What are the advantages of the Kindle over going to the Library?
Isabella Moretti. asked:
I really want a Kindle but the only thing holding my parent’s back is that they think it is a waste of money to buy an expensive device, then have to also pay for the books too on top of that when you can just get free books from your local library? If you agree with my parent’s, don’t answer. I only want some good reasons to convince them. Thank you.
I really want a Kindle but the only thing holding my parent’s back is that they think it is a waste of money to buy an expensive device, then have to also pay for the books too on top of that when you can just get free books from your local library? If you agree with my parent’s, don’t answer. I only want some good reasons to convince them. Thank you.
August 29th, 2010 at 8:58 pm
The Amazon Kindle store offers lots and lots of free books – several thousand, at last count. Most of these are classics, but there are some scifi/fantasy, thriller, romance, and nonfiction titles, too. New free titles appear constantly – just look at the Kindle bestseller list.
There are also TONS of amazing “indie” books out there, mostly priced less than $2.00. I’ve found some really great books for less than a buck that you would NEVER find in a library!
You can do some pretty basic web browsing (google, wikipedia, and the like) and there’s no monthly charge – something you wouldn’t get with, say, and iphone or a netbook.
It might be useful at school – say you need to read “Great Expectations” for a class. With your Kindle, you can highlight and “clip” passages, make your own annotations in the text, and go online to do research. Plus, the book itself is FREE in the Kindle store.
If you’re really into reading (say, you read more than 15-20 books a year) the cost for the Kindle really starts to balance out, as the price for Kindle books is generally much less than the price for a paper book.
Save up your birthday money, do some jobs around the neighborhood, and save up – they’re only $259 now!
September 1st, 2010 at 6:40 am
kindle 2 is not a waste of money it is a treasure of knowledge. take my example it has 2 weeks since i got my kindle and i have already read 9 books. i feel more confident now as it has also improved my reading speed and vocabulary. i think every student should own a kindle.
Amazon kindle 2
Review:As one of the original Kindle’s biggest fans and an owner for over a year, I can speak to the Kindle from two perspectives–the benefits of owning a Kindle, and Kindle 2 improvements (as I’ve now had it for half a day)
The benefits of owning a Kindle (these do not change)
- Absolutely, Jeff Bezos is right that the Kindle ‘disappears’ as you read it…as I read other reviews (and non-user critiques) about the Kindle, this point is often lost. Once you have the Kindle in your hands, you forget everything and become immersed in the content of what you’re reading. Isn’t that really the whole point?
- I read more now that I have my Kindle, 10 years out of college than I did when I was in school, and I really enjoy it. Books look a lot less intimidating when they aren’t sitting on your bookshelf and 3 inches thick. I recently finished Team of Rivals, and I am sure that if I had to read it in book form, I would never have gotten through it because it would have felt so intimidating.
- Heft and weight is a complete non-issue with the Kindle. I like to read in odd positions (in bed, on the couch, on a plane, poolside, shifting around in a lounge chair) and I’ve always had trouble with real books because unless you are in the absolute middle of the book, it always is weighted to one side or another and frankly, my arm and pinkie finger gets tired holding it up. The Kindle is balanced and portable, and entirely usable in any situation.
- I can be in the middle of a lot of different books at once…not much more to say here. You never run out of space on the Kindle, and though it may be a little bit hard to maneuver around a lot of books in your library, it’s still better to have access to all your books at any time.
- I now read newspapers. I always found physical newspapers to be clumsy and take up too much space to actually subscribe to. They are great for short content pieces, but terrible for reading in transit because the pages are so big. I also read some articles on my BlackBerry, but find myself scrolling a lot and waiting a long time for page loads. On the Kindle, you have wireless delivery, easy navigation, no ads, no need to flip to page D17 and find the place where you left off. You also have a searchable/annoted/bookmarked archive of all your newspaper articles if you ever need to find something again.
- All of these things can probably be accomplished with any eBook reader. The difference with the Kindle is that you have wireless delivery of content. This means, literally, that I can be sitting on the plane, start talking about what good books the guy sitting next to me has read recently, look it up on my Kindle, read the reviews and download it before the rest of the passengers have boarded and the plane doors close. This has happened.
- My biggest complaint, which I’m sure will be addressed in due course is that the entire wireless benefit does not exist outside of the US. I have taken my Kindle to Canada, Mexico and China, and I found that I had to (gasp), decide what I wanted to have on my Kindle before I left the US. Foreign language support would also be a plus, but again, I see why this might come later.
Now, onto improvements with the Kindle 2
- There are the obvious ones: sleeker look and feel (it feels solid in your hands), sharper screen, no longer accidentally depressing the next page button by accident and having to find your place in the book again…you can read about these from various sources)
- The 5-way button, though a bit small, allows you to select left and right, and not just up and down like the original version. This is very helpful when you want to select and highlight.
