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Comments
This
surely won't last long, right?
I loved my Kindle . . .
. . . until I got an Ipad and installed ibooks. My Kindle isn't one of the newer ones - it's about two years old now- so maybe they have changed- but the page flipping feature on the ipad - using your finger like a real book makes it easier and faster to navigate texts. Haven't used my Kindle in a while.
Why just Kindles btw at BPL?
Kindle v. Tablet
I have the Kindle app on my Touchpad, and I like the page flipping, too. While I would say that it is a cool app, I still much prefer reading on the Kindle itself, primarily because it is sized and weighted more appropriately. Tablets are too heavy to comfortably hold for a long stretch of reading in bed, for example.
I'm afraid . . .
. . . my Kindle is in a drawer now - unused (and I weirdly feel guilty about it- sorta a waste). I like the weightiness of the ipad- reminds me of a hard cover book more- especially with my ipad jacket cover.
Sorta? It is!
Might I recommend that you give the Kindle to someone who will make use of it, before it becomes obsolete? A kid, a hospital library, anyone!
Compared to other human artifacts, consumer electronics do not hold their value well. A great paperback stuck on a shelf for ten or twenty years is just as usable as it was the day it was put there - but every year that goes by, that kindle/nook/ipad/etc gets less and less useful and accessible.
Techie gadgets - use em or lose em.
Yep-
- I should do something do like that- donate it or something.
I'll take it!
:o)
Tablet + Sun
= why even bother.
The nice thing about the Kindle is the low power consumption and awesome screen technology. Tablets are very good tools for a lot of things, but sitting down to read books isn't one of them IMO.
Not quite
The particular device mentioned above - the Kindle - has a reflective display, not an emmisive one. This means that, just like printed paper, Kindles are using ambient light, not competing with it, and are more readable in direct bright light - even sunlight.
iPads and most other tablets mostly use traditional emmisive tech and generally do not do as well in sunlight.
read again
As that's what I said, is it not?
Sorry - read in thread order, not posting order
Because of the nesting it looked like you were commenting directly on Chris's question, not Henry's response.
My bad.
Just to elaborate
The Kindle costs much less power to run than something like an iPad because it only needs power to change pages/animate the screen. The screen uses a flipboard-like surface...like the timeboards at South Station (one side white, one side black). Just staring at the page to read the book costs zero power and you're doing that the majority of the time you use it. The iPad is constantly pushing electricity to the screen to keep it lit.
What's ironic is when they tell you to "shut off your electronics" on a plane, leaving you alone to read the current page on your Kindle *is* exactly that. Making you blank the screen actually needs it to "wake up" in order to do so.
Kindle app on ipad
if you have an iPad, you can just download the free Kindle app.
Tried to borrow a book
but apparently I have to set something up for on-line actions with the library. I don't have time right now, but I'll look into this again at some point.
The other thing of note: the selection seems to be kind of limited.
Limited selection
Pretty sure selection is limited by what the publisher is willing to put up for library use - the same way some books on your Kindle are able to be loaned and some are not.
What do you mean "begins"??
The BPL has been lending ebooks for quite some time -- several months at least, maybe more. I've read a couple myself.
I guess what's new is that now they support the Kindle's proprietary format (in addition to the other proprietary formats they previously supported).
iPad is available
Some people have been asking, you've been able to borrow books from BPL on an iPad for a long time. You download the overdrive app from the app store and check out the books.
Or computer
I've borrowed eBooks and read them on OSX for the past few years.
Dedham has been offering
Dedham has been offering e-books for a while. I decided I'd check them out, so I requested a book. I got a message that they'd send me an email when the book was available. Available? It's digital - what's the problem. A couple of weeks later, I got the email, went to the web site and downloaded the e-book.
I talked to a librarian, who informed me that publishers are demanding that libraries only allow one version of each title at a time. And since each borrower gets the e-book for three weeks, you can have a three week wait for your 'copy.' And then, if you finish it early, you don't 'return' it - it just stays on your computer until your time runs out.
So this is even worse than hard copies. At least with a book, the person who has it out might return it in a few days. With e-books (at least in Dedham), each digital copy is lost to borrowers for three weeks at a time.
Still like the Kindle in sunlight
I was also thinking that I hadn't used my kindle in a while but out in the sun or at the beach it is so much easier to read than the iPad. I'm going to hang onto it and fill it with BPL books.
The Boston Athenaeum has Kindles they lend to members loaded with a type of book. You can have history or biography or mystery or travel.
http://bostonathenaeum.org/node/213
Maybe the BPL will take some of those orphan Kindles and do the same thing. Then you can check out a Kindle full of reading for a trip.