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Originally Posted by biggybaggyboggy
 Thanks for all the replies guys. very helpful, I'm thinking the DX would be the best bet, for longevity. The only reason I can see for going with a Kindle rather than a Sony e-reader (say) would be the amount of available of books (apart from personal preference, obviously) would you agree?? |
The primary reason for going for a Kindle is the convenience of buying books wirelessly from the Kindle eBook store. If you don't want to do that, there are a number of devices around that are (in my view) significantly better than the Kindle.
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I'd like to get my head around the DRM-free thing...can someone explain it in words of less than one syllable please? I don't understand whether its a file format, or some kind of security, and if so why would you be able to load both on the kindle?...or am I missing something??
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DRM is "digital rights management" - essentially a book with DRM (such as those sold via the Kindle bookstore) is encrypted such that it will only run on your Kindle (or other devices registered to your Amazon account); you can't give a copy of the book to your friends, for example.
The Kindle uses a popular eBook format called "Mobipocket", and there are a number of bookstores which sell Mobipocket books without DRM (eg, if you're interested in SF and Fantasy, there's a publisher called Baen who sells books without DRM). There are also huge numbers of out of copyright classics available completely free in Mobipocket format (eg, look at the "Book Uploads" forum here at MobileRead). Any of these books can be copied to the Kindle (via a USB connection) and read on it.
Hope that answers your question.