Learn me e-book readers

So my wife wants an e-book reader for Christmas.

Which is just fine with me. But I know next to nothing about them.

All my electronic books are on my laptop, but she travels a ton and wants the big battery life and outdoor (she's a forester) readability of e-Ink.

So you've got your Kindle and your Nook, I'm assuming both have some sort of proprietary format if you buy things from Amazon or B&N. Is that difficult to impossible to work around, or is conversion an option with a bit of know-how? How about support for other formats?

I'm sure there are other reader choices out there too, but I'm unfamiliar with them.

I have a nook- and while B&N does sell a version of e-books that is unique to the Nook, it can also work with a digital reader that Adobe has. Which is a common form for both free books on line and what library's use for their e-book check outs.

I've done all three- B&N books, free books, and library. The best formatting, of course, are the B&N books, but the free books and library books are just fine to read from.

fox got a sony reader recently, IIRC- just before my wife got me my nook. Sometime this past summer.

Eric

Does your wife have a preference as to where she buys her ebooks? As in, if she wants to get a ton of them off Amazon, it doesn't make a lot of sense to buy a Barnes & Noble reader...

I think that most ebook readers are able to read the most common non-DRM ebook formats, too.

The Kindle can be made wide open so you can use your own free book sources.

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I really like the hardware of my Sony. My wife and mother-in-law also have them, and the reader has turned my wife from an occasional reader to a voracious one. Most gratifying.

But the software for the Sony is absolutely atrocious. Terrible. Unless you want to do tech support on it on a regular basis, I'd recommend going elsewhere. I wasn't impressed with the original Kindle, but the newest ones look pretty good. I'm not jazzed about the DRM on them though, especially the proven ability to make books disappear if Amazon decides to do so.

Is an iPad out of your price range? Kinda heavy and pricey, but they're pretty darn slick.

paanta wrote: Is an iPad out of your price range? Kinda heavy and pricey, but they're pretty darn slick.

Not too pricy, but doesn't really seem like the appropriate tool for the job, despite Apple marketing it as such. The screen and battery life are deal breakers in this context.

Can it be used as one? Sure. But as mentioned above, she's a forester, whatever I get her will spend a lot of time being used outdoors, often in pretty harsh light, and away from any reliable source of charging.

I have a Nook and love it. One of the main reasons I got it was the number of file types that it can read, makes finding books MUCH easier. I have the version that does not have the 3g connection because it would be pointless in my area and Wifi is so available.

There is also the new Nook Color that should be shipping later this month. I want one of these for textbooks at school and magazines and the like even better if it would read like cbr files for comics and stuff.

BoxheadTim wrote: Does your wife have a preference as to where she buys her ebooks? As in, if she wants to get a ton of them off Amazon, it doesn't make a lot of sense to buy a Barnes & Noble reader... I *think* that most ebook readers are able to read the most common non-DRM ebook formats, too.

I already asked her and didn't get any preferences on sources. That would sure make it easier...

rebelgtp wrote: I have a Nook and love it. One of the main reasons I got it was the number of file types that it can read, makes finding books MUCH easier. I have the version that does not have the 3g connection because it would be pointless in my area and Wifi is so available.

For her 3g is pointless because most of the places it will be used have no cell reception. And wifi is available @home.

There is also the new Nook Color that should be shipping later this month. I want one of these for textbooks at school and magazines and the like even better if it would read like cbr files for comics and stuff.

By the time I'm abandoning eInk I'd likely go with an iPad or other equivalent. It seems it loses the two things that make e-Readers e-Readers and becomes a low power pad/tablet.

Keith wrote: But the software for the Sony is absolutely atrocious. Terrible. Unless you want to do tech support on it on a regular basis,

She's pretty tech savvy. She's the unofficial computer fixer-upper at her office (when she's in her office and not out in the woods). So depending on just how bad you mean it is, this may not be a huge deal.

But unless there's a offsetting factor that's notable better on the Sony, then it's probably not worth it.

Another vote for the Nook. I have one, so does Katie. Darn near replicates the experience of reading a book, downloads are nearly instantaneous, book prices are generally much lower than print editions, selection is large though not infinite (some authors/publishers don't do e-books), and battery life is stellar (days, not hours). I have the 3g edition, which is nice because I can always get a book immediately no matter where I am. The drawback, of course, is that I can always get a book immediately no matter where I am. Crackhead, meet your new fulltime personal crack dealer.

