[GRLUG] e-Books rule at Amazon

[Bob Kline]

Thanks Mike. I knew from the GRLUG
meets that you were satisfied with the
NOOK.  The limitation look painful, but
then it's not clear yet how the Kindle
fares.  I imagine they will all get better,
but one gets older waiting too....

    -- Bob


On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 1:47 PM, Michael Mol <mikemol at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 1:30 PM, Bob Kline <bob.kline at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110519/tc_afp/usitcompanybooksinternetkindleamazon
> > Apparently the crossover point of more
> > digital than paper books has been crossed
> > at Amazon.
> > I'm seriously thinking of getting a unit now.
> > Two questions:
> > *  Does one have unlimited access to a
> >    digital version?  i.e., if I want to reference
> >    a book three years later, will I be able to?
> >    I'm really looking for an online library.
> > *  I know that GRLUG members have both
> >    the Amazon and the Barnes and Nobel
> >    readers.  I'd appreciate comments about
> >    the pros and cons of each.  Amazon claims
> >    it has 950K digital books now.  I don't know
> >    what the corresponding figure for B&N is,
> >    but that would be a factor too.
> >      -- Bob
>
> Using a B&N Nook (not the color one). Haven't purchased any protected
> e-books from Amazon, BN or anywhere else, so I can't speak to that.
> Right now, the Nook is loaded with six or seven DRM-free ebooks I
> purchased from O'Reilly.
>
> Pros:
> * I'm very happy with it.
> * It's great for reading in bed in the early dawn hours. As the
> ambient light level increases, I decrease the font size so I can see
> more on the screen.
> * It's also nice and quiet, and doesn't disturb the SO's slumber. (I
> tried reading paper book in the morning a couple weeks ago, and she
> suggested I go back to reading on the Nook. :) )
> * Battery life is incredible. I can forget to charge it for weeks.
> * Operates very well on ambient light.
>
> Cons:
> * Depending on the book, bookmarks and tables of contents can be of
> varying utility.
> * There's no "jump forward fifteen pages. Now do it again. And again.
> Jump back to where you just jumped from", so it's not that easy to
> seek around manually if the TOC is uninformative.
> * Browser is mostly useless. It'd be handy if the keyboard wasn't
> horrible, but, well...
> * Softkey keyboard is very slow, to the point of painful, and it's not
> a question of my dexterity.
> * keyword searching in a book hampered by the high cost of typos or of
> using the wrong keyword. (keyboard slow, searching slow, page load
> slow if you're only going to be on the page for a half second before
> moving on...)
>
> I've handled B&N color nooks, and have a couple things to say about them.
> * Battery life is much lower than the black-and-white nook.
> * Will not operate well under low-light environment without a backlight.
> * The screen interface for flipping back and forth between pages is
> *very* fast, intuitive and comfortable(imagine a touchscreen on top of
> fbreader. It'd be kinda like that)
> * The wifi wizard will not connect to networks with an apostrophe in
> the name. I think there's some poor quoting somewhere in its internal
> scripts. This means you won't be able to connect to a network named,
> for example, "Joe's Apartment"
>
> I've seen the Amazon Kindle, but I don't recall handling it.
>
> --
> :wq
>
> --
> This message has been scanned for viruses and
> dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
> believed to be clean.
>
> _______________________________________________
> grlug mailing list
> grlug at grlug.org
> http://shinobu.grlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/grlug
>

-- 
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://shinobu.grlug.org/pipermail/grlug/attachments/20110519/0ca5a87c/attachment-0001.html>