Questions/concerns about the Kindle :)

[polly]

Originally Posted by bobsi18

Thanks for that Polly. Do you find the menu system easy to use, and are you able to sort books by series etc?

The menu system is very easy to use. I handed my reader to my computer phobic, refuses to use email, 83 year old, mother and she immediately dove into my book list and opened a book. Ten seconds to show her how to turn pages and get back to the home screen and she was all set. I didn't get my reader back until she'd bought one for herself.

You can organize books into Collections. Calibre does it for me. The reader uses a flat metadata sort of a system. The good news is that the same book can appear in several different Collections, depending on how it's tagged in Calibre, without having to be on the reader in several different places. The bad news is that you can't do multiple tagging. If you're looking for an unread spy novel, for instance, you can't do a search for both unread and spy. You have to look in your spy collection. The reader will put "new" on the cover art of new books so that they stand out better.

None of the major players support folders. If you want that as a feature, you have to look at the smaller ones (Kobo, Astak, PocketBook, etc.).

You wondered about external storage. With the large storage capacities of readers these days, you can carry a huge number of books. There are some circumstances where it a card can help with organization. I have my Star Trek collection on an SD card. I don't want those books cluttering up my reader, so when I want to read a Star Trek book, I can pop in my card. With my Astak, I put my unread books on the SD card. Since it uses a file system, I would navigate to the card if I wanted a book I hadn't read before. It can also be a convenient way to move books to the reader if I don't want to plug it in for some reason. Not the same as WiFi or 3G, but sometimes handy if the cable's not convenient.

[bobsi18]

Thanks for the detailed responses everyone, I really like this community!!

After playing with the Sony Touch the other night, I've decided that's what I'm going to get. Once I got home I realised I should have had a play with the pocket as well, because I like the thought of a smaller reader (as I'm likely to have it in my handbag constantly, less weight and space is always good).

Just wondering if the smaller screen is toooo small, but considering I currently use my iPhone to read books (and have done so for about a year), I don't think it will be a problem. Will play with it a bit more when I next head in to the city (I live ages away from civilised shops that sell ereaders!) Just have to choose a colour - I'm presuming the lighted covers are available for the pocket too?

Oh, and the only other consideration for the pocket vs the touch seems to be the lack of SD card, but as has been pointed out, 2GB is a lot of space, so I think I'll be fine.

Thanks again

[AndyfromVA]

I tried out the Kindle 3 today at my local Staples. I just loved the speed of the page turning - wonderful. I also liked the K3's Pearl screen.

But I didn't care for the tiny page turn buttons. They are way better than the buttons on the Nook, but I use page swiping almost exclusively and using the K3's buttons seems like a throwback. The keyboard was kind of interesting, though I don't think I'd use it much.

The K3's speed of operation is its biggest advantage over the Nook, in my opinion. I'm waiting to see if the upcoming firmware update for the Nook brings its speed close to that of the K3. Then I'll make up my mind whether to buy a K3.

[adityadubey]

Originally Posted by bobsi18

Just wondering if the smaller screen is toooo small, but considering I currently use my iPhone to read books (and have done so for about a year), I don't think it will be a problem. Will play with it a bit more when I next head in to the city (I live ages away from civilised shops that sell ereaders!) Just have to choose a colour - I'm presuming the lighted covers are available for the pocket too?

Oh, and the only other consideration for the pocket vs the touch seems to be the lack of SD card, but as has been pointed out, 2GB is a lot of space, so I think I'll be fine.

Thanks again

I've recently acquired a PRS-650 myself and love it! In my opinion the clean look of the Sony readers definitely scores over the keypad of the Kindle, but that's a subjective thing.

This is my first e-reader so the screen on the 650 seemed just right and I couldn't imagine using a smaller screen comfortably, although since you mentioned you're moving from an I-phone, it should still feel much bigger

And about the 2 GB storage thing, the actual free storage available on your reader when its brand new is something around 1.4GB (at least for the 650). Also, there are posts around here which complain of the reader slowing down considerably if the memory is getting full (or because of badly formatted PDFs which take too much space), so you might want to think about that.

Having said that, I have around a 100 books loaded on my reader (mostly epub with a few big PDFs) and they take up a measly 35-40mb of space. It will take me at least a couple of months to run through those so I really don't think storage should be that much of an issue.

Hope this helps, have fun with your new reader!

[AndyfromVA]

Originally Posted by AndyfromVA

I tried out the Kindle 3 today at my local Staples. I just loved the speed of the page turning - wonderful. I also liked the K3's Pearl screen.

But I didn't care for the tiny page turn buttons. They are way better than the buttons on the Nook, but I use page swiping almost exclusively and using the K3's buttons seems like a throwback. The keyboard was kind of interesting, though I don't think I'd use it much.

The K3's speed of operation is its biggest advantage over the Nook, in my opinion. I'm waiting to see if the upcoming firmware update for the Nook brings its speed close to that of the K3. Then I'll make up my mind whether to buy a K3.

The Nook firmware update 1.5 is out. The Nook now has lightning page turns, sorting capabilities, better battery life and more contrast. In short it now does everything I liked about the Kindle 3. So I now have $139 to spend on other electronic gizmos.