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Update - my Kindle Touch arrived yesterday and I already love it! Fully charged super-fast with my cell phone's wall charger, connected to my wi-fi easy peasy, already was registered since I bought it online through my existing Amazon account, downloaded the free books I'd added last week to my Amazon wish list, and away we went. It was seamless and so easy. I've never had a touch technology gadget before but the adjustment was a breeze - the merest touch is all you need and navigation is straightforward. No ghosting issues, no skipping about, no flakiness (knocking on wood things stay this way).
The e-ink is easy on the eyes and the brain. For me that was a deciding factor in terms of dedicated e-reader vs tablet. I spend a lot of time at the PC as it is and make a concerted effort to avoid that kind of screen glare/flicker within an hour or so of bed. "They" do say that, in addition to the eye-strain, it can interfere with sleep patterns and that seems to be so for me. So, I'd rather not read on a tablet before bed but the Kindle Touch doesn't interfere in that way.
I just ordered the Kindle Touch with the lighted cover. I like to read in bed but the table lamp is on my right and if I turn over my big fat head blocks most of the light. Hopefully this will be a good solution.
I also love the thought of being able to bring lots of books with me when I go places and pick and choose what I'll read when the time comes. I all too often walk out the door without remembering to grab a book and sometimes wind up scrounging around a thrift store or worse yet making a stop in the bookstore and spending too much money.
With eleven bookcases in my house, 5 of them are 3 ft. wide, the other 6 are 2 ft wide and all are seven ft tall, I am literally out of room for more books and have been working on purging them. So an ereader makes sense in that way too.
I'll let you know what I think of it after I've had it for a bit.
I purchased the first generation Kindle days after it was offered. I eventually gave it to my sister, and it still works wonderfully for her.
My wife has the second generation Kindle, which she continues to enjoy. She has poor eyesight, so the ability to change fonts is a real plus.
I now own:
1. Kindle 3rd generation (wifi + 3g): my workhorse. I love the e-ink technology. Even in its cover it is light. Battery much better than the older versions, so long as you do not keep the wifi on all the time. I usually will turn the wifi on once a day, and within 45 seconds it will have downloaded any new items.
I find Amazon to be very easy to shop. I also love being able to purchase foreign newspapers and have them instantly downloaded (or domestic papers; I occasionally will buy the Friday edition of the Las Vegas paper in order to see who is playing in town that weekend).
2. Nook Color: I use mainly for apps (the number of apps offered continues to grow) and magazines. When it gets too dark outside to read on my Kindle, I switch over to the Nook Color. Fair battery life; I guess that being color, etc., eats more power. I do have a few books on it, and find that it is pleasant enough to read for shorter spells. Some of the magazines are very nice: People Magazine, for instance: while reading you should have the wifi on, for when reading reviews of movies they will have a trailer that you can click on and watch, or hear snippets of new music. Nook Color also has some Showtime television shows you can watch, although I have not done much that way.
3. Kindle Fire: Excellent for watching movies and television shows. I am an Amazon Prime member, so, while at home, I can watch various shows for free (streaming; if you wish to 'download' to the Fire, you pay). I had never, for instance, watched "Sons of Anarchy", but I am working my way through the first season. While home, and working at my computer, I will have the Fire streaming the shows. I have purchased and downloaded some other shows (first season of The Big Bang Theory, for instance) and take to work with me to watch in odd moments. The battery life is rather poor: about six hours of viewing movies. Books: ok. Like the Nook Color, good for smaller periods of time reading. I have purchased just a few apps (like weather app with radar).
I got my Kindle touch on Friday and after a bit of a struggle to remember (find that piece of paper that it's written on) my wifi name and password I downloaded half a dozen books that I'd already put on my wishlist.
Got very engrossed in the first one, Part Wild by Ceiridwen Terrill - about her experiences owning a wolfdog. Didn't feel liking cooking last night so I headed in to town for Italian and brought the Kindle with me. It was so much easier to read at a small table than a standard book so I'm very happy about that.
I also got the lighted cover so that I can read in bed but the last two nights I've been so tired when I hit the sack that I didn't even try to read at all.
I briefly tried out the text to audio feature and while it does not have the quality of a well read audio book, it's a bit more robotic/ stilted, I'm glad I can listen while I clean the kitchen or work on making rag rug. Hopefully this might enable me to get more housework done. LOL.
This particular book has quite a few footnotes and I tapped on one to read it and then could not figure out how to get back to the page I'd been on. Have to research that.
So I am very pleased with this purchase. The tough part will be to limit my spending to a fixed dollar amount each month. When it comes to books I say that "I go to my book dealer the way some people go to their crack dealer or local gin mill".
I'll stop by the library in a day or two and find out first hand how the borrowing of e-books works. I expect that I will cull through many of my books and get lots of popular fiction donated to my humane society or the local thrift store since I can most likely borrow from the library if I should ever want to re-read any of them. Maybe eliminate 2 or 3 of the eleven bookcases in the house and have less to dust.
