Have You Heard Of The Kindle
By villageanne
@villageanne (8553)
United States
February 13, 2009 12:25am CST
I have been hearing alot about the Kindle. I read a lot and would love to have one but at $359.00 I cannot afford one. I have never seen one in real life only on the net. It seems that it would be a great way to get books faster. I wonder how big the memory is on them. Do you have one? Have you ever seen one?
4 people like this
8 responses
@charles63 (146)
• United States
14 Feb 09
I have the Sony eBook Reader, which uses the same display technology as Amazon's Kindle. I find that it's very easy on on the eyes, and it's a great way to carry a lot of books with you. Even lengthy books consume only a few megabytes, and you can use SD Memory Cards with it, each with gigabytes of memory, to add to the already plentiful storage capacity. You save a little money on each book that you buy (which at least partially offsets the high cost of the gadget), books download in seconds or minutes, and it's a great way to read the public domain and creative commons books available from the Guttenberg Project which are offered in Kindle and Sony formats at sites such as ManyBooks.net. I also find that with the Sony Reader, you can copy lengthy web articles from the internet to .txt or .doc formats to read off-line with much less eye strain.
@villageanne (8553)
• United States
14 Feb 09
I am very curious as to how many books you can download on the Sony EBook without the added memory? Is there a large seleciton of books available for download? You have my total attention. LOL I have marked you as best response as well. Thanks so much.
@charles63 (146)
• United States
15 Feb 09
You can easily put 30-60 books on Sony's eBook Reader without adding any additional memory. The specs on the box says the Reader has 64 megabytes available memory, but I've got about a dozen books currently on mine, plus a lot of miscellaneous articles and short stories, and the software says that I still have 60.1 mb available out of 91.9 mb total (the operating system probably takes up much of the total memory). But a 1 gigabyte SD memory card is really inexpensive. You you can slide one in and out with no problem, and that lets you carry around hundreds of books on the device.
The Sony eBook store has most current popular books, plus a fair selection (tens of thousands) of older titles. You can browse what's available by downloading Sony's free eBook library software at http://ebookstore.sony.com/download/ . Amazon's Kindle probably has more titles available, but the chances of your finding a title you're looking for are probably about the same. I think that Amazon's additional title plans are more ambitious than Sony's. Amazon's Jeff Bezos says that his goal is to eventually offer just about every title ever published, but it remains to be seen how well he realizes that goal. In the meantime, you can subscribe to Sony's weekly newsletter of new releases, and they number in the dozens of books every week.
1 person likes this
@villageanne (8553)
• United States
15 Feb 09
Thank you so much for all the added information. I really appreciate it. I am off to check out the books now. :)
@peavey (16936)
• United States
14 Feb 09
I read about Kindle a couple of times on Amazon. Like you, I'd love to have one but the price is too steep. I'm not sure that it's that great or that it's just been marketed that well, though. Time will tell. Eventually, they'll be available second hand, then maybe I'll try one.
1 person likes this
@owlwings (43910)
• Cambridge, England
6 Sep 15
I find it hard to believe that the first Kindles were nearly $400! Now, of course, you can have one for less than $100 and very many people have them. I first got one when they were on special offer for, I believe, £69. Then I bought another (with a keyboard) second-hand for £20 and sold the first one to my brother.
I like the Kindle app and find it quite usable on my smartphone, my tablet and on my PC. In fact, I more often read my books on these than I do on the Kindle itself!
@ElusiveButterfly (45940)
• United States
14 Feb 09
I have only heard of them. I read a lot too, but when I purchase my books they are bought at the Goodwill stores or tag sales for about 75 cents each. My hubby is hoping that I will donate them once again and free up the bookshelf. But, I may just keep gathering them and perhaps resell them at a tag sale. There are people who sell them at the flea market for $1 for soft cover and $2 for hard cover. This could be a good way to make a buck or two.
But, that isn't what you wanted to hear about the Kindle! Just call me old fashioned. I like to hold a book in my hands.
@mrtimharry (1180)
•
13 Feb 09
Amazon have just announced Kindle 2 but problem is that they use wifi to download stuff, and as far as I can tell this means that they will only work in North America. Been looking into getting an Ereader but think I will go for Sony's
1 person likes this
@thecrazyjogger (3178)
• India
17 Feb 09
yeh i thnk i might buy it if they support it all over the globe
happy lotting and have a nice day
