h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi guys,

My wife has been told by her optician that an e-book reader would be good for her. I don't think he's a rep. But I have never looked into these before so naturally I need your input please including (but not limited to):

1) How they actually work- I know you download e-books, but do you download them on to the device itself?
2) What are the pros/cons of different makes and models?
3) Any personal recommendations?

Ta

Here's a previous conversation on the subject:

F16034?thread=8139678

Broken link Icy?

Weird, that should work properly in Pliny

F16034?thread=8139678

There, all fixed now.

It worked for me the first time.

In one of the old skins? Yeah, it works there but there was a problem with the APIs for Pliny that stopped them working on the new skin.

A bad programmer blames his APIs...

Dude, you should see these. I wish I could, but they're compiled and we don't have the uncompiled versions

We had decompilers when I was a lad.

To be honest, it's not worth it. They're fundamentally flawed, I've been spending most of the week in the database checking it all with an eye to replacing/updating it, and it's a total mess.
It was set up to be singular, then multisite, then part of the over all beeb structure, and now back on its own.
Next step is to create a new, properly optomised database database and a new set of decent APIs.

People with very poor vision might benefit from e-books because the print can be made any size you want. Trouble is, by the time your vision has gone that far downhill, you may be resistant to trying anything that new.

I didn't have anything to contribute to the linked discussion, but I can contribute to this one as I now have a kindle and I love it to bits.

It's the "old fashioned" one with no bells and whistles, so no keyboard, it's black & white, limited internet access. But I find it really simple to find and buy books and lovely to read. It weighs no more than a standard paperback and has nice side buttons for page-turning with barely a flick of your thumb.

I have a little flexible light I can clip on to read in the dark, but to be honest, that's what my bedside light is for so I've never used it. I suppose if you share bedroom space backlit might be useful.

Deb

The ones with keyboards are the old fashioned ones.

I'm on my third as I damaged the screen, then they sent me one with a non working right page turner, and now my left page turner has broken. Gah.

As to question 1)

Yep, you usually can download books directly to the e-reader itself with just a wifi connection. Some come with wireless connections so you may not even need wifi.

As to which one to get, well that depends on some personal preferences. Obviously the Kindle is the biggest kid on the block. You'll get the largest choice but with that comes some slightly draconian DRM. Amazon has been known to delete purchased books from users devices when they felt they had somehow violated copyright rules, like taking their device to other countries.

If you want to read free books, you may prefer to get one that works well with EPUB format. The Gutenberg project offers free public domain books in a few limited formats so that's something to consider. I have a tablet, so I have multiple e-book reader apps including Kindle, Google books and one other (the name of which escapes me right now and my tablet is in the car) just for epub and other free formats.

As for vision, Kindle has a couple of options. Their original version may be quite good for limited vision, but it might be worth checking out their Paperwhite version as it's significantly brighter and has smoother backlighting.

I have a Nexus 7 which is an android tablet.I can use the provided reader app with Google store and I can use the Kindle app which allows me to download ALL my kindle purchases over WiFi from the Kindle online shop.

There are many ways to get hold of ebooks and another PC software Calibre will allow you to download a variety of different formats which you can then convert to the ebook format of your choice.Also it's possible to transfer via a USB cable both to Nexus and to a Kindle.

I've an Android tablet (Samsung Galaxy tab 2 10.1) which has Kindle app, and other ebook thingies. My mum took a shine to it, bought herself a newer version, which is even lighter, and uses it for all sorts of things including reading. She found her local library also offers e-books. So she's ahead of the game.

Mum is 84 this year.

Oh, and my tablet has now virtually paid for itself, if I discount the money I'd have spent on reading paperbacks.

We did look at Kindles, but couldn't see any advantages over tablets.

sorry, the above post was from me

The main advantage of Kindle (and some, but not all) other readers is the very extended battery life one gets with e-ink type displays. Not having to charge your "book" every night is a nice feature.