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Some initial reflections on using an ebook reader

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Deozaan:
I wouldn't go so far as to call it a clear winner-allen (July 16, 2010, 09:05 PM)
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Yeah, as soon as I posted that I started rethinking my position.

there's a one hour per visit limit on reading a nook book in B&N.-allen (July 16, 2010, 09:05 PM)
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Only one hour? That's. . . dumb.

I knew you could loan books for only 14 days, but I didn't know it was just once per book. They really need a way to transfer ownership to someone else, just as you can do with the analog books.

wraith808:
I wouldn't go so far as to call it a clear winner-allen (July 16, 2010, 09:05 PM)
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Yeah, as soon as I posted that I started rethinking my position.

there's a one hour per visit limit on reading a nook book in B&N.-allen (July 16, 2010, 09:05 PM)
--- End quote ---

Only one hour? That's. . . dumb.

I knew you could loan books for only 14 days, but I didn't know it was just once per book. They really need a way to transfer ownership to someone else, just as you can do with the analog books.
-Deozaan (July 17, 2010, 03:41 AM)
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I'm sure the limit is to limit abuse in someone's mind.

Interesting article on the fallacies of it, though...

http://ireaderreview.com/2009/10/26/publishers-killing-nook-lending-before-launch/

40hz:
Reference books and papers: it's very hard to capture the feel and experience you get from being able to really quickly flip through, scan, and browse such documents and can feel claustrophic and very limiting trying to do here.
-mouser (July 15, 2010, 07:09 PM)
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Interesting that you feel that way. That was also my impression when I got a chance to play with a Kindle and a Nook for a few hours.

Unfortunately, the only reason I would like to be able to cart 100+ books around with me would be if they were all reference materials and user manuals. Much easier than working with an 8Gb key full of PDFs like I currently am.

But even if these readers were ideal, it would still leave me with the problem of having to repurchase all of these books too.

Let's see...48 books @ $49.99 plus 17 books @ $69.99 plus plus 11 more at $39.99 plus that $199 monster...and it comes out to...um...yikes!  :tellme: I'll just stick with paper for now.

tranglos:
But even if these readers were ideal, it would still leave me with the problem of having to repurchase all of these books too.
-40hz (July 17, 2010, 02:04 PM)
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I think this is a major issue with Kindle. Not unlike the changeover from analog record to tapes to CDs perhaps, though with the latter you usually got better sound quality and bonus tracks.

Since Amazon remembers all your purchases, they could offer discounts for Kindle editions to customers who previously bought print editions of the same titles. That would be a serious enticement for me.

tranglos:
Thanks, Mouser, for your thoughts. They couldn't come at a better time for me, since I'm just about to order Kindle (or decide against it), though I'm going for the smaller version.

With the recently reduced price I'm almost convinced, but I still feel uneasy about the availability of books I actually want to read. Almost all my reading, besides reference books, is non-fiction. Since the year 2000 I've bought close to a hundred books from Amazon, of which no more than 20 are available in Kindle editions today. Even some of the most famous, best-selling titles are not available (like, where is Naomi Klein's "No Logo", hello?). Then Amazon intentionally limits their catalog for European customers. For whatever dumb corporate reason the number of books they sell to European Kindle users is about 25% less than what's available in their US catalog.

I once spent some time browsing through audible.com's impressive selection of audiobooks (also an Amazon company), only to find out that when I signed up for an account, I could buy *none* of the audiobooks I wanted. Not a single one; they were only sold to US/Canadian customers. With Kindle it doesn't seem to be so bad, but still the discrimination persists. I guess availability will only improve in time, but at the moment there's only a handful Kindle editions that I really want to buy and haven't yet read.

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