Anyone here have a kindle?

I am thinking about saving up my Amazon dollars from surveys starting after Christmas until I have enough to get a kindle. Do any of you have one? Do you like it.pros-cons..? It will take me a lot of surveys and a lot of time to save for this and to me it's a lot of money..I don't want to buy it only to regret the decision..so I would love to ask someone who has one, or has had one.

Not me. I really like books. Not just that they're easy to read. I like the feel of the paper on my hands and the smell of them. I just can't see spending that much for a reader when I could have any book I wanted free from the library.

Of course the one plus of the kindle that I'm jealous of is the instant access. I love that idea. As soon as you want a book, it's in your hands. But you still have to have the cash to buy the download so I'd still have to wait, LOL. And I'd just die if one of the kids dropped it in a sink or let the dog chew on it.

I love/ prefer reading actual books too, however those books take up a lot of space, which I don't have. Our library is a poor excuse for a library....you know I tried to look up books that JJ will need to read for his homeschooling literature course when we start and I can't find any of them on the library's web catalog..and they are classics by Charles Dickens, Herman Melville, etc.. I would love to have this because most of the books I would want/need would be at my fingertips and wouldn't be taking up valuable space which is ins short supply here. I have almost no storage in my house at all.

KellyM wrote:I love/ prefer reading actual books too, however those books take up a lot of space, which I don't have. Our library is a poor excuse for a library....you know I tried to look up books that JJ will need to read for his homeschooling literature course when we start and I can't find any of them on the library's web catalog..and they are classics by Charles Dickens, Herman Melville, etc.. I would love to have this because most of the books I would want/need would be at my fingertips and wouldn't be taking up valuable space which is ins short supply here. I have almost no storage in my house at all.

I'll have to see if I can find it, but theres a website where you can download or read online a ton of the classics for free...

I'm a have the book in my hands type person, but maybe by the time you will have saved up enough giftcards for it, it will have gone down in price. Its definitely a space saver, but its a big investment and then you still have to buy the books and what happens after you read the book...can you sell it back or something? a real book you can turn around and sell it once you are done reading it.

I considered a Kindle, but have decided against getting one. The cost of the books and the possibility of losing them is too great for me. Plus, I hate being tied to a piece of technology. Amazon has Kindle discussion boards and they have it set up so you can find someone in your area who has one and is wiling to meet with you to show it to you. It would be nice if Amazon would give those people a free book or something for doing that, but I believe it's just a voluntary thing.

Ipods and ipod touch have library apps that are free, and I remember them having some classics included.

It's the Gutenberg Project that has free online literature:
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

I prefer my books in my hands too. plus, the extra expense of buying them on the kindle. and its a computer... we ALL know how (un)reliable they are... what happens during a crash.. you loose all yoru books...

I lost well over 2000 books (yes thats thousand) in my housefire. I havent even been able to replace all of BR's louis la'more books yet. Nor the classics- (do you know how expensive the classics are in orginal form? not all PC'd up?? ) OMG..

We had been collecting for years- well before we had kids. I even had all the disney movies. most had ever even been opened. (they were VHS of course, I started collecting in high school ) in anticipation of having kids.

I dont have space either. But we just stacked and stacked. LOL

There was one time when my waterheater flooded the house, it destroyed about 800 books. (well before the fire) luckily they were romance novels and not our really good books. LOL (or I thought at the time... now their all gone. LOL )

But we are always going back and refrencing a book. We will be discussing something, or watching a movie and will go and get the book from the shelf and look through it. I just love the idea of having my books and not relying on technology to look at them.

If BR was an over the road driver I might concider a kindle for him. because of lack of space in the truck- But it would only be for books we read now, like the divinci code, or such. Ones we loan out once we finish with them with out expecting them back (although its always nice when they do come back)

Kristin has a kindle, and I don' like it. The screen is too small, and I can't see to read it.
I also prefer a book in my hand, and even though I have the apps on the ipod touch, i don't use them, too expensive.

I am a real book kinda gal.

I'm the holding-the-book kinda gal too. And I have TONS of 'em stuffed all over the house. I have been getting rid of a lot of quickie-read types of books that I know I'll never want to read again through paperbackswap.com and have been getting a lot of hard to find and out of print classics in return which I absolutely love!

The free public domain downloads are at Project Guttenburg. New books are being added as volunteers enter them. Just do a search and you'll find the site. I'm sure the classics on the reading list will be there.

Two things on the Kindle (no I don't have one). There is a newer model out with a much larger screen, slightly more expensive, but probably worth it to avoid eyestrain. Also there are a LOT of *free* Kindle books available for downloading, again most of them are older public domain books so you may be able to find things you'd like to read or on the reading list that way.

I'm a techie and a gadget freak, but I tend to wait for prices to come down within reason and for all of the early bugs to be smashed and corrected before I make a plunge with my $$.

OTOH just think of all of the real books you could buy for the price of a Kindle! Then trade them via paperbackswap for more books.

Yeah...I am aware that there are free books to read online, the only problem with that is I have a monthly usage limit on my internet..anything over the usage limit and I have to pay .25cents per MB. I know that for the cost of a kindle I could buy a ton of books...but I hate, hate clutter and couldn't stand to have them lying around and I have no space to store them..I also don't want the hassle of swapping them ..I am probably going to have to pick up the first couple on amazon so that we have something to start with..then we will see from there what I can do about the books we need now. I do agree that the model with the bigger screen would be better..it would take a lot longer to save for one though..I dunno...well see...

What about interlibrary loans, Kelly? You go to your library and fill out a brief form and then your library 'borrows' the requested book from another library. It's sent in the mail to your library, then they call you and tell you it's in. I think you have to have it back in a week or two... it's less time than normal. But it's free. So you can check out any book in print that way.

i just got an email today from amazon for a free kindle download to your pc, so that you can download kindle books to your computer instead of buying a kindle.

i BOUGHT MY OLDER NIECE A KINDLE THIS PAST CHRISTMAS.She and her sister and brother have just about anything.I compared the kindle to the sony e-reader and b and n nook,and decided that the kindle was the best for one reason or another.My niece loves ,loves ,loves it.Not only cause she can get a book in a minute,but also because there are tons of free books she can read.You can also download kindle for the pc to sync your files.I got her the portable one 6 " I think,hope this helps

I'm kind of annoyed about the whole macmillan/amazon pricing dispute and what that will eventually mean to Kindle users. Macmillan refused to let amazon price their e-books at the $9.99 rate and briefly pulled all their titles from amazon, even their paper and ink books. So amazon caved and agreed to raise the Kindle rates for Macmillan books (and eventually for other publishers as well).

I can't say what's a fair price to charge, but I DO say that it's unfair to advertise that no books will cost more than $9.99 and then start charging $14.99. What about all the people who already bought the Kindle? They are the ones who got hosed. And personally, I think $10 was already too high. You can't sell your used copy, can't loan it to a friend... might as well just borrow it from the library and get it for free. Now they want twice the cost of a paperback?

i know they are too high,i did hear though that amazon has the cheapest prices from all the e readers. but seriously,they are expensive.It doesn't cost a thing to print either. at least there's always the free ones