Thursday, May 10, 2012

Finally bought a Kindle

Well, I finally broke down and bought a Kindle. I have a Nook, but don't have a lot of books on it. Barnes & Noble used to notify me when they had free ebooks - usually a new one every Friday, but they quit sending out emails, and I don't have the time to go to their site and sift through every free ebook they have looking for the new ones. The Nook is also a little heavier than I like to hold in order to read - which is why I bought an easel cover for it, so I could prop it on the desk/table to read. But it's also really slow to start up, and I don't like the fact that it's easier to download the ebooks to my computer, and then I have to manually transfer them to my Nook by hooking it up to my computer, opening up Adobe Digital Editions or Nook for PC and moving the ebooks from those apps to the Nook itself.

I looked at the basic Kindle online, and then I noticed that they had them at WalMart, and WalMart was offering a $30 gift card with the purchase of the basic Kindle ($79 with the advertising when you aren't reading a book, I can deal with that). Since Mike works there, we get a 10% discount, so between his discount and the gift card, my Kindle ended up costing me $41.10 (and that's a deal I couldn't pass up). So I got it, took it home, hooked it up to the computer, it found our wireless internet, I registered it, and voila, all my ebooks that I had gotten from amazon were on it without me having to do anything at all. And all those free ebooks I get every day from the groups I've joined on Facebook? Not only do they show up in the Kindle for PC app on my computer, they're also on my Kindle, automatically. So I can either get the ebooks online from my computer or I can shop from my Kindle, whichever is easiest for me, and I have the books in both places, to read wherever is easiest for me.

Sorry Barnes & Noble, if I had known all that when I bought the Nook, I never would have bought the Nook. Amazon just has a wider variety of books for ereaders than you do, and a lot more free ebooks than you do. I already have 450 books on my Kindle and I've only had it a week (of course, I've been getting books for the Kindle for PC for a couple of months now, so that could have something to do with it). But I've had Nook for PC for a couple of years, and I've had my Nook for over a year, and I have less than 100 books on it, so that tells you something about the availability and affordability of books between Amazon and B & N. Of course, most of the books I have for my Kindle are from new authors, but they're still good books, at least in my opinion (and I think I should know, I've probably read 4 or 5 thousand books in my lifetime).

So, if anyone is looking for an ereader, I can highly recommend the basic Kindle, especially if all you want to do is read books.