New Kindles coming

I have been enjoying my Kindle enormously. I have the Kindle 3g which has a keyboard. I was sceptical at first but I have been won over. It is especially useful for books I don’t especially want to keep on a shelf for reference. It is perfect for more ephemeral book. I use it for periodicals.

I use both the text and text to voice options. I plug it into my stero when I am doing chores. The reading is machine-like but it ain’t bad.

Did you know that you can lend books from one Kindle to another? You can highlight something you read on your Kindle and then tweet it to your followers?

The newest Kindles amazon is putting out run on a new technology. There is new generation of Kindle, Kindle Touch, and a new Kindle Fire with color. The Kindle Fire is more like a tablet, like an iPad, and it has a new browser that runs on cloud technology which is apparently very fast.

KindleThe new generation Kindle Touch, however, without a keyboard is 30% lighter and weighs less than 6 ounces and is 18% smaller body but with the same 6″ screen size. It also allows one to borrow books from the local library. Gotta see how that works. [see UPDATE, below]
In any event, if you are going to take the plunge into a Kindle, it might be good to do it now (and do your very early Christmas shopping). I received my Kindle as a gift from a reader here and I have really enjoyed it.

I now have a Kindle wishlist, by the way. Do you?

Did you know you can lend books to another person’s Kindle?

USA only, click HERE to pre-order a Kindle Fire.
To order a simple Kindle Touch HERE or the top end with free 3g HERE.
For the Kindle 3G with the keyboard (the one I have now) click HERE.

UPDATE 2031 GMT:

I did some checking and found that a zillion libraries in the USA, which can lend e-books via Overdrive, can now lend to Kindles. Very cool. I have done this with some library books using Overdrive in the past on my iPad. Having the option for Kindle is great.

The college text book option would be revolutionary, no?

Many of Pope Benedict’s book are available on Kindle, by the way.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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8 Comments

  1. APX says:

    It also allows one to borrow books from the local library. Gotta see how that works.
    Do you know if it’s just public libraries, or does it work for university libraries too? I doubt it, but that in and of itself would pursuade me to purchase it, as I probably spend more time and money visiting the university libraries in the city than I would on a Kindle. How universities get away with charging students $5/hr for parking (which is a 20 minute walk one way from the library building to begin with) is beyond me. It’s actually cheaper to not pay and get the parking ticket, but now I’m ranting and digressing.

  2. Iowander says:

    I’m a college professor, and I really wish they would put textbooks in Kindle/Nook/Whatever format. Right now, all of the major publishers use CourseSmart for e-Textbooks, and the CourseSmart software (for the web, iPad, etc.) is really really bad. And, you pretty much have to have a constant Internet connection to use it. I hate it. It’s better than lugging a bunch of books between home and the office, but I still can’t really do without at least one hard copy of each book.

  3. Iowander says:

    APX, it depends on which e-libraries your university uses. From my experience, the answer is usually no. Most of our available e-books use EBL or Ebrary, neither of which seem to work with Kindle or Nook.

  4. skull kid says:

    I am looking forward to the Kindle Fire coming to the UK. Apple’s products are over-priced and I can’t afford them, but the Amazon products are much more affordable.

  5. Father, be honest, didn’t we buy you a perfectly nice Kindle earlier this year?

  6. manwithblackhat: A kind reader did send me a Kindle, yes. I have mentioned that on the blog at other times. I am not sure about the date of the Kindle’s advent, but judging from the date of the first download, I believe it must have been April 2010. I can’t imagine I took it out of the box and didn’t download something immediately. That doesn’t sound like me at all.

    Renewed thanks to the person who sent it!

  7. The Kindle Overdrive thing allegedly loans out to all Kindle devices, but that apparently includes a lot of apps and the Kindle for PC software. Haven’t tried it out yet, but the library Overdrive has turned into very useful software, so I anticipate no problem.

  8. JaneC says:

    I wait with bated breath for the day when university libraries and textbook publishers abandon outdated and difficult-to-use services like Ebrary and switch to Kindle and Nook-compatible formats like everyone else. As a grad student who is working far away from my university, this is a frequent source of frustration. When it takes longer to turn the page in your “e-reader” than it takes to actually read the page, something is wrong! [I am not sure which e-reader you use, but that is not the case for me with the Kindle.]

    I would love to have a Kindle. If only it were more useful to me.

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