If you are not confused, you are misinformed

[kyber]

Where oh where will the world of ebooks take us over the next few years?

Will the old world and new world merge eventually, and pricing models harmonise?

Will geographical restrictions ever be lifted?

I received my first Kindle, a v3 WiFi model, for Christmas (handed over the week before). Now in the near middle of February, I am on my third device. The first two had screen freeze problems. Have to say, on both occasions I was blown away by the quality, speed and efficiency of the Amazon Customer Service. I received replacements within 48 hours. I bought my wife a unit just after Christmas, and I am pleased to say that she has had no problems.

It took me a long time to decide on whether or not to go with a Kindle. A major decision handicap for me was that I had never tried one, and until I did I was reluctant to commit. Finally, a colleague turned up with one, had a play, and was sold.

The sticking point for me for a long time was the fact that the devices are not backlit. I need very good light to read in, and as I travel for work and spend a lot of time in corporate hotels, I am often faced with poor illumination. My way out of this for a long time has been ebooks on PDAs, namely HP IPAQs (three in all - seems to be the magic number), or, more recently, smartphones (iPhone 3GS currently). I had formed the view that I really needed a light emitting ereader device. I knew though I would have no problem actually living in the ebook world. It was a major blow though in the last 12 months when ereader/fictionwise/barns&noble (all same company) started to apply geographical restrictions (demanded by the publishers) which means many of the books I have bought over the years are no longer available to others in the UK. (They are in my hosted libraries and still available.)

I am travelling less at the moment, have more control over lighting, and also have in my suitcase an nice flexible arm led strip light with a large crocodile clip at the end of the arm that allows me to fit it the back of my beds and position the light perfectly for the Kindle.

The Kindle is, of course, great. Really like it. Have a lot of content now, including regularly updated material (newspapers from the web, etc.) as provided by Calibre.

Ah, introduction... I am a middle-aged happily married father of two daughters (long end of teenage-hood), management consultant / project manager (complex systems integration work) and an avid reader. Biased towards science and sci-fi but regularly read biogs, technical books, thrillers, etc.

Hello all, pleased to meet you.

[Valmore Daniels]

welcome

[neilmarr]

Always good to meet a happily married middle-aged chap ... in spite of the burden of TWO daughters, Kyber. I have two and three granddaughters. It's all I can do to keep my head between my ears, Kudos on ya. As for your main question ... all's in flux. We must wait and see and stay as far ahead of daily developments as we can if we're to enjoy the full freedom of reading as authors intend and literature demands. A little patience will show hugely positive results I (as a cock-eyed optimist) believe. Best wishes. Neil

[GeoffC]

Hello ...

Welcome to Mobileread.

Drop into the various forums (links main forum page) to join in some lively discussions on the very topics you raise ....

[MickeyC]

Hi kyber and welcome to MobileRead

[desertblues]

Hi, welcome to MR from the Netherlands.