David Cantrell wrote

On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 03:58:26PM -0800, Mizter T wrote:

It's an opinion I doubt many on here will share, but I think it's
rather a shame there's now a web browser present on the new Kindle
- I
really liked the idea of a pure single purpose book-like reading
device, unencumbered with the infinite distractions of the web -
the
joy of immersive, long-form, non-hyperlinked reading.

I do *not* share.

A device that only does one thing has to do it a *lot* better than
the
competition to justify carrying it around*. And so I don't have a
Kindle. My phone isn't quite as good at being a book reader, but
it's
"good enough". My ability to use it for the joy of immersive,
long-form
reading is limited solely by how well the author has done his job.

Trouble is, the Kindle makes a pretty damned poor web browser too, so
it still effectively only does one thing, and does it in a very large
device which counts even more against it.

Until screens that roll up or fold up are available the size is
necessary for a pleasant reading experience. The Kindles (and Sonys and
Nooks) are about the size of a thin paperback (original Penguin) and
most of this is screen area. An iPad is still bigger.

Since I have long regularly carried my current paperback in my shoulder
bag this isn't a problem.

I have now read several books on specialised ereader devices and have
enjoyed them.

What you get, built in to the device, is weeks of use between recharges
(if you don't use wireless much), capacity for vast numbers of books (I
have hundreds, having been buying for ten years) search, large print
and Text-to-Speech. If you are not accustomed find 3 or 4 books with
you on holidays and trips not enough this won't mean much and if you
don't buy dozens of books a year the savings there won't be much either


--
Mike D