The Kindle 3 is making headlines as Amazon's #1 bestseller. According to Amazon:
Do you own a Kindle?
What do you think about them?
The Kindle is a fantastic reader. I used my friends for a bit, and was tempted to buy one there and then. But I had just got the iPad. Who knows, when I've finished reading Winnie the Pooh, I might look at the Kindle again 
I don't have one. In fact I haven't even tried one...
I've been using iBooks since its release and I know it's not perfect but it just works fine for me. 
I just tried to buy a Kindle and have it shipped to Asia, but the estimated ship date was three weeks out and the delivery time was four weeks, so I canceled the order for now.
I'm currently using my Eken m001 for reading, but I'm thinking about buying a Kindle:
- the E Ink technology seems great
- now the price is acceptable
- there's Amazon Italy now, so I hope delivery will be quicker
The Kindle is expensive... though less so now. It does provide something that the others don't and that's a free 3G connection and some limited browsing capability.
It's e-ink... so, good visibility in bright light (e.g. sunlight) and you can place the silly thing on a copier and copy it.
We have 3 of them in our family. Mine was purchased from somebody else (to help them out economically). I use mine mainly for PDFs. All of ours are tied to the same Amazon account... so we can read each other's books.
Is the Nook better? Maybe. It wasn't around when we bought ours (all of ours are Kindle2 or Kindle2 DX).
We like our Kindle's even at the exorbitant prices that we paid for them. I took my Kindle DX with me overseas for a couple of weeks and loaded maps and books about places I was visiting... very useful. Easy to carry and the battery lasts a long time. And you can even put some MP3's on it (though it's NOT a feature rich player). Part of the time was on a boat... and it was easy to use in the open deck in direct sunlight.
Yes,
I remember the prices of the first models, those were quite expensive
(~ 500$, if I recall correctly). Now you can buy one for 139$ (no 3G).
But I'm not sure if it's good for reading technology pdf
(with technical diagrams, images etc - the official Oracle documentation,
for example).
Those types of documents loose their formatting, when converted to
the various ebook format.
When I use my 7" Eken for that now, I have to read them in landscape mode,
the Kindle for 139$ has a 6" display.
I don't own a kindle, but my sister does. The new kindle (and not the old one) understands plain pdf and txt, not just Proprietary Ebook Format With DRM And Remote Revocation���, so if I did get a reader I'd make it a kindle.
I have had a kindle for over a month. I got the small wi-fi only version. Right now it is loaded with Perl books. It's much easier to carry around than a stack of books. The e-ink screen is very easy on the eyes. When people see it they don't think that the screen is real. The Perl code in the books did not format well in normal mode so I rotated the text 90� and use it sideways.
Do you need to scroll the page to read the entire content or it fits into the screen?
If the content doesn't fit into the screen, I'll stick with my low cost m001 for now,
it's OK for reading pdf files in landscape (horizontal) mode without needing to reflow or reformat.
When you read an ebook (not a pdf), the content is dynamically reformatted as you read. It puts as much text as it can on the screen and calls that text a "page". You hit the "next page" or "previous page" to move around. Personally I would prefer to scroll but I don't believe it can.
But I have never read the instructions, I just hit buttons and found my own way around. :o
Sorry for not being clear. I mean, do you need to scroll from left to right, not up and down
(you need to do so, when the lines are long and don't fit into the screen).
Most of the time, when I convert a pdf to any ebook format, it looses it's formatting.
I tried the Kindle software on my Android device and I must admit, that the sample
chapters I tried look better, than the manually converted ebooks (I use calibre to convert the pdf files).
---------- Post updated at 06:19 PM ---------- Previous update was at 06:09 PM ----------
Actually I know the answer, as far as the programming code is concerned:
everything fits into the screen and you just loose the formatting.
It would be interesting to know how it displays a graphical objects
(diagrams, histograms etc) when those don't fit into the screen.
I never scroll in any direction. As far as I know the kindle cannot scroll. The kindle seems to know when a line should kept intact. But if it doesn't have room, it wraps to the next line. This is why I rotated the kindle 90�, it reduces (but does not eliminate) the wrapping. I can also switch to a smaller font size to get more on the screen.
Pdf files are another story. I have a complete set of Solaris 10 pdf's in the kindle. The images just shrinks until everthing fits left to right. The pdf page breaks are ignored and the kindle re-paginates the document. The font is painfully small but legible in normal mode. It's much easier to read in rotated mode.
The larger kindle has enough real estate to handle any doc. After the price drops quite a bit more I probably upgrade.
Thanks for the info! A bigger display ( > 6") should be better for the pdf. Me too, I'll wait for a better price
Kindle gen 2 and higher have a real pdf viewer. HOWEVER, the Kindle2 (the small one) ... the PDFs might not manipulate well... but they ARE rendered PDFs.
I hear that the Kindle gen 3 has even better PDF capabilities.... but recent firmwares on the gen 2 make PDFs work just fine (IMHO).
No. I don't have a Kindle.
But I do have a Sony Reader (PRS650) which I thoroughly enjoy. I chose it after considerable comparisons to the multitude of other available eReaders in spite of it's higher cost, and I'm glad I did.
It's incredibly more convenient than paper books (pbooks). And I've found there is a huge reservoir of free literature that I'd previously thought I might read one day that is now free for the downloading.
I just bought one:
- purchased 02.03.2011 11.30 AM
- delivered 04.03.2011 10:19 AM
It was a really rapid delivery - from US to Italy.
I don't own a Kindle but a similar device (Nook) and am disappointed on how it renders pdf's which is why I bought it. I am not convinced that Kindle would do a better job, maybe the Sony 950 and am generaly disappointed in how eReaders are horrible at handling pdf's, so I don't plan to get another one very soon.
I sold my Kindle 3 and it's one of the stupidest things I have ever done.
Now, that was my primary concern before purchasing a Kindle.
Yes, I believe most of the eBook readers (having display < 7") render the pdf format the same way.
I found an acceptable (not a perfect) solution:
I send the pdf to Amazon for a free conversion (you receive the converted file via email, not via Wispernet!) and I loose a small part of the original formatting.
You could also use Modipocket Reader (free software) and the result is similar (I find it a bit worse, than the Amazon conversion).
I can display the pdf files nicely (without loosing any formatting) on my 7" tablet, but Kindle's e Ink technology is far better for me.