Kindles, Irex iLiads, and other e-readers

Discussion about Kindles et al., was getting rather lengthy on my thread, so in a minute I will be posting all the discussions up to now so those who want to talk about this topic can do so here and I can keep my thread devoted to books.

Good call urania! I'll repost what I posted on my own thread (complete with a picture of my Mish-Mash, whose need to retain her own shelf space is a compelling reason for Kindle-ing).

I was just informed that I've been given one for my birthday - its not yet arrived - and I don't know if I want it. Yes, it would certainly help with finding a place for all these books since I've officially run out of shelf space with my most recent purchases - only one empty shelf remains in the house, but its little Mischa-cat's favorite place to attempt to hide from her brother.... Can I steal from a kitten? - and I wouldn't have to carry 5 books with me when I can't decide what I actually want to read at a particular moment, but I'm just not sure about it.

urania1: I got to play with a friend's old Kindle a few weeks back. It is nothing like reading on a computer screen. The Ready Ink technology produces no glare, the screen is not backlit; consequently, there is no stress on the eyes at all. And the new Kindles will hold up to 1500 books. You can get books off of Project Gutenberg and put them on the Kindle. My friend mostly has PG books on her Kindle

fannyprice: Funny that you're getting a Kindle, urania. I was just informed that I've been given one for my birthday - its not yet arrived - and I don't know if I want it. Yes, it would certainly help with finding a place for all these books since I've officially run out of shelf space with my most recent purchases - only one empty shelf remains in the house, but its little Mischa-cat's favorite place to attempt to hide from her brother.... Can I steal from a kitten? - and I wouldn't have to carry 5 books with me when I can't decide what I actually want to read at a particular moment, but I'm just not sure about it.

urania1: Miss Price, my friend Pam was initially dubious as well. However, now she keeps it with her at all times. I think I will use it more to house Project Gutenberg classics. The majority of books on my wishlist are not available on Kindle yet - I suppose because they're too esoteric and not widely in demand. The Kindle is wonderful because it is flat, it reads like a book, is searchable, and does not stress the eyes - at least that was my experience in playing with Pam's Kindle. Additionally, one can annotate the text as one goes along. Pretty cool. And space for 1500 hundred books . . .

fannyprice: "The majority of books on my wishlist are not available on Kindle yet." That's one of my issues, I guess. Its enough that some of the books I want are even translated into English & still in print. I have used my boyfriend's Kindle - the older version - to read some trashy young adult novels (the horror...right?) & I find it very good for that kind of stuff & also for the silly "I've GOT to know what happens next...NOW!" feeling that those books can provoke if read too obsessively. At this point, the bf is so enchanted with the new Kindle that he may keep it for himself, give me the old one, and still buy me a different gift, so I may end up with a Kindle even if I don't want one. Strange, eh?

urania1: I expect that at least initially, I will use the Kindle to store Project Gutenberg versions of the classics, so I can clear out the space taken up by all my ugly paperbacks, which I do not want to throw out but to which I am not sentimentally attached to the physical text. For example, I've run through five copies of Pride and Prejudice at this point. My last copy of Villette finally disintegrated so badly (lost pages etc.) that I threw it out. My current copy of Song of the Lark is held together by a rubber band and paper clips. So . . . getting an eye-friendly e-text will enable me to free up a lot of space on my bookshelves for the books not available on Kindle or books whose physicality pleases me.

Talbin: This is terrible - You're slowly convincing me that I really, really want a Kindle. I've always liked gadgets, but this is one that I've told myself I really don't want or need. But now . . . the idea that I could get rid of some of the uglier books in my library and have them in one slim little device . . . . But I'm not working now, so I think I need to take a step back and wait until the household economic outlook improves.

tomcatMurr: Sacrilege! Damn heathens all of you!!!!

TadAD: One attraction of the Kindle is vacations. Trying to pack two weeks worth of reading in these days of airline charging for baggage—and extra for heavy bags—can get quite expensive unless they are all slim paperbacks.

