Saturday, July 24, 2010

Kitty Bought an E-book Reader

Since June my family has suffered a series of illnesses, I've been spending a lot of time in waiting rooms and ERs. Usually this drives me crazy, I'm not a patient person. So I decided to buy myself a gift that would ensure I don't pace and drive people crazy.

I bought an E-reader so I will not be caught without something to read. I don't like buying things that I can't touch before hand. That left the Kindle out because you have to buy it to try it. Then too you can only buy books from the Kindle store. Too limiting with all the e-publishers out there. Plus the Kindle is still pretty expensive.

Mom has a Sony, and I like it alot but it doesn't have WiFi. It needs to be hooked up to the pc to download books. That said, I used it for the first week of hospital visits and really like it.

Which leaves Nook and the iPad. iPad is too expensive and it's a first generation device. I don't do first generation anything, not software, not cars, not electronics. I'm not an early adopter. Knock the bugs out of it for a while.

There is a Barnes & Noble in E-town, so I went down to take a look at the Nook. I bought the WiFi version because I have WiFi in my house and it saved me $50. Now for some reason the salespeople didn't think I could connect my Nook to my WEP secured WiFi.

The only problem I had was finding where I hid my WEP key.

What I like is the WiFi and the fact that it will surf to different book sites. The touch screen is handy. (Easier to use than my stupid touch phone.)  I like having different fonts and font sizes. The operating system is Android - that means the possibility of apps in the future. (Kindle App anyone?)

The book selection isn't bad at http://www.bn.com/, prices are a bit high and there aren't a whole lot of back listed books. But unless we are talking Project Gutenberg there aren't going to be a whole lot of back listed books anywhere.

I can pick up Joe Konrath's book from his website. I haven't tried Smashwords or http://www.fictionwise.com/ yet. The magazines and newspapers are all big city, nothing local is available.

Then I tried to go to the Project Gutenberg to fill it up. No luck with that. The books should have downloaded, but I couldn't find them. Same thing with documents. I'd like to try to read one of my novels to see what fonts work the best.

I didn't buy a memory stick for it. I did buy a silicon case and the warranty. Trouble has developed a taste for electronics - notably the cordless phone and my idi10t cell phone which were stashed under the bed.

One of these days I'll rant about my id10t phone. I'm sure that it will be amusing. Meanwhile I've got a series to finish - Karen Moning rocks!

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