Kindle, should I get one?

[SayItWithChocolate]

never really fancied a kindle but one thingchanging my mind is that I order a lot of my books from amazon and then I have to faff waitinf for the stupid royalmIL to deliver them and it can take upto a wweek but with kindle it would be minutes. are they a good buy?

I love my kindle (got it as a Chrsitmas pressie)

Personally I would not like it without a cover of somekind though to make it feel more book like iyswim.

There are some cheaper covers out there than the official ones

When my battery went the other night (always at the best part of a book ) I had to read a "proper" book and was not used to reading the left hand page

Worried that it might be like looking at a computer screen which makes me bug-eyed after an hour. Its the only thing that puts me off. I tend to read late at night and I can be tempted to read past the shipping news.

Can anyone tell me if it affects their eyes after a while?

definately not like looking at a computer as there is no glare off the screen iyswim.

I think John lewis have kindles in some stores, so you can always have a look first....

Op - Yes.

bibiane I've get poor eyesight and dry eyes and find reading on my kindle kinder on my eyes than reading a book.

Definitely kind on the eyes, and you can change font size and spacing between lines. I find that really useful if my eyes are really tired or I've lost my glasses

Clangermum - I'm sure you're right about Amazon replacing the books, but you've still got to pay for another kindle. However, perhaps not everybody is as careless as me (speaking as someone who's ruined not one but two ipod shuffles by leaving them in the pocket of my jeans when I put them in the washing machine.

Yes, I'd hate to leave mine in public

the embarrassment of some of the stuff I'm reading too....

PESTO thank you for that. Yes it is expensive but gorgeous. And my birthday is coming up...(!)

What about the fact that you don't actually "own" the books you buy, as such? In 2009 everybody who had "bought" a copy of Orwell's "1984" found that it had been deleted from their Kindles by Amazon, as it had discovered that the subcontractor selling it didn't have the rights to it.

Here's the thought-provoking article:

www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jul/22/kindle-amazon-digital-rights

As the article points out, ironic that it was "1984".....

The kindle is wonderful for going on holiday as it saves so much weight. All the classics are free so I am catching up on some I missed during my youth. The kindle cover with the light is great for insomniacs so as not to disturb DH. I miss the feel of a book and dislike the fact that all the books look the same, no cover, own typeface etc. I still buy books and use the library. Why can't we have it all?

I'm not that bothered about the not owning them in the sense that I give 90% of my paperbacks to charity shops as soon as I've read them anyway, so they are only a temporary sort of ownership. I would be a bit miffed if Amazon suddenly took them away without asking though.

Can I ask a silly question about Kindles? Do they connect direct to Amazon, and do you need to do anything ot set them up?
I have given up trying to persuade my mother onto the internet but I wondered if this would be an alternative, as she finds it hard to get to the library these days.

You need to be able to go online to download the books - or maybe you would do that for her?

You could get her to ring up and find out whether her library does downloaded books on the Sony Ereader - it's the same principle but a different system from Kindle, as far as I can gather. I think you don't pay, but you only borrow the book for a few weeks.

If she bought an E-Reader rather than a Kindle i think she may be able to buy online books from other places, but not Amazon cos they only sell to their own system.

Please somebody tell me if I have this wrong!.....for some reason it's not that easy to find out.