Even thought it won't be out for another year, I'm trying to wait and see what the forthcoming Plastic Logics eReader is like before spending on a Kindle. The former is rumored to have all the features of the Kindle, and to have excellent support for the PDF format, a glaring weakness in the Kindle (somewhat mind-boggling that it's still not there on Kindle 2 after all the complaints on Kindle 1). It also has the nice touchscreen interface.

Talbin: Tad - I thought I read on Amazon's site that the Kindle 2 had PDF support? It's listed as a supported format, but is there more to it than that?

Talbin, that format is in their list of "supported through conversion." Basically, you have to take it, run it through an external program on your PC, then load it onto the Kindle. It works, though I don't think it's a great solution. The following formats are all in that category: PDF, HTML, DOC, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP. Further, unless the converter has been upgraded, it didn't do a great job of reflow on PDF documents, so format changes were handled awkwardly.

It seems rather odd to me. PDF is, arguably, the most common non-DRM format. Why not support it?

>4 TadAD: Tad, my friend has a lot of Project Gutenberg books on her Kindle downloaded from both their plan text and pdf formats. From what I saw, they all seemed to work well. I'll be finding out soon.

>5 urania1:: Hmmm. That will be interesting to hear.

Someone at work has one (Kindle 1) and said he had to use either the email-based converter that Amazon supports (10 cents a conversion), or use MobiPocket Creator or Stanza to convert his files for loading onto it. When I saw that Kindle 2 listed PDF as "through conversion," I assumed it was the same. Here's the screenshot from their site.



ETA: TXT is listed as native, so that format from Gutenberg should be fine. However, then you lose good image support.

Tad,

Pictures or graphics definitely do not work well - no question about that. Kindle 2 does not solve that problem either.

Hmmm, I just played around a little bit with Kindle 1 - I've read a few things on it, but never tried the highlight, comment, etc. functions. I really like them! If it can export comments and notes, that would be amazing! So much easier to keep track of my thoughts on books. I think I might want this! Off to do more research!

I don't have anything to say on the subject, but I wanted to thank you for pulling the conversation out more into the public.

like fannyprice, I've been informed I have a kindle on the way,also as a birthday present. So, I just spend a little time looking at the amazons page. So many fun little gadgets: highlighting, commenting, free access to wikipedia, and this:

Built-in Dictionary with Instant Lookup
Never get caught without a dictionary. Kindle includes The New Oxford American Dictionary with over 250,000 entries and definitions, so you can seamlessly look up the definitions of words without interrupting your reading. Come across a word you don't know? Simply move the cursor to it and the definition will automatically display at the bottom of the screen. Never fear a sesquipedalian word again--simply look it up and keep reading.

>10 dchaikin:: That's a nice thing to have. I used a similar feature in Microsoft Reader on a PDA and am now missing it in Stanza.

Its hee-eere! I am so excited - my Kindle arrived today. I am already downloading free samples like mad.

No fair. I've been tracking mine. It shipped the 22nd, but it is still not here. It is in transit from Atlanta, which means it will get to Knoxville maybe tonight but won't be processed until tomorrow, delivered to Maryville until Friday and delivered to my house until Saturday.

#4 "the most common non-DRM format. Why not support it?"

Possibly because it is non-DRM, something that amazon isn't particularly keen on! (end cycnic)

Anyone used the Irex?,
Or the Sony?

I'm certainly increasingly liking the idea of an e-reader, with lots of books becoming available, but I think I'm going to let the market stabalise a bit before diving in.

The Technology section of today's New York Times has an article describing two of the e-readers, the Amazon Kindle 2 and the Sony PRS-700, and the author's experience with using Stanza and Shortcovers on her iPhone:

Basics: A Walk Through a Crop of Readers

My kindle arrived yesterday and I will be setting it up tomorrow. I bought it for business travel and trash: those books I will read fast and furious and let go. The books that require thoughtful reading and might inspire note-taking, those I will continue to buy hard copy. In the meantime, I will save space at home and in my luggage and may, just may, pay myself back in incremental cost savings on the light reading. Not to mention the peace of mind that I will have knowing I need never, ever find myself bookless while on the road.