- There are now two layers of interaction…before when you were reading a paper, you could only go back to the previous screen to select the next article. Now, there is an option at the bottom of the screen to skip to the next article when you tire of the current one.
- Page loads are much faster. I can feel that the delay between pages is much less. Only issue is I need to recalibrate now–in general, I try to anticipate how much time it will take the next page to load, and when I’m two lines from the bottom, I would hit the next page button. Now I need to push the button later.
- Text to speech is cloogey, but fun. I’m not sure how useful this will end up being. I tried to have the voice read the user’s manual to me and it paused at commas and periods, but skipped right over hard returns. It also scrolled the page as it was reading, so if you are trying learn English and don’t mind developing a metallic accent, it c
September 4th, 2010 at 12:10 am
The Kindle is a luxury device. Whether its a waste of money or not depends on the person in question. A TV is also a luxury device, but many Americans consider them necessities. Incidently, you also have to pay for that and pay for content to fill it.
To answer your question, the best part of having a kindle over a library is the selection and the immediate gratification. You can get any classic public domain books for free on various sites.
If you really want your parents to go for it what I would recommend is trying to get them to go 50/50 with you. You’ll do chores or otherwise save up the money for 50% of the kindle if they’ll also go in 50/50 with you. It would show a great amount of responsibility (which you’ll need to own one, they break easily) and will also show its something you really want.
September 4th, 2010 at 3:42 pm
Kindle offers a lot of books and also at a cheaper price. Once you buy the book its yours. Again it has such good features like 3G wireless and Text-To-Speech. You can have any newspaper at any place. Paper like display, 1500 books storage and list is on.I love this little magic book.
Amazon Kindle Home
More info on kindle
September 5th, 2010 at 5:40 pm
With the Kindle you can own the books without borrowing them. And there are quite a lot of free books on the Kindle too.
I own the Kindle 2, so let me give you some of my opinions. It is a great device, and I’ve to say I love it! I think I’ve read over 30 books with my Kindle, no glitches so far! And since Kindle books are cheaper than actual books, I think I’ve saved around $120 on buying books already.
One of the reasons I love my Kindle is that it has helped me improve a lot on my efficiency and utilize my time. Before I have the Kindle, waiting time like when I’m waiting for friends or waiting for shuttle bus or some thing like that is simply wasted. Now I just need to bring the Kindle 2 along with me, and all my favorite books are inside it. Another thing I like the most is the text-to-speech function, which means I can “read” books without even holding or looking at the Kindle. Now I like to use this function when I’ve myself busy on some boring things, say when I’m on the step machine or doing some housework…
I like reading and at the beginning I did miss a bit on the feeling of reading books. But now I love to hold the Kindle, the e-ink seems to work very well, it is really like reading books… Now I often read with the Kindle for several hours but I don’t feel tired… And I now prefer to manage all books inside the Kindle rather than my never big enough bookshelf… And like to do bookmarking, annotation, dictionary lookup without any additional thing but a Kindle.
There are quite a lot of free books (tips: if you’re outside the U.S. all the books will have US$2 added, but when you choose to download to computer when you check out, the $2 will be waived, and you can copy the books to your Kindle through USB cable), and many Kindle books, magazines and newspapers are cheaper than the actual paper version. I remember I read these reviews about the benefits of the Kindle when I decided to buy it:
Finally, guess you know, Amazon has recently put a price slash on the Kindle 2, and it is now selling $100 cheaper than the price I got my Kindle, and it adds in international wireless access… So take the chance if you want it.
Hope it helps
September 6th, 2010 at 7:06 pm
I love my Kindle 2 very much. If you’re thinking about getting the Kindle, I’ll say get it and you won’t regret. Right now I’ve read over 10 books with the Kindle, and I really like the idea that I can bring and store all the books with the handy device. Besides, it uses the e-ink technology, it is really clear like reading books; and even I read with the device for long hours, I don’t feel tired. My only complaint is the white case, right now all the Kindles are in white color… I think it will be cool if I can have a black or deep blue color Kindle
I suggest you to read this review from a top reviewer who is also a book lover, it outlines quite a lot of benefits of the Kindle and also why it is worth especially at the end of the review:
And there are some websites like these two, where you can find more than ten thousand free books for the Kindle:
Hope this helps.
September 10th, 2010 at 2:54 am
I recommend you to read this article about the advantages of the Kindle, so you can show to your parents. It is the best review on the Kindle that I’ve ever read (note that the Kindle 2 support PDF natively now):
September 11th, 2010 at 4:23 pm
The Kindle is great, I’ll say.
You may be interested in this article, it mentioned about Amazon Kindle, and other ebook readers by the end of the review:
September 13th, 2010 at 6:52 am
Tell them that it’s good for the environment! Less printed books means less trees being cut down. Also, you have access around 20,000 free ebooks on the Kindle!