Kindle

I know ut's been covered before but can't find the page.... What do wannies think is the best kindle and are they better than real books.

I have a kindle fire - given free by a daily newspaper when buying a year's subscription to the newspaper. It downloads the newspaper every morning - saves me having it delivered, and I can pick up a hard copy for free at any newsagents if I do need one. The Kindle also enables me to access the internet wirelessly. And that includes radio stations. I can't view pages which use shockwave flash and some graphics programs are not kindle-friendly. Through Amazon I can get an infinite number of books - some for nothing (out of copyright), some very cheap (25p) and recent publications at 10-25% less than the hard copy price. I can store loads of book on the kindle.
In terms of ease of reading, it always remembers my place, I have an online dictionary, I can highlight bits, I can exchange comments with others. It is self-lit so i can read it in the dark. Only drawback - if I drop it, it breaks - a book always survives. Not recommended for reading in the bath! I think they retail at around £79. You can also get all your textbooks online saving you a substantial amount.

Can be a bit limited if viewing diagrams and pictures. But aside from this, on the whole I think they are better than books - but take some time to adapt.

Cheers
stephen

Kindle Fire is better than most tablets for reading but it is a back-lit tablet so not ideal. Kindle e readers are as good as books in terms of reading comfort and avoiding eye strain. Like stephen says about the Fire, you can store loads of books, look up words you don't know in seconds and get loads of books and loads of classic for free. If you want something purely for reading books I would go for an e reader. If you want to watch videos, browse the internet, post on WAN then go for a Fire. ( For the record you can view Flash pages with the Fire but you have to do a bit of a hack :P).

The Kindle can be more convenient than "real" books but you don't have the romance of the book as an object. It depends what your priorities are. But here's the thing, you're allowed to have both! People don't believe me but I have a Kindle Fire, a Kindle e reader and I still read paper books sometimes. I haven't been arrested of assassinated or anything.

..but you don't buy ebooks from Amazon, you only rent them, if you infringe their terms in any way they can just delete your account, no (more) books.

^ This is exactly why I've never got a Kindle. I don't like that Amazon are able to remove the books I've bought with no warning at all.

Plus if I've bought a book then I want to be able to leave it to my grandchildren. Obviously my grandchildren would probably send all my teetering piles of grotty paperbacks straight to landfill because no one has read a proper book since 2040 and books now get wired directly to your brain, but that's besides the point.

Other e readers are available.

Here you go:

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/10/drm-be-damned-how-to-protect-yo...

Could you get together with ten mates and buy ten kindles, all linked to the same account, and each mate has one each. Then when one of them buys an ebook, the others all get to read it for free?

I am aware that this could be considered morally suspect, given that writers don't get royalties for their books. And when one mate had appalling taste in books then you'd have their rubbish filling up your Kindle. But is it possible?

Yes. I have five or six Kindle devices on my account.

Plus you wouldn't have to download all the books to all the devices if you didn't want to.

Cheers guys checking the Fire HD.
Appears that the 16gb is £100
While the 32gb is £145

Does the extra gb make that much diffrence.

I would hazard a guess at double.

Can you slot in extra memory cards with a kindle?
I bought a Hudl2, which you can use as a reader, and has extra memory capacity. (For storing movies etc) It also comes in a range of tops colours. The Sound quality is awesome, so you can store extra music on the card etc.....
Small memory is like all small things, pretty pointless.

^ i've got an little lumia 620. can't see the point in carrying around a phone the size of a tablet

Hudl2 isn't a phone ???

^ but you had a go at small things. More memory doesn't necessarily make something better. Every gym mp3 player I've owned has had less than 4gb because if I get bored of the 10 or so albums I have on there, I just switch them to something else.

If that flicks your switch so be it