I'm thinking about buying a
Amazon Kindle DX and
Amazon Kindle 3. Can I use it to read other ebooks that I download from the internet or does it only read ebooks you buy from amazon
Despite the apocalyptic predictions of lovers-tech era, the paper did not die, but will have stiff competition. Show business so formidable that are drawn around the e-book and reading media, such as Amazon Kindle. These new e-readers are all the rage in the U.S. today.
But in five years, will look as archaic as the Commodore 64. "Do you remember those prehistoric e-book readers? -Tell. Using electronic ink displays black text on gray background. Without color. Without a touchscreen. And every time you turn the page you gave, you had that rare black-white flash-black. Can you believe that someone wanted to buy them? ".
Well, it's time to progress. Nook The new Color (250 dollars U.S.), Barnes & Noble is the first reader e-books a major firm that brings color touch screen.
He looks confused, but is light years better than the slow Nook, white and black, erratic, last year.
The hardware is attractive. It is a tablet 8 x 5 inches (20 cm x 13 cm), half-inch thick (less than 1.5 cm) with an aluminum edge and the rear rubber coated.
Has a triangle cut into the bottom left, where you can swipe your finger. This is an original design detail, but it may also serve to attach to your keychain.
The Nook weighs 450 grams, and is among the Kindle (about 250 grams) and the iPad (750 grams). The color screen means you have to recharge every few days instead of every few weeks, as the previous version. The animations are rather choppy, and the screen often do not "respond" when it first touches. But otherwise, the Color Nook is fast enough.
Regarding the touch screen, you know what? All e-book readers should have touch screens. Once, with a touch, you open a book, slide your finger to turn the page and drag your finger across the bar for brightness adjustment, using a joystick to move the cursor or an electronic ink display seems indirect and outdated.
The color screen is bright and beautiful. Magazines, for instance, look spectacular. You can subscribe to any of 70 magazines (the first two weeks are free) or purchase individual copies. The get with the whole design, including advertising.
Obviously, it will not be possible to read a magazine full size when zoomed to a screen of 7 inches (18 cm). You can navigate like an iPhone: using two fingers to zoom in, and dragging a finger to rotate.
You can also use the colorful row of thumbnail pages that slides to the bottom of the screen for easier navigation. Some magazines even bring a Article View (Item Viewer): A vertical column that moves, which contains few elements of black text on white, and is easy to read. The original design of the magazine is below to give context.
Books for Children also benefit greatly from the color, and receive special treatment in the Color Nook. At the touch of the text on any page, it gets bigger.
Some titles -300 end of this year, according to the company, come with a button called "Read to Me" ("Readme"), for the young reader can follow the book with a recorded voice.
Like other e-readers, you can subscribe to newspapers, if you are in a Wi-Fi, the newspaper arrives at your device automatically in the middle of the night, ready to read it when directed to work. The photos look great in color.
But the rest of the diary is strangely spartan and lacking in imagination, especially as compared to the magazine, which is so elaborate. There is no design.
The color does not add too common books (Barnes & Noble said that its online store, attractively redesigned, offers two million books. However, about 1.5 million of these books are often obscure scanned copies Google, free and very old).
But all the books benefit autoiluminante screen, laptop style, the Nook.
Sunlight can also read the Color Nook, although not as easily as an electronic ink display (the reflection is sometimes a problem, too.)
The Color Nook has numerous functions. Notes, highlighter, bookmarks, dictionary definitions instantly, quickly search Wikipedia and Google for a chosen word. You can select parts of the text and post them on Twitter or Facebook account (Nook Color online access only places with Wi-Fi).
The device comes with a basic Internet browser built. A music player. An image and video editor. It is equipped with a MicroSD memory slot to expand storage to Nook of 8 gigabytes (6,000 books) to 40 gigabytes (35,000 books).
The Nook is very customizable. It has three "home screens", where you can drag icons for books and magazines, and a rack Library (library), to install, label and fill new shelves. You can also change the source (of books) and character size, width of margins, spacing between lines and even the wallpaper.
It runs Android, the new operating system Google's free, but no applications designed for Android. And some own incorporated, such as Sudoku, a puzzle and a Pandora radio application.
The price you pay is the complexity. The Color Nook offers too many pop-up control commands. Is the Quick Nav Bar (quick navigation bar), the Status Bar (status bar), the Media Bar (media bar), the Library (Library), the Daily Shelf (rack daily), and the Recent Items menu ( of recent items.) It will take a while to learn where everything is.
The biggest problem, in fact, is the great weakness of the features it brings. It's as if Barnes & Noble reading applications had assigned a team of magazines, books to another, and a third day.
In summary, Color Nook does not approach the sophistication or consistency of, say, an iPad or a Kindle. At the same time, the Nook Color looks more modern and powerful than the Kindle.
It also gives an impression of computer electronic book reader from Amazon, which is both a blessing and a curse