AMAZON KINDLE vs SONY READERS - Page 3

So it runs a SIM card?

The kindle 2 is also about 20% faster and more responsive then the first gen, it also does away with the awkward side bar thing. I have one of these and love it as well. The kindle store is easy to use and always availible, no monthly fee's, the internet is workable in a pinch, also free. The downloads of books are very quick, normally less then a minute, the process for getting PDF Files on the device is a snap, just email the pdf to your kindle emaill address and it appears on the kindle seconds later. There is a fee for this however, most of the time it's 15 cents per document, but larger documents can be more, I think the most i've been charged is about 1$ for a 15mb pdf. People make way too big a deal out fo the back light, it sounds like a big deal but once you have a kindle and experiance it and the screen, you don't miss it. The screen is pretty amazing and clearly viewable in all lighting conditions, there's never any glare on it, you can read it on the beach, in the car, or even by candle light. Get a good pouch to put it in and a nice LED book light and the problem is solved, it's well worth the trade off, being battery life, you literally can go for weeks on a single charge. The interface is very slick and intuitive as well. The overall product has a lot of polish. Only thing I really regret is bying it in june and paying 360$ for it.

sprint is cdma. the new "world" kindle probably has a sim chip because it runs off gsm networks

Boomana, I have the same case as you, only in black. The case that Amazon offers is flimsy by comparison. Regarding the international version of the Kindle, it uses AT&T's network and not Sprint. Note that U.S. users will be charged a $1.99 roaming fee when downloading a book internationally.

Any ops on the Nook?

IMHO most of what Barnes & Noble is touting about the Nook is a lot of hype. Probably the only good thing about it is the fact that it uses the ePub format which means you can borrow eBooks from the library. Sure the little LCD screen is cute, but how functional will it really be on an eReader? And it will probably be useless in direct sunlight even though the eInk screen will be readable.

Although you can lend books on the Nook, it is only for a 14 day period and you can only do it once. When you do lend a book, you yourself cannot read it. In addition, it will be up to the publisher to decide if a book is lendable.

That said, I own a Kindle and yes, I'm biased.

Here is Znet's take on the Nook.

B&N's Nook e-reader: Weirdly unrevolutionary | Rational rants | ZDNet.com

There has also been an interesting development regarding the Kindle (K2). A couple of weeks ago, Amazon dropped the price to $259 and introduced a new international version (which can also be used in the U.S.) for $279. The major difference is that the international K2 version uses AT&T while the U.S.-only K2 uses Sprint.

Today Amazon announced that due to the apparent overwhelming interest in the international version, it will now be the only K2 version available. In addition, the price has now dropped to $259. A lot of owners of the original (K1) and U.S.-only K2 are concerned that Amazon will abandon Sprint, basically making their Kindles useless as far as a wireless device goes. Amazon is still selling the DX version though which also uses Sprint.

why do they seem to think we want 3g data on them?

it just eats battery adds cost for something i know i would never want to use. for reading newspapers yes but for books its a useless feature

I wanted a simple reader; no touchscreen/wifi/dictionay/mp3/notetaker/toastmaker whatever, just a replacement for the fictionbooks I read while commuting and in bed.
The important things to me were readibility (contrast etc), build quality and ease of use.
Since a month I got the Sony PRS300 and I couldn't be happier; reading is great on it, I read faster and with more pleasure then paper, and it is great to have lots (and I mean lots, I estimate I can get ~1000 books on it) of my favorite books with me.

It avoids the hassle of having to download a book to your PC and then transferring it to the device. You can browse the bookstore, buy a book, and be reading it in under a minute. You can also turn off the wireless when you don't need it to save the battery. On average, I go at least three weeks before I need to recharge my Kindle.

I ended up buying a Sony Reader PRS-300 2 weekends ago and didn't regretted it. I'm reading my 4th eBook on it (Big Machine by Victor LaVallee) ; it definitely made the bookworm in me wake up again.

Few things that made me go for it :

The Kindle still doesn't really work in Canada (w/o a valid US credit card and address).

ePub support. The Canadian Public Domain has a LOT of "old" eBooks available for free... Mark Twain, George Orwell, HG Wells and SO many others! Plus the format is supposedly going to be the "future" of eBook formats (tho I've read a lot of complaints about its formatting, so I hope they're gonna "clean" it a bit).

And...I didn't really needed a dictionary and an annotation feature, so I didn't get the PRS-600. Plus, because of the PRS-600's touchscreen, the screen of the 600 was a little more prone to glares (I did try them both at Best Buy before deciding) and slightly more blurry. Slightly.

The weight is good in hand and the reader feels solid, having a metal shell.

The only downside to this reader is the software ; not that it's bugged or anything, but it's majorly incomplete in features. I have yet to find the way to make collections on my reader (and that IS after reading the software's help file). I am no super-tech expert with software, but no newb either. Sony needs to hire real software engineers for their library software.

I also bought the leather book-like cover for it. The reader clips rather ingenuously to the cover by using pins that fit on the top and bottom of the reader itself.

Anyway, now it goes everywhere I go inside my HEYS travel bag (my gf went away with my Crumpler - need to order a new one).

dont talk rubbish, it is no hassle at all. at best whos likely to go through more than one book a day? whos likely to be adding books on there several times a day? i suspect many will load it up with several at a time and hardly ever need to connect it to anything.

its designed as a stupid lock in feature to trap you into only using the shop they want you to. the nook bar its name looks great but the 3g connection takes space and power that i dont want or need and really why 3g? a 2g connection would be fine for ebooks.

oh and with the kindle how do find adding your own files to view on it?

If you check out your local targets/walmarts some may stock the old PRS-505 and are cutting the prices down. From 299 to 230, 200, 170, it depends on the store that's clearancing it.

The 505 is the last generation, but has a huge fanbase. It has the 5" screen, expansion slot, plays mp3s, charges through usb, pdf support and all the open-source formats that amazon doesnt touch. I love all the selection that epub has.

If what I want mostly is a portable device to replace all my books, have a basic internet browser (when I don't have my iPhone at hand), and can read all my PDF e-books, what's the best reader out there? Should I go Kindle, or Nook?

If you haven't done so yet, check out MobileRead Forums . It's an eBook and eBook reader resource website and forums just like Head-Fi is to headphones, very valuable.

I personally would wait for Nook reviews before going for it, leaving the Kindle as the only alternative at the moment that I am aware of, hence the mention of the website in the previous paragraph

Wait to see the Nook. Browsing on an eink display isn't the greatest, that's not the strength of the device. Save that for the iPhone. Don't judge an ereader by that criteria.

PDF support on the Kindle isn't that great. There's a bunch of programs so you can do your own conversions, I use Calibre on my Mac. Works great for books. But PDFs w/ pictures, tables and graphs don't work well at all. There's no zoom and it's hard to read. What you'd want is a way to convert PDFs to PNG files and transfer those. I've read the entire Bone graphic novel series on a Kindle in that format and it was quite readable.