Little Yoshi Posted November 21, 2011 Report Share Posted November 21, 2011 Planning on buying a kindle for someones birthday but know fluff all about them. Can anyone help? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sam T Posted November 22, 2011 Report Share Posted November 22, 2011 It's an electronic book 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monkeyseemonkeydo Posted November 22, 2011 Report Share Posted November 22, 2011 It's an electronic book And they're really quite good, provided you like reading of course. Got my wife one for Xmas last year and she's never without it. Had a couple of issues with it freezing and stuff but their customer service is really really good. Probably second only to Tarty! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aener Posted November 22, 2011 Report Share Posted November 22, 2011 What do you want to know? They're a fair bit of money, but if you read a lot, it's paid for itself by the time you've read 15-16 books. They're dead handy to have instead of carrying books around. They can play music while you read - but only through the files on it sequentially. It's not a media player. It has a browser (if you get a 3G one, the 3G connection is really rather quick) but it doesn't support multiple windows or flash (meaning no youtube videos or anything that opens in a separate window. Battery life is amazing. I charge mine about once in three weeks, an I use it quite a lot. Comes with a dictionary already on it - you can read through a book and use the directional keys to place a cursor over the word and a definition'll pop up at the top or bottom of the screen. They're multiple format friendly: .mobi, .epub, .pdf, .doc, .txt and probably others I've yet to come across. They're comfy in the hand. You can highlight bits and make a note of them in a note file, then if you open that you have all the things you highlighted in one place. You can't create text documents, which would've been nice, but that'll probably come along in a software update at some point. Can't think what else you might want to know. If there's anything, ask away - but the Amazon services are really great. I've asked questions of them via email three times concerning the Kindle, and each time got a response the same day. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sam T Posted November 22, 2011 Report Share Posted November 22, 2011 What do you want to know? Cheers for that Flipp! I'm also thinking about buying one as a present. How easy is it to download books? Are they free to download? I'm guessing that there must be some kind of application like App World where you can browse through the books? Sorry for the questions! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mr ailsbury Posted November 22, 2011 Report Share Posted November 22, 2011 (edited) Love mine. I'd definitely get the 3G+WiFi one just for the convenience, Looked at a book in a shop, went outside and downloaded it to the Kindle and it was there within about 2-3 mins ready to read by the time I got to Costa. You can also download them off the Amazon website too obviously. I treck to and from London on the train every week to see my girlfriend and after going in and out of my bag a few times with all my luggage a real book is dead, the book mark is nowhere to be seen and takes up loads of space, Kindle is just way more portable and as long as you have a case for it, won't get trashed at all. Don't buy the official Kindle case 'cause its a rip off. Mine cost about £15 and does the job nicely, it has a light but I've only ever needed it once or twice so far. Only down-side for me is that you can't get the Harry Potter books for it but they should be getting released before the end of the year. There are also plenty of ''free'' books online to download if you don't mind plenty of spelling mistakes, but the books are cheap enough that theres not really much point stealing them. The only way a Kindle isn't good is if you're one of those wierdo's who likes sniffing the pages in books and stuff. And obviously for refrerence books with lots of colour pictures in them. Edited November 22, 2011 by mr ailsbury Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aener Posted November 22, 2011 Report Share Posted November 22, 2011 Cheers for that Flipp! I'm also thinking about buying one as a present. How easy is it to download books? Are they free to download? I'm guessing that there must be some kind of application like App World where you can browse through the books? Sorry for the questions! They can be I tend to be naughty 'cause I'm a student (read: skint), and I don't agree with paying for digital stuff. A lot of the books I want are almost the same price as their physical copy, so I definitely don't pay for those ones. They're about as easy to get hold of as music - though they quite often don't have the chapter markers in (when they're there, you can press left and right to skip to the next marker), but that doesn't bother me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monkeyseemonkeydo Posted November 22, 2011 Report Share Posted November 22, 2011 you can't get the Harry Potter books for it but they should be getting released before the end of the year. You can if you look hard enough. Well, actually, you don't have to look very hard at all. Are they being 'officially' released? I thought Rowling was dead set against ebooks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aener Posted November 22, 2011 Report Share Posted November 22, 2011 (edited) I thought Rowling was dead set against ebooks. She's obviously never moved house I love having a big stack of books up one wall of the room. I think it's got great aesthetic value - but hardcopies are expensive, and when moving house twice a year (oh student life!) they're extremely cumbersome. Edited November 22, 2011 by aener Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Little Yoshi Posted November 22, 2011 Author Report Share Posted November 22, 2011 Don't buy the official Kindle case 'cause its a rip off. Mine cost about £15 and does the job nicely, it has a light but I've only ever needed it once or twice so far. Where did you get it from? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mr ailsbury Posted November 22, 2011 Report Share Posted November 22, 2011 Yeah i've got the dodgy copies already I meant official release. They're launching a whole online Harry Potter thing called Pottermore.com and when that comes out they're releasing the eBook versions of the books. They wanted to wait until that was done before releasing them. THAT Thats the one i've got. The lights a bit shite but it does the job. The case is good though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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