This is mostly me! I LOOOOOOOVE my Kindle.Lisaren wrote:I absolutely love my Kindle. It has been dropped, it has been slept on, it has been used to read about 100 books in the last 4 months. Of course, I did purchase the leather case to help protect it. It was one of the best purchases I have ever made. To keep from spending a fortune on new books I am downloading and reading the classics that are available free. Of the 100 I have downloaded, I have only paid for about 17. I do not get the month long battery life, but mine is on for over 2 hours every day and I read pretty fast. The more pages you turn, the quicker the battery goes dead. I get about 3 weeks from a full charge.
A lot of posters have mentioned the smell, the weight, the feel of a book... I thought I would be like that. I did not at all want an ereader. I loved all of the above, and I loved the library and had no interest in starting to pay $10 a pop for what I used to get in bulk for free. But, my husband got me a Kindle for my birthday abouta year and a half ago. I love it so much! So many books at my fingertips!
I do still use the library and buy paper books sometimes. I don't miss it like I thought I would, though. There are a ton of free books on the Kindle, and while I sometimes want to read bestsellers rather than classics, it's good for me to have so many classics available for free-- I should read more of them, anyway. Plus, the Kindle recently started the sharing feature-- it's not perfect (you can only share once, and for 14 days), but it's a start.
As far as which ereader, I do reccomend the Kindle, but it's the only one I've used, so I can't compare fairly. The first thing I would do in deciding which one to get is immediately drop anything backlit from the list. I can read my Kindle, with the e-ink, so much longer than I could read a backlit screen without hurting my eyes or head, AND I can read my Kindle in the sun. I would never be able to read a backlit screen at the park, so I love that I can read outdoors with my kindle.
A year ago I would have said that I'd choose whichever reader worked best with library systems, but I wouldnt' necessarily say that now. Now I'd say-- ask your librarian. Even libraries that work with them still only have so many copies they can loan out with copywrite laws, so many still have long wait-lists for e-books, and not many choices at that-- that would negate the library benefit to me.
I also love that the Kindle offers a phone app. I read at night with my Kindle at home, then waiting in the kids' pick-up line for half an hour after school, I just 'sync' my phone, and pick up right where I left off, and vice versa. It's perfect!
Good luck to those deciding!