My Introduction to Electronic Book Readers
It Started with the Amazon.com Kindle
I bought a Kindle., one with WIFI but not 3G,
with the soon-to-be-ironic model name: latest generation ($139).
I was surprised that it completely changed my reading habits.
Being able to change the font size quickly has allowed me to read without glasses,
and being able to control the line width seems to me to have sped up my reading.
What I like when Adding Content (unordered)
- lets me read thousands of free classics on gutenberg.org, even books in French
- lets me get first chapters for any book for free - I get the samples to remind me to consider buying
- delivery for books is usually under a minute, charged to my credit card; returnable if within 7 days
- 3gig of memory means I can carry up to thousands of books
- delivers newspapers and magazines at low prices, esp for Canada
- I can convert web pages to kindle format (google: kindle format)
so I can carry reference materials
- connect to desktop and drag content (many file types, such as PDF, MP3 and JPG) to my kindle
What I like when Reading with a Kindle (unordered)
- with wireless off, it will go for weeks without a charge; with it on, a couple of weeks
- at least as fast as competing readers, and sometimes twice as fast
- very nice display quality
- control font size and words per line and line-spacing - no reading glasses needed
- has a dictionary so I can look up all those big words I never bothered to look up
- lets me change the dictionary to a french-english one so I can do less guessing what those words mean (fr-en dictionary was $6, 14 french novels by Hugo cost 99 cents - no tax, no delivery charges)
- don't recall an acronym or a character? search and find all the uses (early ones provide more info)
- lets me read on up to five devices: iPad, iPod touch, or laptop (bigger screen, color);
syncs up to the farthest location reached on another device
- easy to add bookmarks, pretty easy to highlight text passages, a little harder to annotate those passages because of little keyboard; easy to review all of the above; all are shared across all devices
- built in browser allows following links in text;
browsing is awkward due to screen size, difficult zooming, no mouse, tiny keyboard.
- plays mp3s on headphones or through built-in speakers
- can read text aloud (although I don't use it)
Drawbacks (again, unordered)
- I catch myself avoiding books not available on the kindle, and some books are not.
- screen is too small for comic strips (okay for one frame cartoons, but haven't found any yet), diagrams, etc. but these look good on a laptop or desktop
- I can't bring myself to touch the screen, so I sometimes find it awkward to hold
- I have to be careful with the 5-way controller and the keyboard and accidentally hitting keys around it
- Some books could be much better done for Kindle (e.g., links missing, no contents, etc.)
- the "kindle off" picture of Emily Dickenson is spooky
Feature Wishlist
- Touchscreen (I'd pay $50 for that) - zoom/pan/rotate would be much easier
- Color (I'd pay $25 for that)
Then I Got the Color Nook (Barnes&Noble)
My first impression with the Nook Color (NC)
was that it was about the same size as the Kindle,
but heavier.
Instead of a tiny keyboard, data entry is on the touch screen.
Instead of a reflective gray-scale display,
the NC has a backlit LCD screen that is much prettier.
NC screen is shiney, so reading in sunlight can be difficult.
The basic model is similar to the Kindle.
Search the store for books and buy almost immediately, or get a sample for free.
When reading a book, I can look up words in a dictionary,
but I can't look up words that are in the dictionary.
I can pinch-zoom the dictionary popup window to control the font size;
but I need to go through a few menus to change the size of text I am reading.
It seems the the software for reading a book page is completely different than
the software for using the dictionary.
Magazines are very different on the two devices due to their screens, input methods,
and user interface design.
Colorful magazines look much prettier on the NC, but the user interface design
made me drop all subscriptions on the NC, keeping them on the Kindle.
With the NC, I could view a full page, ut not large enough to read it comfortably
(I refuse to put on reading glasses).
I can pinch-zoom the page, but not large enough to read it comfortably.
I can use the article view, which lets me read the article text and images in a narrow center column.
I can scroll down the article column, and side-swipe the next/previous articles.
I can change the font size of the article view using a menu,
but the range of font sizes is from miniscule to slightly large,
and changing the font size does not make images such as graphs or charts any larger.
Even though the page images are too small, they still add up to a large download,
and with no progress indicator, the blank screen can be disconcerting.
Issues with the Readers
User Interface