The Kindle Report
Mar. 30th, 2012 08:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chocolatepot- It is great.
- Many of the things people were complaining about in the 1 star reviews don't bother me at all and I don't even sure how many people they'd be issues for, things like "the sides are too small and it makes your thumbs slip off and hit the page" or "there's not enough contrast between the screen and the type" (which I realize is a real issue for some people when it comes to dark grey on light grey, but the contrast is not at an objectively bad level is my point) or "the screen is too recessed and it makes a slight shadow around the edges".
- Or they're actual your-kindle-is-broken, you-should-return-it issues, like the people who had excessive ghosting.
- There is a slight learning curve to using the touchscreen. It's just tricky to get used to holding your finger down for certain amounts of time if you're not used to it.
- The digitized ebooks in the Kindle Store are much better than the ones in the Nook Store. At least, the ones I picked out for Mom a few months ago had a lot of typos, and the ones I'm looking at now have very few. It just seems like more humans may be involved in the process.
- However, most of my classics are PDFs I've put directly on (nb: don't put them on with Send to Kindle, just copy/paste them into the Books folder on the Kindle like it was a thumb drive). I can definitely see why people who want to look at PDFs created as PDFs on the Kindle are having a problem, but the files from Google Books are book-shaped and need either little zooming in or none at all (at least, if you have vision like mine). I just wish I could decrease the margins of the scanned pages on the actual PDF files, because sometimes there's just too much white space.
- The special offers are mostly not intrusive. Mainly they just come up when it's asleep (but not turned off). Except that when I was trying to put books in collections to make it easier to navigate they kept popping up, but I may have accidentally been hitting the ad at the bottom of the screen.
- It's interesting how the free fantasy ebooks in the Kindle store have covers a million times more professional-looking than the free romance ebooks. I think some of them are actually professional, like books that cost money in physical form are put up for free as ebooks, but even the ones that aren't are still really impressive.
- I'm having a hard time with the idea of paying for ebooks when I have so many free ones, classics and non-classics. I expect it will take me a few weeks.
In conclusion? I strongly recommend it. Unless you know you have a hard time reading dark grey on light grey (like on the search filter sidebar a AO3), in that case you should borrow someone else's and see how it works for you first.
- Many of the things people were complaining about in the 1 star reviews don't bother me at all and I don't even sure how many people they'd be issues for, things like "the sides are too small and it makes your thumbs slip off and hit the page" or "there's not enough contrast between the screen and the type" (which I realize is a real issue for some people when it comes to dark grey on light grey, but the contrast is not at an objectively bad level is my point) or "the screen is too recessed and it makes a slight shadow around the edges".
- Or they're actual your-kindle-is-broken, you-should-return-it issues, like the people who had excessive ghosting.
- There is a slight learning curve to using the touchscreen. It's just tricky to get used to holding your finger down for certain amounts of time if you're not used to it.
- The digitized ebooks in the Kindle Store are much better than the ones in the Nook Store. At least, the ones I picked out for Mom a few months ago had a lot of typos, and the ones I'm looking at now have very few. It just seems like more humans may be involved in the process.
- However, most of my classics are PDFs I've put directly on (nb: don't put them on with Send to Kindle, just copy/paste them into the Books folder on the Kindle like it was a thumb drive). I can definitely see why people who want to look at PDFs created as PDFs on the Kindle are having a problem, but the files from Google Books are book-shaped and need either little zooming in or none at all (at least, if you have vision like mine). I just wish I could decrease the margins of the scanned pages on the actual PDF files, because sometimes there's just too much white space.
- The special offers are mostly not intrusive. Mainly they just come up when it's asleep (but not turned off). Except that when I was trying to put books in collections to make it easier to navigate they kept popping up, but I may have accidentally been hitting the ad at the bottom of the screen.
- It's interesting how the free fantasy ebooks in the Kindle store have covers a million times more professional-looking than the free romance ebooks. I think some of them are actually professional, like books that cost money in physical form are put up for free as ebooks, but even the ones that aren't are still really impressive.
- I'm having a hard time with the idea of paying for ebooks when I have so many free ones, classics and non-classics. I expect it will take me a few weeks.
In conclusion? I strongly recommend it. Unless you know you have a hard time reading dark grey on light grey (like on the search filter sidebar a AO3), in that case you should borrow someone else's and see how it works for you first.