>16 NeverStopTrying:, "The books that require thoughtful reading and might inspire note-taking, those I will continue to buy hard copy."

Its funny you say that, bk04011, because I actually think that the clippings and note functions on Kindle will make me more inclined to read those type of books on the Kindle. I hate reading with a notebook, highlighter, and post-it notes in hand. Makes me feel like I'm back in school!

Mine just arrived tonight. I'm exploring. I'm yet sure how I will use it, maybe just like I use regular books ;)

One cool feature - for any ebook you can a download a free sample of the first handful of pages. I tried three books, and it sent a different amount with each one, the longer the book the more sent. For one book I got about 10 pages, for another I got about 40. (It's hard to know how many actual pages, as there are no page numbers. Instead they have locations. I checked a couple books which came out to 11 or 12 locations per page in a Trade Paperback.)

My Kindle arrived on Thursday. I haven't been the same woman since. I have purchased four books and downloaded 26 works from Project Gutenberg. I was able to replace several novels that were falling to pieces via PG. I also added a ton of German philosophy in areas where my knowledge is weak. Currently I am reading Elie Wiesel's latest novel A Mad Desire to Dance. I have been annotating like crazy. This novel picks up on many of his earlier themes and symbols as well as a trenchant critique of right-wing Zionist politics. I will post a review later noting strengths and weaknesses. In the meantime, I must away. A woman and her Kindle are not soon parted.

#17 - fannyprice

LOL. I never got over the habit of having highlighter and/or pencil in hand when reading anything of note. I cannot focus if I am not "armed". I am trying to transfer some of that to taking notes in a reading journal but I don't expect complete success. I can certainly see that the Kindle could be hugely useful for research, given the way you can access your highlights, dogears and comments without having to flibble through the pages.

Something I am interested in is that you can sign up to be notified if a book you have already bought from Amazon in hardcopy becomes available electronically. I wonder what the surcharge would be. I cannot imagine Amazon making it a freeby, although that would be lovely.

Question for those of you reading Project Gutenberg books on your Kindles: How are you cataloging these in LT and what are you using for the cover? I want to keep a record of them, but I'm not sure if I should manually enter them or what.

#21 - Here was my try with The Brothers Karamazov

http://www.librarything.com/work/details/42380877

I added a 2005 copy in the Library of Congress catalogue by the same translator. This gave the correct subjects. I then edited all the publication information to match that listed under Project Gutenberg.

I left the cover blank, although I won't do this for ebooks I purchase. Project Gutenberg doesn't supply covers, so it seemed to make sense for to maintain that in my library. For other ebooks I will copy the cover image from amazon.

Publication Info

for the publication info, I started with this format:

Location : Publisher (Series name ; NR), (DATE original) DATE (EDITION). PAGES p. ; HEIGHT cm (abbr. binding method)

Also I use square brackets for info not supplied by publication info in the copy I'm using

So, I ended up with this:

Project Gutenberg (Ebook #28054) : {1880} 2009 (from The Lowell Press, New York), 877p (Ebook)

Notes:
-I don't know how to correctly list "Lowell Press, New York". I put it in the edition information because it seemed like the best place
-page numbers were embedded in the text. With amazon ebooks you only get a location, and perhaps that should replace page numbers
-replace '{' & '}' with square brackets. The original publication date of 1880 came from wikipedia
-I erased the ISBN number
-I added a link to the ebook in the comments.

What is the best method to transfer a Project Gutenberg book onto your kindle? For mine, I downloaded a copy as HTML, copied the entire text, and pasted it onto a Word document (2.8 mb), then I e-mailed the Word document to my kindle e-mail.

