Anyone tried an e-reader?

[Rum]

My mother has lost the sight in one eye and her other is not the best. She is in her mid 80s. She is an avid reader and so she gets large print books from the library. However given her tastes there is a pretty limited choice. So I am thinking of getting one of those e-reader thingies for her..here's an example:-



I am assuming one can enlarge the text to any size you want. This would increase her choice a great deal!

Anyone used or owned one? What are they like?

[ScholasticSpastic]

I very much enjoyed owning an e-reader.... until I set it down next to my bed, went to sleep, and stepped on it the next morning.

The next time I have disposable income I intend to purchase another one.

Mine was a Kindle. I found many great old books for sale for free or for less than a dollar from Amazon, including The Voyage of the Beagle and several other books written by Darwin. I also actually managed to read some of the Sherlock Holmes novels at last, all of them for less than a dollar and some rather large bundled volumes for free.

Turning pages is easy- just depressed the button on the side, either side, and waited about as long as it takes to turn a paper page for the screen to change. The Kindle also included a search function, which I found very useful for work. I was able to email .pdf copies of journal papers to Amazon and they'd email e-document conversions of them back to me for free or send them directly to my Kindle for 25 cents, at which point I then had a searchable journal paper, which saved me all sorts of time when I had to cite sources and I couldn't remember which paper I'd read something in.

Battery life was fantastic. I often went a full week between plugging my Kindle into my USB port for a recharge. When I heard a rumor that Amazon had been deleting books from people's e-readers I just downloaded all my books from my Kindle to a folder on my PC. Never bothered to check the veracity of the rumor and I never saw any of my books disappear, but taking precautionary measures was not difficult.

My e-reader was fantastically portable and very durable until I stepped on it. If you have the funds, I say go for it- but it's probably a good idea to find an e-reader which doesn't require that you're limited to a single vendor as the Kindle does. Font size was, indeed, variable and easily changed for comfort. Navigating through and between books was easy and intuitive. This is a technology I'm enthusiastic about, bibliophile or not.

[Ayaan]

Yesterday, I bought a nook, Barnes & Noble's e-reader (http://www.barnesandnoble.com/nook/index.asp). I'm still playing around with it, but so far I like it quite a bit. You can scale the font up and down, change the font, and it saves your place without you having to do anything special. This one also lets you load music on it.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

They're all tools of Satan! They'll lead you down the primrose path to Hell! Damnation hovers in every one of them.


I can't wait 'til I get one.

[leo-rcc]

I love reading e-books, but haven't gotten around to buying a dedicated e-reader. The e-ink screens are very nice and save a lot of energy since it only consumes electricity when switching a page.

[Rum]

Thanks for the comments guys. Looks like the solution to my mom's reading issue!

[tattuchu]

Fuck no! I don't go for that Scientology crap :I-love-pork:

Oh, wait...nevermind

[lpetrich]

You can get e-book-reader apps for your favorite platform - OSX, Windows, Linux, the iDevices, Android, Blackberry, ...

So you don't have to do without in case your e-book reader breaks.

[Rum]

You can get e-book-reader apps for your favorite platform - OSX, Windows, Linux, the iDevices, Android, Blackberry, ...

So you don't have to do without in case your e-book reader breaks.

Yeah, but I am talking about book 'replacement' with big text. B'bery, laptops etc ..plus an 84 year old don't do it. Simplicity is part of the requirement.

[colubridae]

Should you have trouble this may help.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Cd7Bsp3 ... re=related[/youtube]

[klr]

I've thought about them ... but only thought. I have a big library of RL books, and unlike as with my music collection, that is not transferable into electronic format. Buy them all again? "Not bloody likely ..."

I am a True Believer in the idea that traditional books will someday in the foreseeable future become a thing of the past (spot the juxtaposition there ), but until it becomes viable for me, I won't be running to join the bleeding edge.

[Tero]

I have an iPod Touch. I can buy all the kindle books there. But they are not cheap. I only bought one, a short Beatles album by album review.

A bird field guide I bought as an iPod application, as I needed the color pics. The readers are all black and white.

[JimC]

I have an iPod Touch. I can buy all the kindle books there. But they are not cheap. I only bought one, a short Beatles album by album review.

A bird field guide I bought as an iPod application, as I needed the color pics. The readers are all black and white.

The field guide sounds very useful to have available at any time... But I suspect the small screen size of the iPod would get to me for prolonged reading sessions...

One day, I may get an iPad or a Kindle...

[Meekychuppet]

I use Aldiko and Kindle applications on my Dell Streak. They're okay.

[Clinton Huxley]

Just pre-ordered a Kindle 3. I'm quite the modern chap.