Are e-readers still too underdeveloped to be worthwhile?

Miyazaki

Someone has been reading what hi-fi again.

Peridot

I do find that the displayed text is sharper when ebooks are transferred using the USB cable rather than over wireless. I'm wondering whether a more expensive cable might deliver even better depth and definition

confused88

I don't have a Kindle but  I use the PC and iPod edition.
I recently had a problem with a couple of my books. Some characters were not displayed properly. Amazon acknowledged that the error is due to a bug on the PC edition of Kindle and offered me a refund but admitted that there is no solution at present. It's funny that the problem emerged only after a Kindle software update.
Quite a disappointment! Not something that would happen with a real book, unless you spill too much coffee on it.

gavan

Absolutely - I have a special USB cable made by muchkins with golden hairs spun from a unicorn and with three special markings on the connector at the PC end (to further enhance word separation) which I am willing to sell to you for a bargain three grand.

Pecker

For those having books delivered to their Kindle wirelessly, did you remember to de-ionise the air first?

I forget the other day, and my copy of Shakespeare’s King Lear arrived as last Thursday's Scottish edition of The Sun.

Steve W

Pecker

I'll admit it - I now prefer reading on my Kindle to reading the 'real' book.

The big drawback is that it's more difficult to flick forwards or backwards to a page at random.  Unfortunately I've downloaded lots of free short story collections from Gutenberg, and lots of these have no table of contents.

The only other problem is that I don't have my entire library on the Kindle, and replacing my books will prove to be costly.  It's not quite as easy as ripping your CD collection to an mp3 player.

But for everything else the Kindle is easier to hold and page turn, and having your entire library there in front of you for reference is (or would be) excellent.

Bottom line, I've read more since Christmas than in the previous year.

Steve W

FZR400RRSP

The ibooks app is what stopped me buying a kindle.
It's a superb app, I use it on a daily basis.
You say the kindle blows it out of the water, but enough of an improvement to make it worth me carrying a kindle and an iphone on a plane?
Nah, don't think so.

Pecker

The thing that would swing it for me is visibility.  One of the major times that I read is on holiday.

Any system where I cannot read a book on the beach or by the pool if it's too sunny is a complete non-starter for me.  Even if one system was substantially worse than another, if I couldn't read easily and comfortably in bright weather, then I wouldn't even consider it.

Having seen my mate's i-phone in the sun, I'm afraid it didn't register at all on my list of potential e-readers.

Steve W

gavan

You'll presumably be carrying an iPhone in your pocket anyway so it's not a case of either/or.

For me, the enhanced reading experience of eInk  is more than worth the very minor hassle of carrying my Sony reader with me when I'm flying or travelling generally.  You can read books on a small smartphone screen but it's really sub-optimal.  Better than nothing I suppose but it would be a waste of money to buy books just to read on the phone screen.

confused88

The iBook app is fine but the Kindle store is the better store.
For one thing there is more variety in the Kindle store, at least for now.
Furthermore iBooks is limited to the iphone\iPad but Kindle works pretty much on any device.