Benefits of having a Kindle E-Reader

Now that Kindles are available in New Zealand, I thought I would share some of my experience with them.  I have had 2 - the huge benefit is that you can carry around a huge selection of books on a small device which gives you very close to a normal reading experience.  The screen is based on e- ink which means that it reads very much like a normal page.  There is no backlighting like with notebook computers.

I got mine via Amazon - they wouldn't supply directly to NZ at that time.  I made a mistake with my first Kindle in that I didn't buy a protective cover for it.  So my screen froze partially a few months in because it got squished in my handbag.

The second time I got it right.  The Kindle was smaller, cheaper and held up to 3500 books!  The cover I got for it - A Tuff-Luv one - is really excellent.  It even has a little flap that means you can have it standing up on the table in front of you rather than holding it.

While I think Amazon is a great site - I do think their e-books are horrendously over priced.  I also don't like the way they try to get you to put the books directly onto your Kindle and then maintain control of your library.  I avoid this by downloading books to my computer and then transferring them via USB cable to the Kindle.  This means that I have full control of my own library and there is no chance of Amazon being able to check what I have on my Kindle.

You can get e-books from a range of sources.  Many of them will be in formats that the Kindle doesn't support.  Don't be fazed by that.  There is a program called Calibre which you can get for free off the net that will enable you to easily convert those formats to the mobi one that works on the Kindle.


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