Kindle any good

[martysparky]

Was thinking of getting a Kindle to put PDF's on to keep all my stuff in one place and handy etc etc.

Anyone got one?

Are they any good?

 

[Marvo]

Yep, just got one of the small ones and I have to say the screen technology is brilliant. Battery life is staggering. It's thin, light and easily portable. One or two shortcomings, it only has a one gig memory capacity and you can't add-on memory. It will read pdf's natively but you can't select different text size options with pdf. This isn't the end of the world if you grab a copy of 'Calibre' from sourceforge and batch convert your pdf's into mobi files.

All in all a great piece of equipment.

 

[Phil]

they are not bad quite easy on the eye. but tbh for the same sort of money have a look at toys r us the have a couple of cheap elonex tablets in 7" for 99 ish the 10" same sort of size to the ipad is 150

 

[nickblake]

Kindle eh , chopping wood chopping wood , ill see shawn sheehan from britains got talent the kindling king tomorrow night ill ask him.......Mmmm is that wise that im actually admitting to knowing him .. sorry marty ive know idea what they are like , ill ask my apprentics he,s mr gizmo man see what he says , or any thing else he can suggest for you mate

 

[Dorsetspark]

Really good, have put all my pdfs on there, from 7671 to GNs, although these are non-searchable.

Wiring diagrams, Ch setups, the list is endless.

Screen quality is astounding, am going to buy a clip-on light shortly so I can bone-up on the Regs in bed under the covers while the missus is snoring - phwoarrr!

A lot of people say to me "yes but it hasn't got a backlight/better sound, extra memory capacity, get a tablet instead etc etc". The point is it is solely a READER, and that's it, yes you could bolt on lots of enhancements, but then you would have yet another me-too product which does a bit of everything.

Amazon kept it simple and in my opinion got it right. Battery life is astounding too.

And of course it's tax deductable...!

 

[veroni]

I think it is great but not work-wise. I can find something much cheaper doing the same job. I bought it for a private use but it is quite useless at work IMO. See how expensive are protection covers and you will realise the whole investment is just not worth it.

 

[Dorsetspark]

Aaah, those are the expensive ones, designed to lure you into parting with lots of cash. I got a hard case on ebay for £10.00 delivered from the USA.

 

[Zimmer]

In my opinion the Kindle 3 is a brilliant device for reading books and with built in wifi and fantastic battery life for around the £110 mark, I love it.
For anything else including manuals etc it's not so hot nor would I expect it to be.

 

[The_Wanderer]

Sorry to drag up an old thread, but i just bought a kindle... loving it.
But been trying to get technical PDFs to look any good and be of use on it, even tried calibre but still end up messy pdfs and when 1000 pages long and you need to find reg no 123 for example, how?

Would appreciate your tips on how you converted your pdfs etc and use them on kindle. Ta

 

[Dorsetspark]

TW, what do you mean by messy pdfs?
I find the best thing is to make sure the pdf looks good on your pc in Adobe Reader on your pc first, then just connect your Kindle and copy it across either using Windows file explorer or Calibre.

If you have a non *.pdf file to start with, then convert it first using one of the online converters (Google "convert pdf and you will get loadsa choices).

 

[Swicade]

Best use i've found for a Kindle is to keep my missus out of my way and keep her quiet...

 

[Zimmer]

Sorry to drag up an old thread, but i just bought a kindle... loving it.
But been trying to get technical PDFs to look any good and be of use on it, even tried calibre but still end up messy pdfs and when 1000 pages long and you need to find reg no 123 for example, how?

Would appreciate your tips on how you converted your pdfs etc and use them on kindle. Ta

Probably , not what you want to hear.
In my opinion, if pdf's are important, I wouldn't use a kindle at all. As I said earlier, I think Kindle is absolutely brilliant for standard books, but that's it
Keep an eye out for a blackberry playbook, same size, great screen, and great value for money at the moment.
Plug it in and it's just drag 'n drop your pdf's on to it, in brilliant color, great for diagrams etc. as you can zoom with gestures etc.

 

[The_Wanderer]

Ah well i tried just putting PDFs on and yes they go on Kindle just fine, but so small and zooming comes such a pain i tried to "convert" the pdfs to something more readable, tried amazons own conversion, tried default settings on calibre. But i find it ends up a mess?
So you just use them as a normal PDF and do lots of zooming etc?