Kindle pros and cons

[C-dub]

The "Kindle" (lowest cost reader) does not have a light. All of the rest do.

Scroll down a little and you can see the comparison of current Kindle models here: https://www.amazon.com/b/?node=66697020 ... dflcpo5n_e

I guess I'll have to verify which model.

[ammoboy2]

I have an early Kindle about 2007/8. I find it still lighter than many hard cover books and the screen is great. It is easy on the eyes compared to back lite screens. The paper white display is very easy to read in a wide range of lighting conditions. They take up very little space and can be used most anywhere. Mine has the US 3g connection for book downloads and I have also directly loaded books from my PC. Battery life is still good, especially if you turn off the wireless connection. My kindle is nearly full, I guess I will have to get a new one when I run out of memory space. It is great for taking on trips to read on the plane. Much better than having to cart two books because you are just about finished with one and need a second on the road.

[JALLEN]

I have an early Kindle about 2007/8. I find it still lighter than many hard cover books and the screen is great. It is easy on the eyes compared to back lite screens. The paper white display is very easy to read in a wide range of lighting conditions. They take up very little space and can be used most anywhere. Mine has the US 3g connection for book downloads and I have also directly loaded books from my PC. Battery life is still good, especially if you turn off the wireless connection. My kindle is nearly full, I guess I will have to get a new one when I run out of memory space. It is great for taking on trips to read on the plane. Much better than having to cart two books because you are just about finished with one and need a second on the road.

I have that one. My wife surprised me with it for my birthday when they first came out. I'd never heard of them. What a terrific idea!

I loved it. Every time we went to her village in France, I got stuck paying overweight charges to haul my reading material. No more! It doesn't weigh any more full than it did empty! I put an 8 GB card in it for additional space.

I seldom use it anymore, since I got this iPad. I have the Kindle app, and it works quite well. I have it in my iPhone too. No more reading 30 year old or People magazines in doctor's offices, or standing idly in line cursing at some government office when you can carry most of your library with you.

I used to prefer books, but now not so much. The bio of Harry Truman I just finished was heavy, and I was apprehensive about losing the bookmark. Not a problem on Kindle, or iPad. As long as you keep an eye on charge level, you're good.

Now, I never get sweaters, ties or underwear for gifts. Everyone knows to get Amazon Gift Cards, always my favorite color and never too large!

[C-dub]

That brings up a couple more questions. It's been mentioned that there are 3gb and 4gb models. About how many books is this? If it is full and I've downloaded the books to my computer and then uploaded them to the Kindle, can't I just delete a book from the Kindle to load another one and then re-upload it later from my computer if I want to read it again?

[Liberty]

There are two types of Kindles. The plain old Kindle, and the Kindle Fire.

The plain old kindle comes in two forms the regular kindle and the paper white. and they are broken down to different models.

To make full use of the Kindles you will want the Prime service. This allows you to use the the loaner service 1 free book a month, and some free movies and TV series for the Kindle fire. If you use the shopping service and delivery, the Kindle Prime is a pretty good bargain.

The regular Kindle is mostly just a reader only. It is high contrast, and backlit. The paperwhite is like reading paper, very easy on the eyes. Its light weight and cheaper. It isn't so made to be a web surfer, or movie viewer.

The Kindle fire is a Tablet, Smarter and easier to navigate. It operating system is a modified android, modified to navigate Amazon easier. Apps are normally downoaded through there Web store ( most of the most popular ones are free.) The fire tends to show advertisements and have unexpected Amazon views. Something annoying sometimes. It is still a good tablet. Watching movies and films is pretty kewl. You can view most streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime supplies a good souce of free material. Its not as nice for reading books as the paperwhite and can washed out in bright sun just as any phone or tablet will be. But it is pretty usable.

Kindle and Amazon have a lot of material and is a great way to read books. Its convienient, and keeps track of where you are. I find that I am a lot more willing to check out different authors. Books are kept in the Cloud as well as on the devices.

[The Marshal]

C-Dub, at the very least get the Paperwhite. I was able to get a Voyage (newer version) off Craigslist for a great price. Really enjoy it. With the backlight, you can set the brightness to what you need and not disturb the Wifey whilst in bed. Verified!

Also, you can change the Font size to adjust to our "more mature" eyesight and leave the glasses off. The battery life is measured in weeks. The volume of books you can store on it is in the 1000's. The case you put on it has a magnet on the cover, which turns the unit on/off when you open/close it. When you open it, you will come back to the last page you are reading. You also get the ability to click on words and have a dictionary pop up for explanations, a page numbers, percent completed, and estimated minutes remaining to finish.

Here is my favorite part. I bought my first book when I got it, and 85 books later I have not bought another.
There are websites like http://www.dailyfreebooks.com/ where you can get them for free, and you 'buy' them for $0.00 and own them.
And if we are REALLY good friends, I can 'loan' you my books for a 14-day period so you can read them too.

Also, you can 'check out' books from the library for 14 days as well at no charge.
The 3G is nice because the you can get books wherever, and it doesn't cost you. (You pay for that when you buy it)
The Wifi is fine. The trick is to download a bunch of books when you are on Wifi, and then you always have something to read even if you don't have wifi. Ha!

Also, you can pay to not have the "Ads". $20 upcharge one time. However, the "Ads" are only shown when you open the cover, and you can swipe right past it. I thought I wanted to pay the $20 immediately, didn't and now I don't care.

Highly recommend the Paperwhite/ Voyage if you can get one.
Paperwhite comes in several models based on year, so check that.
The Voyage has more backlights, totally flat surface, and slightly smaller.