>22 dchaikin:, Thanks for the tip! I hate the "no cover" option, so I think I may jury rig a fake cover, if I can figure out how to design one.

>23 dchaikin:, Oh my heavens, that is far too much work! And you are paying the 10-cent email fee each time. I assume you have Kindle 2, since I think I remember saying you only recently received it. I just download the PG books from the site -picking the "plain text" version, rather than the html version (it is still readable & works fine). Then, connect the Kindle to your computer (I've only done this on a PC, but I assume it works on a Mac) with the USB cable that doubles as the power cord (the plug disconnects from the cable & works as a USB cable). The Kindle opens itself up like a drive and you should see three folders - the one called "documents" is where all books are stored. Just transfer the text files from PG over to the documents folder and presto! When you disconnect your Kindle from the computer, they should be there. Its much easier and slightly cheaper than how you've been doing it.

I have noticed that if you go to Amazon.com and search in Kindle Books for a PG author then when the search results appear if you 'sort by' price low to high the free PG books appear; then all you need to do is download directly. I believe that more and more of the PG books will become available at no cost in this way as the months progress.

I do not have a Kindle. I am noticing that emotionally I am longing for a Kindle, I want to hold 1,500 books in the palm of my hand, I want to be able to pick and choose as my mood takes me where ever I am when I feel like it. An essay by Orwell? No problem; Ballantyne 'Boys Own Adventure'? Sure, why not?; Virgil anyone? Let me read you a stanza.

There are drawbacks. I live in Myanmar so I will have to wait till June 3rd when I step back on Stateside soil. I will have to justify the purchase to my wife and this emotional urge is all 'Errational' so I had better get my justifications lined up.

So much anticipatory fun. I think I'll start planning my library now. H.G.Wells for starters. I wonder if Joyce is on the cheap list?

#24 fannyprice- (revealing personal cluelessness).... How did you make the PG book a file? When I download a copy from PG, I'm not offered the option to save, I'm only given a web page. So, that is why i copied and pasted. I could have avoided that 10cent charge and probably will in the future, but I was curious how it worked. (PS: yes, I have a Kindle 2)

#25 BeesleSR - Good tip. I could have bought The Brothers Karamazov for 80 cents, but Crime and Punishment is free (and if you buy from the store, you even skip the 10cent download fee.)

You can also mail the PG document to Your Amazon Kindle name@free.kindle.com.. Amazon will email the document back to you via your regular e-mail for free. You then simply download the file and put it in your Kindle documents file. Easy as pie. I will note, that plays written in verse from PG download properly formatted. I've been reading Schiller's Mary Stuart this morning. One can tell by capitalized letters in the middle of a sentence, where the line breaks did occur in the PG version, but conversion loses the original formatting.

>27 urania1:, Oooh, that's a trick I didn't know about, urania.

>26 dchaikin:, Dan, I am so bad at describing these technological things. Basically, when you choose a particular PG book you want, you are given a download page where you can select either HTML versions or text versions with different types of encoding. I can't remember the difference, but the PG site has a good little guide to the encodings that you can click on. Just left click on the kind of file you want and the site will either advance you to a page where you can choose your download site or a page with your default download site, if you've selected it. Once you get to that page, you can just right click on the hyperlink and select "Save As" - then type in whatever you want to call the file and save it to your computer. I hope I've described that all correctly & I apologize for all the PC terms. While I use both a PC and a Mac, most of my actual "work" happens in PC-land, so those are the terms with which I'm familiar.

After struggling and struggling to figure out how to make a custom cover for my project gutenburg books, I have just decided to use whichever member-uploaded cover I find most visually appealing for these books. Its not precisely accurate, since none of these books actually have "covers," but I hate just leaving the cover field blank. Its too ugly.

Thank you for all this really interesting stuff related to e readers. Does anyone have a Sony e reader I wonder as I was seriously contemplating one and loved the example I handled in Oxford.