Ooh, room for a wall mounted big screen TV someday/maybe if I can convince myself that it's OK to buy a new TV even if the one I bought in 1988 is still working just fine.
The Kindle Fire is my first venture into e-readers. I am somewhat of a Luddite when it comes to books, and resisted the e-reader for quite a while.
I Still love to handle a book, and will likely not give that up, but the Kindle does have it good points.
I loaded all my technical manuals in PDF to the fire, it is far superior to use compared to trying to scroll through them in my laptop while at a customer site.
The games and films are an added bonus. The battery life is a bit weak, but having an extra long usb cable makes it easy to find power near a comfortable spot.
I also like the Amazon shopping, and ability to find a book I want to read, and download it when I want.
This particular book has quite a few footnotes and I tapped on one to read it and then could not figure out how to get back to the page I'd been on. Have to research that.
Just tap the top of the screen to bring up the menu bar, then tap the "back" button (the arrow facing left). That should take you back to the page you were on before you jumped to the footnote. It usually has a good memory too so you can jump around the book a few times and then hit the back button a few times to get all the way back to where you were before you started jumping around. It's pretty clever.
The tough part will be to limit my spending to a fixed dollar amount each month. When it comes to books I say that "I go to my book dealer the way some people go to their crack dealer or local gin mill".
I know the feeling! You clearly know about being able to borrow ebooks from the library but, do you know that books copyrighted before 1923 are public domain so, if digitized, they're free? I'm enjoying Wodehouse and Wilkie Collins now - have others in the queue - all free
My husband got me the Kindle Touch for christmas. I was against them because I prefer real books but realized it wouldn't be a bad thing to have. The e-ink screen and the new design was the only reason I considered it more closely. I fell in love with it and gave it glowing reviews HOWEVER I am having issues with it. It started the other day and I didnt put too much thought into as it is a tech device and they all have an issue every now and then.
Today though was the worst. It took a long time to flip pages. It was running really slow. Then it would shut off and reboot itself several times. I thought it was broken. So I googled Kindle Touch is slow and found a 4 page forum on amazon with many people complaining about the Kindle Touch. All stating the same issues I am having. I was told to do a hard reboot which I did and nothing changed. Someone else suggested deleting the welcome letter that comes on the kindle. So I did that. I then did another hard reboot. The kindle is working fine again but now I am starting to wonder if this is just the beginning of bigger issues.
My husband got me the Kindle Touch for christmas. I was against them because I prefer real books but realized it wouldn't be a bad thing to have. The e-ink screen and the new design was the only reason I considered it more closely. I fell in love with it and gave it glowing reviews HOWEVER I am having issues with it. It started the other day and I didnt put too much thought into as it is a tech device and they all have an issue every now and then.
Today though was the worst. It took a long time to flip pages. It was running really slow. Then it would shut off and reboot itself several times. I thought it was broken. So I googled Kindle Touch is slow and found a 4 page forum on amazon with many people complaining about the Kindle Touch. All stating the same issues I am having. I was told to do a hard reboot which I did and nothing changed. Someone else suggested deleting the welcome letter that comes on the kindle. So I did that. I then did another hard reboot. The kindle is working fine again but now I am starting to wonder if this is just the beginning of bigger issues.
Have you updated the software? There's currently a 5.0.3 version out - they are slowly pushing it out to devices but if yours hasn't updated automatically, you can do so manually, instructions are here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/custom...deId=200790650
They also include instructions on how to first check which version you're on.
Alternatively, if it HAS updated automatically, it could be that the update is causing the problem. Contact Kindle Customer Support and they may be able to help by reverting you back to the original software version. Be sure to contact Kindle Customer Support which is different from Amazon Customer Support.
I was pretty skeptical about the two month battery life claimed for the Kindle Touch as when I get reading I tend to do nothing else for days until the book is finished. I figured I would be lucky to get 1/4 of the advertised battery life. To my amazement, I still have a bit of life left from the original charge on Christmas Eve so I got about 1/2 the advertised life and I read for WAY more than the half an hour a day they used to calculate that battery life expectancy.
I read a book on the reader and then started over and am about 1/3 of the way through my second read through, this time with the public highlighting feature turned on. The hardcover version is over 1000 pages. I really like being able to read a book that thick without having to carry 1000+ pages around with me. It is awkward to handle such a large book - it is heavy, difficult to hold open, won't fit in a normal handbag, and it attracts too much attention reading it in public. But on my Kindle, no one knows what I am reading, and strangely, no one asks. If I carry a real book with me I usually get at least one person who comes over, asks me about the book, but clearly has no actual interest as indicated by their eyes glazing over before I can spit out the title. Often they will then announce that they don't read. Then why did they interrupt my reading to ask about the book? I have never understood that but it is quite common.
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All stating the same issues I am having. I was told to do a hard reboot which I did and nothing changed. Someone else suggested deleting the welcome letter that comes on the kindle. So I did that. I then did another hard reboot. The kindle is working fine again but now I am starting to wonder if this is just the beginning of bigger issues. 
I have never understood that but it is quite common.
