Library offerings = major Kindle turning point, imo

[Loosheesh]

Originally Posted by bfollowell

Come on guys. Let's be realistic. These things hold hundreds, if not thousands of books. When was the last time any of you were sitting out on the river on a sunny Saturday afternoon, finished your book and had absolutely nothing more to read and had to use 3G to download a new book?!

If this has happened to you, I say extremely poor planning and poor organizational skills are a bigger issue for you than your choice of ereader. That and the fact that you need to find something better to do with your time when you're on the river, at the beach, on vacation, etc.

Come on Jon. Buddy I'm with you on the whole crappy quality of many ebooks issues but this constant Kindle bashing in favor of the almighty Sony is getting a little old and really lowering your credibility with many. If you are so dead-set against the Kindle, why do you constantly lurk on the Kindle boards? Please, for all of us, go back to the Sony boards and sing its praises there because, honestly, I don't believe any of us care.

- Byron

Hero of the Day! For everything but especially that last part.

Ok, I'll go back to lurking now ...

[log]

Touchscreen for me is important since I'd rather have a lighter/smaller device with the same size screen.

Also in this day and age, not having a touch screen makes the device feel real dated to most consumers.

Beyond this it's simply more intuitive to be able to use a touch screen instead of arrow keys on a keyboard.

[DiapDealer]

Beyond this it's simply more intuitive to be able to use a touch screen instead of arrow keys on a keyboard.

You forgot the 'in your opinion part.'
Because it doesn't get more counter-intuitive than touching a screen to me.
Touchin', swipin, pinchin... bah. You can have it.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by log

Touchscreen for me is important since I'd rather have a lighter/smaller device with the same size screen.

Also in this day and age, not having a touch screen makes the device feel real dated to most consumers.

Beyond this it's simply more intuitive to be able to use a touch screen instead of arrow keys on a keyboard.

I'll take my Kindle (3rd gen) to work every now and then to show someone and the first thing they do is touch the screen to try and open a book. When I tell them it isn't a touch screen, they give me that "incredulous" look.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

If the book were that important, I'd download it to my iPod touch and read it later on my Nook Color. Problem solved.

BTW, I never take my Kindle on vacation.

If you have an ipod touch, you can use its browser to get the book from the library.

Although I will be interested in how Sony's system works - well before I got to the final page where I couldn't get the Kindle book because of the browser's inability to open a new window I decided that this would be for emergencies only, since looking for a book to get on the library's website with my Kindle browser was just so painful. (And my library's mobile website provides no information in e-books).

[carld]

As long as they keep the K3's page turn buttons on the side I could live with a touchscreen. I might even grow to like it, as long as I don't have to tap on the screen to turn pages.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Touchin', swipin, pinchin... bah. You can have it.

You forgot the "depends on what you're..." part

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

If you have an ipod touch, you can use its browser to get the book from the library.

But not in Kindle format. I tried and it won't let me.

[Harry_Y]

Originally Posted by bfollowell

Come on guys. Let's be realistic. These things hold hundreds, if not thousands of books. When was the last time any of you were sitting out on the river on a sunny Saturday afternoon, finished your book and had absolutely nothing more to read and had to use 3G to download a new book?!

If this has happened to you, I say extremely poor planning and poor organizational skills are a bigger issue for you than your choice of ereader. That and the fact that you need to find something better to do with your time when you're on the river, at the beach, on vacation, etc.

Come on Jon. Buddy I'm with you on the whole crappy quality of many ebooks issues but this constant Kindle bashing in favor of the almighty Sony is getting a little old and really lowering your credibility with many. If you are so dead-set against the Kindle, why do you constantly lurk on the Kindle boards? Please, for all of us, go back to the Sony boards and sing its praises there because, honestly, I don't believe any of us care.

- Byron

For me he has lost all credibility over it

The constant need to come to the Kindle boards to
bash them makes him seem a bit on the weird side.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by log

Beyond this it's simply more intuitive to be able to use a touch screen instead of arrow keys on a keyboard.

I find that touch screens are much less accurate. When I try to select text on my Sony PRS-350 I'm constantly ending up with the wrong text selected.

[andrys]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Say you go on vacation and you don't have access to a computer, but you do have wifi access. If you have a Sony WiFi PRS-T1, you can still get your eBooks from the library when they are ready. But if you have a Kindle, you are well and truly screwed. You will then have to go to the back of the waiting list as you need a computer to get library eBooks for the Kindle. So when you end up going to the back of the line, you'll wish you had a T1 instead of a Kindle.

I am probably missing something here, but every single Kindle 3 has a WiFi option. Some models have both WiFi and 3G. And you can use free 3G web lookups in about 100 countries, as a resident of a country that offers (slow) free 3G web.

It's the Kindle 1's (2007) and Kindle 2's (2008) that have "only" 3G, which works almost anywhere you happen to be for all the regular book downloads from multiple online book sites.

Kindle 3's came out August 2010, over a year ago. The Sony model mentioned just came out, but it's not competing against a non-WiFi Kindle when mentioning advantages of WiFi with models released in the last year.

(What am I missing?)

[andrys]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Library borrowing is a really big deal for the US market. So Amazon is getting close. If they add just two more features (touch screen and direct-to-device borrowing), they'd have the killer eink ereader in my opinion.

BTW, Sony is adding direct-to-device borrowing to their new T1:

For over a year, the current Kindle (Kindle 3, in 4 models) all have WiFi.

It provides direct-to-device borrowing at the libraries now. People have expressed surprise Amazon made it so easy.

The older Kindles (released 2007 and 2008), however, don't have WiFi, just 3G.

With the library lending, Kindle borrowers will answer that their loan is for a Kindle and then if they have a Kindle 3 (released Aug 2010), they'll be redirected to Amazon where Amazon will ask which device they want it on, and then they'll get it direct to Kindle via their WiFi capability.

Now, if they're not near a WiFi access point, that's another matter but this is true for all WiFi devices.

The exception is the Kindle DX, which came out in June or July last year and has only 3G on it. But Sonys from the same year notoriously didn't include WiFi or 3G except for the most expensive model at the time.

Where the Kindle will fail for touchscreen-preferring customers is with the navigation mechanism. But I have a NookColor and I have trouble with the highlighting (precision wise) and also because it's oversensitive and I activate links w/o even touching them. The Nook Touch is better at that, but there I have a problem with the relative grayness of the font (and all the missing features I do like and use).

Nevertheless, for any slow web-accessing, the touch screen is way better.

[abookreader]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

But not in Kindle format. I tried and it won't let me.

But you could use the iPod/iPad to check the book out and then go to the Amazon Kindle Manage Your Kindle page and select to have it Whyspersynced to the Kindle - right? I would assume that would work, I haven't actually tried it yet. It really isn't an issue that has come up for me yet. Maybe I need to vacation more.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Ron.

Saying this puts the nail in the coffin of the competition is a bit of a stretch...

Originally Posted by carld

It does remove one of the main advantages that some of the other e-readers had over the Kindle.

These.

I'm glad to see it, because it increases the availability and market for ebooks, but sorry that we don't have a single standard yet.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

I'll take my Kindle (3rd gen) to work every now and then to show someone and the first thing they do is touch the screen to try and open a book. When I tell them it isn't a touch screen, they give me that "incredulous" look.

You should grab a rag or tissue and begin to furiously clean the screen and give 'em this: