Am 03.03.2011 um 13:01 schrieb a@aboq.org:
On Thursday, March 2011 at 11:21:39 (GMT +0100), Keith J. Schultz:
I personally will not shell out no more that $ 50 for a dedicated reading device.
I believe that's being rather petty and unreasonable, at the cost of your own reading pleasure, and very likely also your eye-sight, which is a precious thing. Reading on a Kindle device strains your eyes far less than staring at an LCD screen. It depends on your screen and settings. I have had glasses since I was a young kid. Since I used computers for decades and at times 24 a day. Doc says my eye is as good as ever. It even did get better. Then again I have always had large screens.
I'm not wealthy by any means, but I happily shelled out hundreds of dollars for earlier Kindle versions. Therefore, the current low price of $139 seems like bread-crumbs to me, and I can't understand how anyone who truly loves literature can fail to pay that low price to get a Kindle. ;-)
I am not into literature as one might say. The price has do with thier function. DVD-players and Blu-rays are cheaper! Take a look what you can do with an iPad what you can not do with a Kindle! Then you will understand. That screen of theirs is not worth that much!! Yes, I know the screen are the most expensive part!
Yes, $139 is for the small-screen Kindle, but that's still radically better than reading on a laptop. And, for reading on-the-go or in direct sunlight outside your home, the $139 Kindle is an unbeatable deal. (I do prefer the large Kindle DX for reading at home, because there I can also set the font to be of a comfortably large, but not huge, size -- which is another boon for your eye-sight.)
Thanx for proving my point about small screens!
Personally, I would suggest the iPad.
The iPad is great for reading after it gets dark. But, in daylight, nothing beats a Kindle, while it would seem kind of silly to me to stare at a back-lit screen for many hours every day while there is ample light all around you, from natural sources.
[snip, snip] The Kindle app is still available
But the Kindle app for the iPad/iPhone is extremely low-quality. I don't recommend it; just use Stanza instead. In addition to the outrageously wide margins, wasting lots of the iPad's screen real estate, the Kindle app does *not* offer the same functionality as the hardware Kindle. As a good example, when you want to highlight a passage in the Kindle app stretching over several pages, this is not possible in the Kindle app, and the passage you highlighted will break into 2. In contrast, on the hardware Kindle, highlighting a passage across pages works flawlessly. I wonder why amazon produces such poor software!! Wonder, Wonder. You might be be surprise if the software was as good on an iPad! Wonder, wonder!! ;-]
regards Keith.