Margie

Sony software: you can simply treat the Sony like a removable memory card. Plug it in, drag and drop files onto the Sony, unplug and you're done. It has support for a large number of file types, so a big bonus there. But if you want to use the Sony Reader store (ie, their iTunes substitute), things get more awkward. Most of the time it works as expected, although it would be nice to be able to edit author names and titles so you're not dealing with both William Gibson and Gibson, William. But once in a while it will just hang up on a title and refuse to do anything. On my mother-in-law's Reader, it asks if you want to install the software every time you plug the thing in, even though the software is connected - Sony says this is normal.

The only problem I have with the Nook is that LCD screen at the bottom. To me, it seems it would eat up space for a fairly small benefit. But I haven't had much exposure to it.

The touch-screen Sony is really nice, that's what I have. It has a very clean interface due to the lack of buttons and you can write/draw on the screen if desired. Makes it into more of a two-way device instead of just a reader.

As Margie said, the big appeal of these things is the battery life. I read constantly and I only have to recharge my reader every couple of weeks. The wireless connections chew up a bit and big shiny color screens really suck up power, so keep that in mind.

So, with these ebook things... Can I read my own text or PDFs? For example, I have my bike shop manuals in PDF format. I scanned all the pages and put the images into one big PDF. Can I load that on to a Nook thing and then read them anywhere? Or can I go get a free ebook as a text or PDF and load that and read it? Or do these things only use files that they got from their "home"?

In reply to Dr. Hess:

It's not a normal .pdf file, but I think it's close enough that the conversion is simple.

for those kinds of formats, you can also use PDA's and smart phones, since reader apps are free.

The problem with the pdf's and reading them are the graphics- the size is very dependant on the screen, and AFAIK, you can't zoom a screen. It may be possible to use the web reader to see those files. I would suggest finding a friend to see if it works or not.

Since I got mine in July, I've read WAY more books than I normally would. I guess I'm a sucker. the Nook works quite well.

Oh, and there's supposed to be an OS upgrade any time now.

Hess, you can load those pdfs into your sony easily enough, not so sure about the Kindle and the Nook. I've done it with my Sony.

A Sony reader handles a zillion types of formats, and can load and display just about anything out there. The Kindle is the opposite, and only displays a few things. Nook is in the middle, more towards the Sony level of abilities.

For me, the Kindle took itself out of the running by being so proprietary and incompatable with the public libraries. I've heard there are hacks and work arounds and such, but I wasn't interested in that.

Wanted to love the Nook, tried to love the Nook, bought the Sony. The split screen of the Nook I found annoying and slow. The web capabilities were so slow as to be useless. But the colors are pretty.

The Sony with the touch screen is darn nice. I use that capability a whole lot more than I expected to. Notes scribled in the margins, checking on word definitions, etc.

The Sony software defines the word horrible. I think it qualifies as the worse I've ever experienced in my life. It really is that bad. The good news is the free Calibre software works perfectly with the Sony.

All said and done, my Sony is now sitting quite a bit. Might not even have a charge on it at the moment. It's a royal pain to go flipping back and forth between numerous pages. Using large font for older eyes means more rapid page changes, which uses up the battery a whole lot faster. It's still neat, don't get me wrong. But my paper books feel "right" and don't require batteries. I'm also still balking at buying electronic books. especially when I can find paperbacks by the zillions for under 10 cents each, and usually free.

Is it not true that with one of the E-Books, you don't really buy the book. You are allowed to read the book for a fee?

Didn't one of the manufacturers/suppliers recently pull all the copies of a certain book out of the E-books customers had bought? I know that caused some consternation

Is this true for all of them, or some? .

Alfa, my shop manual PDF's are all really big graphics, not even OCR'ed. That wouldn't work well without scaling.

FT, that's kinda how I feel about the whole ebook thing. I kinda like the old paper kind, and when I need to "find" something in a book, it is prety fast to just flip through the paper pages. I guess I'll stick with my laptops for my shop manual PDFs, and paper books for everything else.

I have a book idea: I shouldn't put it out here in the wild, but... WTF, I'm not going to get around to writing it. In my book, a society is built "green." "Green" is worshiped as a religion or semi-religion. Everything manufacturered has to have a built-in decay/life span after which it has to return to the earth. The wonderful government would provide licenses for various time-of-life. Like a car would have to self destruct/return to the earth in 200 years. A fast food wrapper 1 year. Only very few things would be allowed to last 1000 years, like maybe a building or a road, but then at that 1K years, it has to be all done. Of course, licenses for longer times cost the manufacturer more money from the wonderful government. (Hey, alfa, you should propose this to your bosses). Anyway, energy would be free. Satellites would capture solar power and beam it down to the Earth, where devices would receive the power and operate. There would only be a couple of massive super computers. All applications would be run as Cloud Computing on semi-dumb terminals. A typical terminal would be about 1 cubic inch, fit in your pocket and project a hologram of a screen and a keyboard, then sense your finger movements into the hologram for typing/data entry. Conventional books would be unneeded. Every book or entertainment video/recording would be available through the cloud computer to your terminal. Your terminal might have a 100 year life span.