In one of the threads, we discussed whether or not e-readers were greener than paper texts. Here's an interesting study addressing just those issues. It's a bit long, but I thought some of the techies and environmentalists out there might be interested.

>31 urania1: Thanks for that link Urania1, I spent 15 minutes looking through the study and got the impression that the production of books has a much higher impact on the environment than the production of e-readers. (Which I had assumed would be the case). I appreciated seeing a break down of just how each reading vehicle had an impact and got to wondering whether the study took into consideration the amount of electricity reading demands when done after sunset! (Both for e-reader and print). Perhaps I need to wake at dawn in the summer and read through to Breakfast so that I can then sleep after dark and conserve energy use. How much would that deepen my reading green?

>30 juliette07: Juliette07 I took a look on line at the sony e-reader and then in perusing the amazon reviews of the Kindle I noticed that someone had said that the Kindle was strictly for Amazon downloads and so if I purchased a Kindle I would be supporting Amazon in taking over the entire world. (I exaggerate but you know what I mean), apparently the sony reader is usable with more 'platforms' (if I have the tech language correct) and hence buying one supports a diverse market. I do not know if this is true but I will take a look at possible consequences and get back to you all!

Another NYT article on the impact of the Kindle: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/fashion/26kindle.html?

My favorite part: "Please, they’re overlooking the really important concern: How will the Kindle affect literary snobbism? If you have 1,500 books on your Kindle — that’s how many it holds — does that make you any more or less of a bibliophile than if you have the same 1,500 books displayed on a shelf? (For the sake of argument, let’s assume that you’ve actually read a couple of them.)"

Although the article is kind of silly, I do understand what its getting at. I have often had moments where I see someone in public reading a favored book and suddenly am a little more interested in a complete stranger.

Even in my own household, which is now a 2-Kindle household, I've found that it has changed the social aspect of reading. Our Kindles are on different accounts (which is stupid, I know, but we read a lot of different stuff and I'm a fanatic about my Amazon account giving me recommendations for things I'd actually want to read), which means that if we both want to read the same book, we actually have to physically exchange Kindles, which can be kind of pain. We are no longer hyper-aware of what the other is reading because we can no longer tell just by looking. Reading has become a little more private in this way. Additionally, I can no longer be so generous with recommendations because when I read a Kindle book that I love, I can no longer offer to lend it to someone or pass it along. Instead I have to tell others "oh, buy it yourself, my copy is electronic," which often comes off weird.

Still, I love reading on the Kindle and I am basically out of storage space for books in my apartment as it is. Although I do like being surrounded by (physical) books and fear that one day, I will end up with all ebooks. But for now, there are more than enough books that are only available in paper. Also, being able to buy ebooks or download free ones allows me to reserve space and funds for more books that are actually works of art in themselves.

Another story on the Kindle vs. Barnes and Noble's new e-reader, Nook: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=114115466&ft=1&f=10...

And another one: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/21/technology/21nook.htm?_r=1

Since I last posted on this thread, I've gained a Sony Reader which I love. I will still buy lots of pbooks, because bookshops are just nicer than hunting for the website that has an ebook version in my format at a sensible price. I'm still not sold in the Kindle even though it's finally gone international (something BnN have yet to release a date for). Depends on what features you want, do the comparison, and choose the reader best for you.

Here's a good list for sites containing free downloadable e-books. Many of Google's public domain books are also available. The pdfs and htmls won't translate to Kindle; however, many of Google's public domain books are available as EPubs. Epubs translate quite nicely to mobi (prc) via Calibre. You can even edit metadata and get a cover if you like. Once you have translated your file to mobi (prc), just pull it from your Calibre Library directly to the documents file on Kindle. Calibre is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Feedbooks (listed on the Free E-books site) has lots of interesting pulp fiction and science fiction, the copyrights of which were never renewed. I also know of an illegal site located in a country that does not recognize copyright, but I'm not going to list it here.

