I am about to start using it for the first time, due to not having enough luggage space to carry books on holiday, and am wondering what to expect. Any tips/pitfalls?
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Kindle - Pros & Cons?
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Kindle - Pros & Cons?
You can use the highlight feature to make notes that you can cut and paste elsewhere, if you're studying.
You can use a Blackberry or Fire charger if you don't have the Kindle one. The battery should last the length of your holiday, though.
Remember to download/sync any books you buy while you have internet access; don't buy them and expect to be able to read at the beach without downloading them. It only takes a few moments.
You can read PDFs and Word docs and see JPGs on the Kindle although it's not ideal for any of those. You can convert documents for the Kindle, though, which makes them as easy to handle as Kindle books.
That's about it from me, I love my Kindle and not having to lug books around is great.
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- Mar 2008
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Kindle - Pros & Cons?
My consumption of books in French and Spanish has increased, as the ability to highlight word or phrase and get (reasonable/not perfect) dictionary definitions is far preferable to either underlining in pencil and trying to remember to go back to it later, or lugging a dictionary around alongside your novel.
I downloaded my 1st graphic novel for it yesterday (a Star Trek/Planet of the Apes crossover called The Primate Directive) so I'll be interested to see how that works.
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Kindle - Pros & Cons?
I like my Kindle, although my head's been turned by Audible of late.
Bear in mind that, if you already have a biggish smartphone or tablet, you can also use that to read Amazon books.
PDFs have the problem that you can't resize the text, although there are (imperfect) conversion methods. Of course, if you create the PDFs yourself, you can get around this.
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Kindle - Pros & Cons?
I love my kindle. It's easier to read than paper, and the adjustable font size is great when I don't want to wear my glasses anymore. The battery lasts a few centuries, and I don't cram my holiday luggage with books anymore.
The only downside I've ever encountered is people being arsey about the fact that it's not a real book, like you're eating everything at a Michelin star restaurant through a straw or something.
It works great as a comics reader - the panels are programmed in, so you switch from panel to panel as opposed to from page to page.
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Kindle - Pros & Cons?
I do very definitely prefer paper books, but living 7,000 miles away from my own bookshelves in a city where there are no reasonably-priced English language bookshops the Kindle is a lifesaver (and the reading experience is fine; it's nowhere near as tiresome as people telling you it's not a proper book, as URD says).
One thing I do find is that it takes me a lot longer to read anything over about 450 pages than it does in paper. I'm not sure why that is, I just don't find myself getting through them as quickly. I'm still on A Brief History Of Seven Killings at the moment and I'm not even 20% into it.
But yeah, it's a brilliant device.
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Kindle - Pros & Cons?
I always feel like I get a great sense of momentum reading on the Kindle. That's because I make Mr. Magoo look eagle-eyed and have text as tall as one of the Himalayas, but the ability to 'turn' the page every 30 seconds feels great on a personal level. Even if it's a false high.
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Kindle - Pros & Cons?
Here's what I want.
A lightweight writable tablet computer that does everything one of those fancy tablet computers - like a Surface Pro - can do, but with a screen sort of like the Kindle in that it doesn't glow on it's own unless I want it to.
Does that exist yet?
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Kindle - Pros & Cons?
Reed John wrote: Here's what I want.
A lightweight writable tablet computer that does everything one of those fancy tablet computers - like a Surface Pro - can do, but with a screen sort of like the Kindle in that it doesn't glow on it's own unless I want it to.
Does that exist yet?
I always liked the idea of the YotaPhone, which has an LED screen on the front and an e-Ink screen on the back.
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Kindle - Pros & Cons?
The main pitfall other than DRM and it being an Amazon product, is the country restrictions. Amazon enforces regional publishing rights quite strictly and weirdly, so if you're planning on buying a lot of foreign books (or buying a Kindle not in your country of residence) research that aspect in detail.
I'd also disagree that it's a good comic reader. Any proper tablet with a decent screen would be a better alternative.
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Kindle - Pros & Cons?
GY's comment above is a good one, but it's worth noting things don't seem consistent in that regard. My girlfriend had to set up an Amazon US account due to having an Argentine credit card (and US being the same as international for them) when I bought her a Kindle a few years ago. I read when I got mine that I'd be restricted to buying books for it from Amazon US too, due to the site picking up that I was placing the order from a computer in Argentina - but I've had mine for about five years now and am still using my UK account just fine (which is good, as changing it to the US would have been a right pain in the arse).
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Kindle - Pros & Cons?
I can't remember the details, but it's some combination of the country the account to which the email you register the Kindle to is in, the country you are physically located in, and the store you are trying to buy books from. I'm not sure credit cards come into it other than as a requirement of the storefront.
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Kindle - Pros & Cons?
Sorry, there were two different things there. My girlfriend's got an Amazon US account because that's their 'rest of the world' site as well and therefore when she put her card billing address into the UK site it told her she had to register on amazon.com instead.
Separately, when I got my Kindle I was told (and even gleaned fom Amazon's own FAQs, if I remember rightly) that ordering whilst located abroad over an extended period would be a pain in the arse and/or prompt me to re-register with the US site at some point, but it's not worked out that way at all.
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