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Old 11-27-2010, 03:16 AM   #3
ATDrake
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Posts: 11,517
Karma: 33048258
Join Date: Mar 2010
Location: Roundworld
Device: Kindle 2 International, Sony PRS-T1, BlackBerry PlayBook, Acer Iconia
For the price of a Wi-Fi Kindle, and given your considerations 1) and 2) and the fact that you mainly plan on reading classics, I'd say that it would be worth it for you.

I myself have the older 3G model, and I practically never use the 3G, though lately I've started sending myself samples via wireless rather than downloading and transferring them via USB out of sheer laziness. Quite frankly, web-browsing on an e-ink screen is rather slow and kind of a pain.

Personally, the best aspects of the Kindle for me are:

a) Portability. I take public transit, and it's great to be able to carry around dozens, if not hundreds, of books with me to read and be able to switch from one book to another until I've found one that suits my mood.

b) Adjustability. Being able to set the font size up or down for most books (PDF and Topaz format excluded), as well as being able to adjust margins and line-spacing, and such, is great. The Kindle lets me comfortably read books either with or without my glasses, which helps to give my eyes a rest.

c) Variety. I've gotten literally hundreds of free books from the time-limited publisher e-book promos alone, not to mention having access to a whole lot of public domain and indie book giveaways. Plus I've picked up a lot of fairly cheap backlist books during sales, some of which would have to be hunted up in a used bookstore if I wanted to read a paper copy.

Of course, not everything's available and I'm nowhere near giving up paper books, which I still love, but I'm perfectly pleased to support authors I like by getting their sale-priced electronic editions, as well as have the oppportunity to try new ones out at zero initial cost to myself.

If you happen to live in an area where there are retail stores like Best Buy or Target or Borders which carry any model of e-reader, perhaps you might like to go over and try out their display units; see if you like the general functionality and features of whatever they've got, even if it's not the model you have in mind.

As for library use, check to see what's available in your area. Some libraries are better stocked than others as far as e-books go, though the Philadelphia Free Library which allows non-resident access for $15 per year is always an option.

I will warn you that in order to put most library books on the Kindle, you will have to become familiar with using certain scripts to modify the downloaded files so that they will be compatible with the Kindle, which does not support any of the common library e-book formats natively.

This can be a legal grey area in various places, so we can't discuss it in detail for the forum's protection, but it's fairly easy to find the information to do so online. If you don't think you're up to it, or wouldn't feel comfortable circumventing copy-restriction even for fair use purposes, you may wish to consider a different e-reader which will support DRM-ed ePub and PDF files if you have your heart set on library use.

Finally, we have a very nice library of free classics right here, contributed by our very own members who take the time to hand-format them to display nicely on a variety of devices. Just click the E-Books link in the top blue navbar to see what's available.

Hope this helps, and welcome to MobileRead!
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