Kindle 3: e-book readers come of age
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
and all the people who are hardcore about audio cringe at the notion that music sounds the same regardless of origin or equipment used to reproduce it... these also happen to be the same people who cherished the album, who saw insights into the music from the artwork on the cover, and read the lyrics over and over.
I'm a geek. I owned a Kindle and read books regularly on my iPad and iPhone. I love the technology.
However, it drives me crazy when people make say that the details in the "antiquated" and analog versions aren't/weren't important. There is truly much being lost.
The kindle will honor the crop box. So the margins can go away, and the text can be rendered larger.
That helps on the DX. But the small kindle is just too small. The kindle 3 offers contrast adjustment on PDFs, which also helps with the small fonts.
The little kindle isn't great for PDF - it's just too small.
Don't buy from Amazon! Buy from other sellers who provide DRM-free ebooks instead. One of my favorites is Baen. They have a massive free library, and I've bought quite a few books from them as well.
Project Gutenberg is another great source, of course.
Like all these things, I suppose it depends on how you use it. I buy books on the Amazon store, I read them on my Kindle. I don't find the DRM annoying, or even visible.
It's pretty much the same as the old iTunes DRM. Yes, it was there, but if you bought on the iTunes store and played on your iPod, you didn't even notice it. The fact that download are now DRM-free is not even noticeable, except that you get better quality and pay 30% more.
Also, bookstands. Has a truly good one ever been made?
Finally, trying to work with a hardcover book, a laptop, and a paper notebook takes up a lot of space on a desk.
The best I've ever used was actually mini-drafting table. It was the perfect size for a hardcover book and, depending on the type of binding, it either sat on the lower wooden ledge or the hardback could actually be forced behind the rule (with the lie-flat books).
It's ironic that a thing made to hold books completely sucks at the task, but a thing made to hold only a few pieces of paper (at most) is ideal.
I also have to agree, that a good 95% of non-fiction books are on the horrible glossy paper. I remember detesting them in college as florescent lights were the worst as instead of a glare you'd see an aura from the entire tube.
What I found that helped with that were the giant rubber bands you can get at art supply stores, that are typically used to hold things to a drawing board. Two of them around the editor's desk do a fine job of holding a book open, bands stretched across the top and bottom margins.