Then, one day, SOMETHING happens. Massive political instability, or greed, or a comet/meteor shower takes out the power satelites, or through lazyness, the people of the Earth don't bother maintaining their satelites or lose the drive to educate engineers to build new ones. (Why study mathmatics when you can be surfing for p0rn instead?) The satelites start to fall out of the sky as the orbits naturally decay or get popped by debri. In a brief period of time, there's no more power, anywhere. No more power means no new products can be built, nothing will work anymore. The whole planet's infrastructure fails. There are no paper books to fall back on. All knowledge is lost. In 1000 years, Earthkind falls back to the Stone Age.

All the technology described above exists today. Think about it.

Anyway, I guess I'll stick with paper for a while longer.

That was an hour episode of the remade twilight zone back in the 80s.

I spent the 80's at sea. Damn, someone stole my idea.

triumph5 wrote: Is it not true that with one of the E-Books, you don't really buy the book. You are allowed to read the book for a fee?

That depends on the book - or more accurately, the publisher's restrictions. It's just like music. Some books are yours forever to do with as you wish, some publishers would love to charge extra if someone is reading over your shoulder. But your description does meet that of the Kindle store best.

triumph5 wrote: Didn't one of the manufacturers/suppliers recently pull all the copies of a certain book out of the E-books customers had bought? I know that caused some consternation Is this true for all of them, or some? .

That was Amazon/Kindle and a couple of George Orwell books - notably, 1984. Oh, the delicious irony. Amazon recalled the book by remotely deleting it from customer Kindles over the wireless connection and giving a refund. There's also an unpublished limit to the number of times you can download a purchased book on to your Kindle for some reason.

Calibre does work to manage files on the Sony, but it runs into a problem when borrowing books from some libraries. Our local library has tried a couple of systems, and the current one works very well but you need to use the Sony software. Thus the potential problems. I do have a problem with artificial restrictions on availability of a digital book ("sorry, that book has been checked out"), but I'd prefer that over no digital access at all.

The wife has a Sony and loves it. All of her downloads are run through her laptop. AFAIK she hasn't had any software problems and the hardware seems to be indestructible. At least she hasn't managed to destroy it yet. She got the Sony last Christmas from me. I ended up choosing the Sony because of the limitations the Kindle had built in. Proprietary stuff just rubs me the wrong way. Probably why I don't buy Apple stuff either.

Edit: Me, I would rather drag around a book bag full of paper books. E-readers just don't have any soul.

Paper doesn't have soul either. The soul comes from the words. If you're still noticing the reader when reading, get a better book

Janel - my wife - travels for a living. Dragging around dead trees really isn't an option for her, but a reader full of bits is small and light. Perfect for her.

I have no personal experience, btu things ive read (cant find the link at this moment) suggest 2 things:

1. The E-reader will be a dead technology in the next 5 years. While E-ink screens are VASTLY superior to LCD/LED/other in terms of long term readability, the multifunctionality of zomgphones will erode the customer base (why pay for/learn/maintain/carry around more than one device if one can do it all).
2. The Next Gen Kindle is supposedly "where its at" in terms of E-readers. If you leave the Wi-fi off, you get A MONTH of battery life! Other comments/data from the link has 50% better black/white resolution, faster page loads, and better connectivity than other readers.

This is just research Ive gleaned from teh intrawebz y0! because SWMBO wants one and xmas is coming. I personally have never even held one of these in my hands let alone had a chance to compare different models.

I don't agree that they'll be dead in 5 years. The zomgphones have been around for the entire evolution of the reader - the iPhone predates the Kindle by nearly a year, for example. There's quite a difference between reading on a 7" e-ink screen and reading on a 3.5" LCD. Tablets might have an effect, although battery life is always going to be a concern in an all-in-one device with an LCD screen.

There's always going to be a next generation. That's simply how technology (and cars) works. Battery life on these devices should really be measured in terms of page turns, as that's what actually uses power. Higher contrast is always good, and the screens will continue to evolve. I don't think connectivity is a critical thing for the readers, typically it's used to load in new material and that's all. The screen refresh rate is too slow for the readers to be useful as a web access device and monochrome isn't great for most sites other than Wikipedia.

If you're thinking of getting one for SWMBO, check it out in person. WalMart, Borders, B&N, Best Buy - there's no shortage of places to lay your hands upon one. It's a lot easier to try one out than it was three years ago!