Quote:
Originally Posted by BeccaPrice
I have a Sony 350 and a K2 Kindle. I use them for different things . . .
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I agree with your points about the Nook. I also found it's mixed up LCD *plus* E-INK to be awkward, and not quite my cup of tea.
I shouldn't have been so hard on the Kindle 3 perhaps, but it suffered from being built up as this wonderful, great, fantastic, impressive, super duper, improvement over all other book readers created by mankind - yada, yada, yada - and after all that HYPE, I found the real thing to be HUGELY DISAPPOINTING.
For example, you mentioned that you didn't like the kind of 'second class citizen' way that the NOOK separated the users side-loaded titles from B&N content. I felt the same exact way about the way that Amazon entices you with a nice Thumbnail book-cover browser in the 'Kindle Store' BEFORE PURCHASE, but once they HAVE YOUR MONEY, your book is just unceremoniously DUMPED into a 'text only' home screen listing.
I'm glad you prefer it that way, and given the Kindles limitations, this may be the quickest way to navigate, but it would be kind of nice to have a choice.
By way of comparison, on the PRS-350/650/950 readers you can easily PICK whether you want a 'thumbnail' or 'text' based title browser, and select from two differently levels of 'text' info (a simple title only one-line display, and a title and author two-line 'list' display).
For anyone who would prefer this, and hasn't found it yet on their Sony reader, just go to HOME, pick the 'See All' mode and then hit your 'Options' key and select 'View' to select the type of view you want.
This only effects the 'See All' view - so the main home screen will still give the nice 'continue reading' thumbnail, plus cover icons for the three most recent titles - but as soon as you pick 'See All' you will get either the thumbnail or simple text-listing based on the 'View' option.
So in simple terms, the Sony reader CAN do a 'text-listing' view like Kindle, if that's what you prefer, but the Kindle CAN'T do a nice cover thumbnail view like I prefer on my Sony.
This is just one of many, many reasons that, after seeing the Sony, I thought the SOFTWARE on the Kindle was just HIDEOUS. If I had never seen the Sony, then I might not have been quite as harsh on the Kindle, but after seeing Sony's third generation reader, it was obvious that they had made some pretty dramatic advances. Where, with the Kindle I was left asking myself "What has Amazon been doing with all their profits from the previous models?" (because it sure didn't look like they had invested in writing better firmware for the Kindle or better user documentation)
If you put the Sony and the Kindle side by side, and simply bring up each device's built-in instruction manual, it's like night and day. The Sony's manual is not only much better formatted aesthetically, but is laid out with on-screen control buttons and hyper-links that really show off the way that the touch screen let's you effortlessly navigate through a complex document.
The Kindle 3's manual is just horrible. I would say that it looks like it was written by a sixth-grader, but I don't want to insult the sixth-graders of the world. The Kindles sketchy documentation, not only doesn't do anything to clarify it's kludgey and confusing interface, but, if anything, really drives home the point about how little effort Amazon put into refining both the device and it's associated documentation.
In fairness, the ACTUAL READING EXPERIENCE on the Kindle 3 is pretty nice - it has a really great E-INK Pearl Screen, plus nice fonts and typographic options to tweak things to your liking. The battery life is incredible, so you don't have to think about unwanted intrusions like having to stop reading so you can charge the unit.
I have herd that there are actually some folks that
don't want a touch screen on their reader, as they are afraid that it will get marked up with fingerprints or some such thing, so if that's the way you feel . . .
For me though, having had a chance to use both, if I was stranded on a desert island and could have a thousand ebooks of my choice, but only one book reader, there is absolutely no way in the world that I would trade my PRS-650 for a Kindle. Not the Kindle WiFi, not the Kindle 3G, not the Kindle DX.