>34 fannyprice: & 35: My wife wants an ebook reader for Christmas and I thought the choice was a slam dunk until I saw the Nook announcement. The PDF support is a factor in my mind because we have so much stuff in that format and more everyday.

>37 TadAD:,

I would look at the device first. Available as pdf doesn't always mean it is. Most pdf files online are scanned copies (i.e., as images). Until you've actually checked the device to see if it will read a scanned pdf file (try Public Domain Google Books), then you may be in for an unpleasant surprise. I am curious about the Nook, but seeing is believing as far as I'm concerned. Kindle's "experimental" pdf doesn't work with scanned copies, although I've heard that on the DX it does.

>38 urania1:: Oh, I certainly won't purchase it without playing with it first. Many devices that claim PDF support don't do re-flow properly and the stuff looks like hell.

I just wish the Nook had come out earlier. I've lots of friends with Kindles, so trying it is easy. If the Nook is at all late or at all under-supplied, trying it out before Christmas may be a problem.

ETA: And, one of my major considerations won't really be testable just playing with the device. The Nook supposedly has a 10 hour battery compared to the Kindle's 14 hour one. If the Nook is over-stating the case and it's really something like a 6 hour battery, it becomes a problem for a plane flight, etc.

10-14 hrs ?! That's rubbish. Really really rubbish. The Sony claims about 7000 page turns - I don't get that, but 2 weeks of reading on a single charge is easy.

PDF - reflow is an issue on all devices so far as I know. If it's not been locked than you can just reformat it to the screen size (ie 6") on a PC. But most books are locked. Images generally work I believe ( I certainly have no problems on the Sony) but if you don't want poor reflow, then you're stuck at quite a small font size.

It is worth looking at several different retailers though because some will have Epub or Mobi and the others only PDF.

39 & 40 -- Isn't it 10 vs 14 DAYS on a charge, if the wi-fi is off? I'm pretty sure I saw Amazon claiming 14 days, B&N claiming 10 days.

Of course, I don't know if they consider a "day" to be 24 hours of use... ;-)

Good discussion. I don't think I would read a book that I could easily get a hold of on an e-reader. But, for older otherwise harder to get texts, it sounds like they are great. Although the price of entry is a bit steep for me - I think I'd rather spend it on books I can hold.

Has anyone used more than one of these devices and can offer an opinion with respect to them (offer away!) or is everybody committed to the one they have?

33: I'm sure most people here are terrible snoops about what others are reading. LT satisfies that urge and more since you can say something about it without the default reaction being - Who are you? Get away from me!

>42 slickdpdx:,

I really enjoy my Kindle. I have downloaded a lot of free classics from various places in order to free up bookshelf space. Unfortunately, few hard-to-get books are available for any e-reader (i.e., obscure texts in translation), although I do a regular run through of books as they come up. Penguin Classics is putting more of its obscure work on Kindle--a good thing. Publishers are still skittish, which I consider foolish. Books are simply too expensive to produce. Storage is a problem. E-readers offer a version of print-on-demand and other features favorable to large and independent publishers alike.

I am not wedded to the Kindle. I considered it the best item available at the time I purchased it. As we all know, the perfect device is always the next model. I am a Mac fan. If Mac's "reported" Kindle Killer does come out, with a good selection, and no two-year contracts with bad wi-fi carriers, I will probably go Mac (provided the price is reasonable).

I think the Nook's going on the Xmas list.

"Has anyone used more than one of these devices and can offer an opinion with respect to them"

I only have my Sony. but my OtherHalf took one look at it, liked the idea and the screen, but didn't like the device itself - too heavy, and struggled with the buttons. A bit of research later, we're now a two device household, the other being a Cool-ER: It's lightweight purple, plastic, with only a couple of buttons.

The main feature of all the devices is the screen - touch or not, size. Once you've decided on that, you really need to hold one, and see how the buttons and menus work for you.