E-Reader advice

Thanks for all the info. My daughter is asking for an eReader for her b-day or Xmas, and I've been searching.

 

I pre-ordered the Kindle Fire for my daughter. I think she will really enjoy using it and definitely get my money's worth from it. I may order one of the lower models of the Kindle for myself, I am not sure yet.

 

I'm worried about buying what is in essence, a tablet computer. I want to encourage reading, but having the web, and apps at your fingertips can distract you away from that. Especially with a teenager. She already has a cell phone and notebook computer for that stuff.

 

The thing I like about the Kindle framework, is it translates from PC->Smartphone->Kindle Device.

Which means that I can continue reading the book i was reading at home last night, on my phone when waiting in line or on a bigger screen when i'm not particularly feeling like looking at a small one.

Whispersync i guess is what Amazon calls it & it works!

 

The Nook has the same technology as Amazon as far as being able to go from one device to another.

 

I've decided to go with the Kindle touch with wi-fi. I appreciate all the input. It helped to inform my decision.

 

Another good reason to get a Kindle and have Prime Membership at Amazon. I am glad I got my daughter the Kindle Fire, now I want one too. I already have Prime Membership.

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?ID=1625426&p=irol-newsArticle&c=176060&highlight=

Introducing The Kindle Owners' Lending Library
With an Amazon Prime membership, Kindle owners can now choose from thousands of books to borrow for free - including over 100 current and former New York Times Bestsellers - as frequently as a book a month, with no due dates
Books can be borrowed and read on all Kindle E Ink devices and Kindle Fire

SEATTLE, Nov 02, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) --
Today, Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) announced the launch of the Kindle Owners' Lending Library. With an Amazon Prime membership, Kindle owners can now choose from thousands of books to borrow for free - including over 100 current and former New York Times Bestsellers - as frequently as a book a month, with no due dates. No other e-reader or ebookstore offers such a service. With an annual Prime membership, the Kindle Owners' Lending Library is included at no additional cost. Millions of Prime members enjoy free two-day shipping, unlimited streaming of nearly 13,000 movies and TV shows, and now thousands of books to borrow for free with a Kindle.
"Owning a Kindle just got even better. Today, we're introducing a new Prime benefit built for Kindle: The Kindle Owners' Lending Library," said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com Founder and CEO. "Prime Members now have exclusive access to a huge library of books to read on any Kindle device at no additional cost and with no due dates."
The Kindle Owners' Lending Library offers access to a wide array of categories and genres in fiction and non-fiction, and includes popular titles such as Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, The Big Short and Liars' Poker by Michael Lewis, TheHunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins, and Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen --plus award-winning books such as The Finkler Question and Guns, Germs, and Steel, memoirs such as Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential, and motivational books like The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Just as with any other Kindle book, your notes, highlights and bookmarks in borrowed books will be saved, so you'll have them later if you purchase or re-borrow the book. Books are borrowed from a Kindle device, and customers can have one book out at a time. When customers want to borrow a new book, any borrowed book can easily be returned right from their device.
Titles in the Kindle Owners' Lending Library come from a range of publishers under a variety of terms. For the vast majority of titles, Amazon has reached agreement with publishers to include titles for a fixed fee. In some cases, Amazon is purchasing a title each time it is borrowed by a reader under standard wholesale terms as a no-risk trial to demonstrate to publishers the incremental growth and revenue opportunity that this new service presents.
"The Kindle Owners' Lending Library is a great new benefit for Kindle owners and an entirely new growth opportunity for authors and publishers," said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President, Kindle Content. "With the growth in Prime membership and the recent addition of Prime Instant Video, we've been able to broaden our relationships with movie and TV studios such as CBS, Fox, and NBCUniversal and significantly increase their revenue. We're excited to expand that investment to books - with this launch, we expect three immediate results: Kindle owners will read even more, publisher revenues will grow, and authors will see larger royalty checks."
"We're excited to offer titles from our ebook 'Chapters' series, which covers some of the world's most popular destinations, to members of Kindle Owners' Lending Library," says John Boris, EVP Lonely Planet. "Our ebooks have done incredibly well on Kindle and this is a great way to showcase our travel expertise to an even broader audience."
"We're excited about any program that helps readers discover our authors and their books," said David Nussbaum, Chief Executive and Chairman of F+W Media Inc. "We think this will lead to more people reading F+W's books, and more profit for our authors."
To learn more about the Kindle Owners' Lending Library, visit www.amazon.com/kindleownerslendinglibrary. To learn about all of the additional benefits included with Amazon Prime, or to start an Amazon Prime free trial visit www.amazon.com/prime.

 

The Nook has been doing what amazon is doing as far as lending and library books from day one. Sorry folks, but Amazon is behind the curve here. While no e-reader with a color screen is going to match a tablet (iPad mainly), from what I've seen, the Kindle Fire just isn't up to speed in comparison to the Nook offering.

I'm not downing anyone's decision by any means. Every person has their own tastes etc, but the fact that it has virtually the same hardware as the pre-existing NookColor and B&N offers 1.5 million more books than Amazon makes it a no brainer for me. I didn't buy an e-reader for web browsing and cloud storage although those are perks. If you wanted something more powerful than a normal e-reader, then the Nook Tablet is the way to go for only $50 more. Expandable memory and a better android market are winners. I like being able to keep more content with me instead of relying on a cloud service. Nook has had cloud service from day 1 as well..so again, Amazon is behind the ball here..they're just better at the hype machine. Wayyy more battery life on the Nook Tablet coming out also.

The biggest sell for me.. good luck trying to root an Amazon device. I can dual boot a rooted NookColor and once I find a android 4.0 release.. I'll have paid mere pennies for a full fledged tablet.

 

I should have posted this months ago as it shows one are were eInk is better than LCD

 

What do you expect from Amazon's website

 

I have a 3G Kindle (with keyboard) and my wife and daughter each have the WiFi Kindle k/b. We're all happy with them, and it's increased everyone's consumption of text.

Calibre is a great conversion system between formats, and Amazon (in the UK at least) seem to be getting their act in gear over their pricing on digital delivery at lower prices than physical media.