the point. I read a lot, most books from the free library the rest from charity shops. Plus my wife and I read most of them then they are passed around the family, finally ending up in a hospital charity. Can you do any of that with Kindle books?

[Jethro]

Can you change the font size on a book ?

[Jethro]

Keyboard on the Kindle 3 was meant for annotations, notes, and allowing you to enter passwords, etc when connecting to wifi or buying eBooks. Clearly Amazon have done some research and found that a great majority of users never the keyboard much, so lost it.

Bit miffed aas I got mine in March, but would have waited for the smaller version. And the Fire looks like it might replace another section of my library that the 3 couldn't - books with colour pics that aren't too high- quality.

Personally I can see 80% of my library moving to the kindle, and the rest being taken up by heavily illustrated or non-paperback sized books.

Maybe the government could demonstrate it does care about the planet by removing the VAT on eBooks.

[Bob Eager]

Yes. Several different sizes. You can also do portrait/landscape, and select a different font - I forget how many.

[Bob Eager]

Search for words, phrases, etc:

- in the book

- on Google

- on Wikipedia

- in a dictionary (US and UK ones supplied, but you can get others)

- etc.

Use the inbuilt browser.

Buy books.

Margin notes (which can be shared).

Other stuff...!

[Bob Eager]

My take on it was that they wanted it to be smaller and cheaper. Hence the on-screen keyboard instead.

[Jethro]

Sorry, I was being sarky ... I should have said "can you change the font size on a paperback" ? Mrs Jethro has poor eyesight, and finds it a godsend that the Kindle can instantly become a large-print version, if needs be. Which reminds me - don't forget the text-to-speech feature. OK, not brilliant, but as a "free" feature ....

[Jethro]

True, but it's great they did it by removing a feature that few (including me) use.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Yehbut with tiny pages. Most of the large print books I've seen have larger pages too. So all sort of scaled up.

[Bernard Peek]

A friend of mine with severe diabetic retinopathy uses a Kindle because he can't read even "large print" books. There are thousands of free ebooks around, even if you restrict yourself to legit rather than pirated stuff. Needless to say there are also thousands of pirated books too.

[airsmoothed]

Never tried that on SWMBO's but I suspect that you'd have to convert it to PDF first. Biggest drawback from SWMBO's usage is you can't use it for library books (in the UK anyway) as it can't handle the Adobe EPUB format that they use.

[stuart noble]

I bought the Kobo from W.H.Smith which does none of that, and I haven't felt the need to use its wi-fi connection. Haven't even scratched the surface of what's available free through the Gutenberg Project etc

[larkim]

The biggest drawback for the "normal" user that I can see is that searching for specific books on the amazon store via the Kindle will be a bit harder than before.

For "abnormal" users like me, who use their kindles for email / facebook etc, the keyboard is essential as without it I wouldn't be able to type emails at a reasonable pace.

Notes can be saved, but you can't edit books and documents on it.

I got the 3G version (at a discount) which allows me to do some limited web browsing whilst abroad with no roaming charges at all, which I personally find very useful.

Matt

[Jethro]

Yes, although the rendering becomes flaky :(

When you buy a kindle, you can add it to your Amazon account (you have got one, haven't you ?). This allows you to access the "manage my kindle" area, where you can nominate e-reading devices (bear in mind, you can download a kindle app for PC and mobiles, and share your e-books across any 3). This is where you enrol in whispernet, which allocates your Kindle an email address, where you can send personal documents (non-amazon bought ebooks, PDFs .docs etc) to it from.

Check out Calibre, if you are serious. It's a great prog (I run it on Linux) and it lets you manage an e-library from your PC and automates re- rendering documents and sending them to your Kindle. It allows you to take ebooks from other readers, and put them on your Kindle too - although you need to check your licensing.

[NoSpam]

+1 ... which seems to be becoming the modern way to say "me too" ;-)

Also very useful to have pdfs and docs on it during meetings when the laptop/ipad are being used for something else

[The Medway Handyman]

Assuming you have the 3G kindle - The £150 jobby. Mine was cheaper, it has a keyboard but isn't 3G. I have to plug it into the PC & drag downloaded books across.

You can search the book or the dictionary.

[Clive George]

The non-3G one can do anything the 3G one can if you point it at an appropriate wifi network - no need to plug into the PC if you don't need to plug the 3G one in.

[airsmoothed]

Yes, thanks, I've just tried that out today as it happens, trouble is, you have to remove the DRM from the ePuB file first before the conversion, so it's all a bit of a faff.Calibre does look like a useful program for future use.