Pirate's Cove

So, I’m over at Andrew Sullivan’s spot, just to see what craziness he may be up to. Plus, to be honest, I enjoy the pictures he posts. He has a couple posts up about the Kindle and Ebooks, which leads to this post by Kindle skeptic Rob Horning

Amazon has released a new Kindle.It costs $359. I don’t know why anyone would buy that piece of crippleware when you can buy a netbook for the same price or cheaper and get unlimited functionality. (I suppose if I had experienced the magic of the Kindle’s no-backlight technology, I wouldn’t dismiss it so glibly.) Even in his effort to champion the device, Joel Johnson revealsits inherent limitations: “While the new model now has 2 gigabytes of memory onboard, seven times as much as the old Kindle in storage terms, it no longer has the SD flash memory card slot that made it possible to keep a library of tens of thousands of books on the device at once. While my library never really grew that big (having even a few hundred books began to make getting around in the menus somewhat awkward), knowing it could went a long way towards tickling my desire for the world’s entire written history to be in my pocket at all times.” The Kindle is not apparently meant to be the book that subsumes all books; it appears to become clumsier to use the more you load onto it. In practice, it seems a novelty gadget for travelers who want respite from their laptops, but are too indecisive to settle on what book to bring on the plane.

As a Kindle owner (I thought I had a post about it, if so, can’t find it,) I do have to agree that it may be a bit expensive for the average reader, but over time it pays off, if you read a lot. I use it quite a bit for non-fiction, books not available at the library, and typically save about $10-$20 per book. So, for the 15 non-fiction books or so I have bought, I have saved a minimum of $150 in less then a year. Besides, I used part of ye olde stimulus check to get it.

There are places all over where one can get free books, Blog Kindle being a good place to start. Follow on to this post on places to get content, both free and paid for. Then, let’s move on to Hack Your Kindle: 100+ Tips, Resources, and Tutorials to Read Better and Learn Faster.

Yeah, you might get more use out of a netbook for around the same price, but, that isn’t really the point. People are either going to be in to it or not. Will it replace paper books? Not for me. I still like to read, either by buying them or getting them from the library, paper books that are fiction. I often read them multiple times. But one of the nice things with the Kindle is not just the massive content, but that you can download a preview and decide if you like the book or not.

If you do not want to spend that much, there are plenty of other readers outthere. You can do it on your iPhone or smartphone, if you have one. You can have book sized ones and PDA sized ones. Personally, I like the design of the Sony’s, but, there is way more content for the Kindle, and more formats for the Kindle.

What’s on mine? Lot’s of non-fiction, new and old, some paid for, some free. Probably about 30 or so fiction books, many are classics, such as Dracula, The Time Machine, and War of the Worlds. I use it to access basic Internet at times, particularly Bloglines. Extravagance? Maybe. But, it works for me. I can often get books that are out of print and/or unavailable anymore. And, sometimes, I am glad I did not buy the book. Bernie Goldberg’s latest, A Slobbering Love affair, was not very good, and I would have been annoyed had I paid full price (well, almost full price, since I have discount cards for Borders and Barnes and Nobles) for them.

You can pay for delivery of newspapers and blog post, but, better, you can get them in RSS format, so, download and read on the way to work if you are not driving. You can use it with Yahoo Messenger. You can use the Wireless to GPS where you are on Google Maps. Change the font size.

Want more? How about 30 Benefits of Ebooks?

And, PS, if you decide to buy one, click the link below. Hint hint s–