Anyone seen these things or know anyone who has one?


Barnes & Noble's Nook

Watch the info ad




Amazon's Kindle

Watch a video review



If you haven't heard of these things, they're basically like iPods for books and have wireless modems in them so you can buy and download books. The screens are not "backlit" or colored. They use something called e-ink which makes it look exactly like ink on paper so it won't hurt your eyes. The Nook is a touchscreen while the Kindle has buttons, but they both do virtually the same stuff. Amazon says that you can browse 350k books to buy and B&N says that you can choose from over a million books from their store, plus the Nook lets you "lend" books to someone who also has a Nook. Both Amazon and B&N sell the online books for 9.99. They both hold about 1500 books with their factory hard drive, but the Nook has a micro SD slot that you can hold more on. The Kindle has speakers and will "speak" the text back to you if you want, but that's probably spotty and sounds terrible. You can make the font bigger or smaller. The Kindle has a browser and lets you access Wikipedia for free.

I'd love to get that Nook thing.

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kitteh

I didn't know they weren't backlit. That's a cool feature. I'm just not really a big fan of any reading not in book form. I'm sure we'll all have these eventually. No hurry though.

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Make your own path as you walk, and if you ever find footsteps before you turn away from them and continue to walk into the wilderness, where no man has been before you.
- Varg

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy, it is the wine of a new procreation, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for men and makes them drunk with the spirit.
- Beethoven

i think they're sweet as hell, but the price would have to come waaaaaay down for me to consider switching from the written page.

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"prison ain't so bad, you can make sangria in the terlet. 'course it's shank or be shanked''"

Yeah $250 is pretty expensive considering you have to pay for the books too unlike an iPod. The Kindle has been around for a few years now, but now that they have competition, I bet it comes down. Seeing as their bank of books are restricted to their own store, they stand to make most of their money from the book downloads and not the from the sale of the device itself.

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kitteh

Yeah. These would have to come down in price by at least 50% before I'd even consider buying 'em.

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(Award Winning Human Being)

I don't understand the concept of an e-reader. No gadget should be a uni- or limited-tasker.

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The iPod was the same way at first and now they can do just about everything. These things will no doubt get a lot more sophisticated, but for now, the concept is to save space and spend less on books. I wonder if you would be able to store the ebooks somewhere in case you lose the reader or it gets stolen or something.

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kitteh

Personally, I'd rather read a book. And like most people in this thread, these things would have to come WAY down in price before I'd even consider getting one. Do the books come on like little SD cards or do you just download them? I'm sure these things have plenty of handy features. You can probably search for certain parts in a book a lot easier than you can scanning through paper pages.

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I use my old Zire palm pilot as an ereader. Works just as well and the battery life is comperable, and you can find those for less than a 100 on Amazon. The ebooks are cheeper too. only 5 to 6 dollars (generally) versus 9.99.

It`s not back lit either. so it doesn`t strain you eyes like a back lit screen would.

Just a suggestion.

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CHOMP!!!

New blog address: http://promethiandeath.wordpress.com

I wouldn't pay for an e-book. Up to $10? What a joke.

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NNID: kissoon32

i think it will be much more difficult to move in this direction with books and reading than it was for music and rocking.

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"prison ain't so bad, you can make sangria in the terlet. 'course it's shank or be shanked''"

I shall never abandon the written page. Ebooks are false.

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Blargh...
http://www.recordnerd.com/lists/Chaoseum

I can't help but be fascinated by these for a number of reasons. I do not see them as being superior to print in any way really other than perhaps if you read like a book or two a week and don't have the space for said books. Or if you were in a remote area with limited access to mail service and/or civilization, but had satellite to be able to download. These being the first generation there are drawbacks as such: price, features, functionality etc. that I am waiting for the the next generation or two before even considering researching and possibly purchasing. Sony also makes one as well I believe.

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Still cheaper than brand new, but not by a whole lot. That price will probably go down eventually too. I also imagine that a printed book that goes for less than $10 will be less in digital form.


Why do you hate trees, Phil?

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kitteh

They should have these for textbooks.

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Make your own path as you walk, and if you ever find footsteps before you turn away from them and continue to walk into the wilderness, where no man has been before you.
- Varg

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy, it is the wine of a new procreation, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for men and makes them drunk with the spirit.
- Beethoven

I'm not adverse to reading books on screens, in fact I have LOTS of pdfs. But actually paying more than a few bucks for some 1s and 0s is ridiculous.

I think I might be more open to it if the authors sold it directly from their website, cutting out the middlemen, which would immediately half that price no doubt.

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NNID: kissoon32

The authors would have to have a way to upload and send the ebook to you without a middleman. That would be unlikely in most cases. Even though you'd think that an ebook should cost significantly less than a printed one, someone has to pay to host them in servers and the people to transfer it to digital form, etc. It should still be less than 10 bucks though.

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kitteh

I'm sure it's only a matter of time. Think of the savings for that.

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kitteh

As these devices proliferate, I'm interested in how the publishing companies will react as they face the same issues as the recording and film industries. Book costs are outrageous across the board, especially in the textbook sector. Their business model is outdated.

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Make your own path as you walk, and if you ever find footsteps before you turn away from them and continue to walk into the wilderness, where no man has been before you.
- Varg

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy, it is the wine of a new procreation, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for men and makes them drunk with the spirit.
- Beethoven

I was raped by a tree.

THERE! ARE YOU HAPPY???

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Blargh...
http://www.recordnerd.com/lists/Chaoseum

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NNID: kissoon32

Im with Chaoseum and 9 on this..

Do we have to have EVERYTHING in an electronic computer/cellphone form??

Im just old fashioned... i love having shelves full of old books that have a history of who's read them and enjoyed them... , i know:

I dunno..i can see how this may be convenient on long trips if you need something to occupy your time and dont want to pack a bunch of books..but as far as reading leisurely at home..i want the real thing.

I'm very important. I have many leather-bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany.

And this is exactly why I have a small collection of ebooks that I read on my palm pilot, which I already have for other purposes.

Most of the ebooks that I have, I already have in paperback/hard cover and I just have them in an electronic format because my 3.5 inch by 2.5 inch Zire with all the Harry Potter books loaded onto it instead of me lugging all seven of my hardcovers around is way easier on my back.

I also edit my writing in ebook format too. It gives me ideas on how they will look when formatted for publishing. Very continent.

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CHOMP!!!

New blog address: http://promethiandeath.wordpress.com

http://www.teleread.org/2009/10/26/publishers-crippled-the-nook-dont-like-the-lending-feature/

Ha, I guess publishing companies are just as much of greedy cockheads as the record labels are. Who'd a thunk.

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kitteh

I want the real thing. Period.

I think all books should only be distributed via smoke signals. Screw anything more modern.

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"I can only dream that someday people will use random quotes from me to help express their opinions." - Thomas Jefferson

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"prison ain't so bad, you can make sangria in the terlet. 'course it's shank or be shanked''"

that dana carvey bit was funny.

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"prison ain't so bad, you can make sangria in the terlet. 'course it's shank or be shanked''"

And now with the advent of iPad....bump

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