Call me if you want more ramblings. :)

[Liberty]

That brings up a couple more questions. It's been mentioned that there are 3gb and 4gb models. About how many books is this? If it is full and I've downloaded the books to my computer and then uploaded them to the Kindle, can't I just delete a book from the Kindle to load another one and then re-upload it later from my computer if I want to read it again?

Deleting it just deletes it off your device, It still remains on the cloud to be downloaded later.

[joe817]

I have an early model Kindle too, not backlit. It originally started out as my wife's, then I upgraded her to a Kindle Fire HD. I ended up with it 3 years ago. I have about 70-80 books on it, and am nowhere close to filling it up. There's TONS of free book on Amazon in every genre. I have purchased only 1 book in the past year, and I paid only $0.99 for it. I love it.

[maverick2076]

I've had 3 Kindle's since the very first model came out, right before my last deployment to Iraq. I was pretty pro-book and anti-Kindle, right up until I got one. Now I would give up my cell phone or my personal laptop before I gave up my Kindle. Battery life is amazing, reading on it is very much like reading an actual book, it is lightweight and it can hold thousands of books. The Paperwhite display is very nice. IT is much easier on the eyes than reading on a tablet.

[chasfm11]

I've been researching Kindles, etc and have spent a fair amount of time reading the customer ratings. Those ratings seem to indicate:

1. The newer devices are sometimes (often?) worse than the old devices. The newer Kindle Fire seem to have developed freezing problems among others. The negative reviews seem to consistently recommend "keep your old device, don't try to upgrade." Any comments?
2. The use of storage on the device seems to be an issue for some. On the Kindles, only the base memory can be used to store books. I guess this isn't an issue if you are planning to only keep a book or two on the device with the rest in the cloud. But I see that there can be a variety of sources for ebooks and I'd hate to try to keep track of where I got them all. Amazon's cloud only keeps the ones from the Kindle library, as I understand it.
3. I've looked at the devices. My wife has the big iPad Air (not the mini) and I've read several books on it. I really like the size of the screen and the way that it works - but not the price tag for a second one. When I look at the smaller screen Kindles, they don't seem as easy to read for me though I understand the value of a smaller, more portable device. I've looked at the Galaxy S2 Tab as a possible compromise. The screen size of the bigger ones and the customer reviews are pointing me in that direction. But the Galaxy, too, as a limited amount of core memory and the rest is expanded memory. I cannot find anyone who uses an S2 and has a lot of books to store and is willing to relate their experience with it.

To this latter point, I want the device to be able to store a pile of books that I can read without having to deal with wifi. We were in Chama, NM for a month and the wifi in the campground there was awful. A lot of the RV parks throttle downloads, even in the middle of the night. I have great access at home but on the road, wifi speed can be iffy at best.

I'm pleased to hear about the positive experiences of the folks on this thread. Thanks for sharing your situations.

[TexasTornado]

I have the kindle fire, iPad, and Samsung Tab E...

For just reading books, any of them work great. We subscribe to Amazon Unlimited which lets you borrow select titles 10 at a time. You simply return one to download another. We also subscribe to Amazon's Audible.com which gives you credits to download audiobooks. I've done both of these things + school text books, pdf's etc from all 3 devices with no trouble on any of them.

[ELB]

I have an older model Kindle from about 3 years ago, and I loved it at the time, and I loved having my whole library on it. But it turned out I ended up reading more on my iPhone using the Kindle App because it was always with me.

A few months ago I bought the cheapest Kindle Fire for my wife, was $35 on sale (Prime day I think), and turns out I really like it! So when they had another sale I bought one for me for $35, and it is great to read kindle books on, plus I can check email and Texaschlforum
and other websites. It really is pretty nifty for the price, good quality screen, find it easy to read. I use it mostly around the house or the office where I have good wifi connections. For "the road" I still use my iPhone.

The only drawback I find to the Kindles, whether regular or Fire, is that they are not great if the book has detailed illustrations or photographs. Really need a larger, high quality screen for things like that.

But for books that are largely or solely text, they are great.

[JALLEN]

I've been researching Kindles, etc and have spent a fair amount of time reading the customer ratings. Those ratings seem to indicate:

1. The newer devices are sometimes (often?) worse than the old devices. The newer Kindle Fire seem to have developed freezing problems among others. The negative reviews seem to consistently recommend "keep your old device, don't try to upgrade." Any comments?
2. The use of storage on the device seems to be an issue for some. On the Kindles, only the base memory can be used to store books. I guess this isn't an issue if you are planning to only keep a book or two on the device with the rest in the cloud.

.....

To this latter point, I want the device to be able to store a pile of books that I can read without having to deal with wifi. ......

I can't speak to newer models, but it isn't true about base memory only for storage. I put an 8GB card in mine, figuring that could store just about everything ever written in English. I probably misunderestimated that, I now imagine.

You don't need wifi, can't use it on this one. If you are out of the cellphone area, like I was in France, you download your book on a laptop, wifi, or hardwired to the internet, etc, then use a cable to transfer it to the Kindle.

You can store other than Kindle books sourced from other than Kindle. You e-mail your material to an address that is youname@kindle.xxx or something like that. I have done that but not in some years. It's not as easy as mere downloading, but it works.

[corkman]

Good discussion. I have never had a kindle and read 1-2 books a week. Use a Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 w/8" screen and FB Reader software. I download books to computer and copy to tablet, typically keep 8-10 books on tablet and delete when done reading, keep library on a flash drive. Has worked great for me as I wanted not only a book reader but also a tablet, think I paid about $199 a couple years ago.

[rotor]

My wife has had several Kindles over the years but reads all of her "books" on an ipad mini. I think if you have any tablet or a large smartphone you really don't need to buy a Kindle device.