Amazon Kindle Fire review: first look

Tuesday, January 24th, 2012

When Amazon launched the Kindle Fire last year, it made the rather irritating decision not to bring it to the UK at the same time. The rotters didn’t even let us have the Kindle Touch, leaving us with the (admittedly excellent) fourth generation Kindle. If the rumours are to be believed, however, changes are afoot, and with the UK braced to receive Amazon’s latest baby, we’ve managed to get our hands on an import to see what’s what.

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The best free books to read on an Amazon Kindle

Thursday, December 29th, 2011

There are so many free books available for the Kindle that you never need spend anything more once you’ve bought the device. You have the entire canons of out-of-copyright writers such as Oscar Wilde, all the Sherlock Holmes adventures you’ll ever want to read, plus a myriad of other freebies. And in a way, those other freebies are the more interesting.

Some of the books are honeypots from professional authors, hoping to lure you into their 23-part series that tells the life story of an amazing spy/explorer/dancer/footballer. There’s nothing wrong with this, just go into it with your eyes open.

Some are only briefly reduced to free as a promotion, before being shoved up to full price. You can keep an eye out for such promotions by entering your email address at www.ereaderiq.co.uk (this site also provides a slightly clumsy search mechanism for finding free books).

Then there are some that barely qualify for the terms “books” at all. O’Reilly, for instance, produces a number of very short publications about technology that feel more like extended articles. (more…)

Don’t send the developing world PCs: send them Kindles

Monday, February 21st, 2011

I was in India recently, spotting tigers in the jungle. I was about five hours north of Nagpur in Central India, which is a bit like pointing to the moon and telling somebody to take a left. There was no internet access, my mobile phone worked sporadically, and the nearest village was so poor there was a hint of Hollywood to it. You know, the kind of place where you start thinking “children in rags carrying water home from a well 3km away, I’m not falling for that.” Or “fifteen people living in a house with their cow and chickens, pull the other one.”

Nobody’s that poor, not really, because if they were that poor Bob Geldof would immediately start singing at them, and if that’s not reason enough to be upwardly mobile then nothing is – I mean, look at Ethiopia. The entire country gave up famine just to get him to bugger off.

So I’m waiting in this village for my lift to arrive, reading my Kindle to pass the time, and all of a sudden I look up to discover about 20 kids stood in a big group, just watching me: big eyes, curious expressions, ridiculously cute and all intent on the Kindle.

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Why Kindle eBooks are outselling paper on Amazon

Saturday, January 29th, 2011

Amazon has very excitedly shared a couple of stunning stats with the world. First, sales of eBooks overtook new paperbacks for the first time, after doing the same for hardcover books last year. Second, it rang up a whopping $13 billion in sales.

I find this fascinating, as my own book buying has mirrored this very trend, with eBooks overtaking paper titles of any kind since I bought a Kindle in November.

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Amazon Kindle step-by-step: buying a book

Wednesday, October 6th, 2010

This is going to be one of the shortest posts I’ve ever made on the PC Pro blogs. Not because I’m being lazy, but because what I’m about to show is so simple. If you’ve read our definitive review of the new UK-specific Amazon Kindle, you’ll know that purchasing a book on the device is child’s play. What I’m going to do here is step through the process to show you just how little effort you have to put in…

1. Hit the Menu button and the Shop button is already pre-selected. Your account details are already installed on the device before the Kindle is shipped to you. (more…)

Amazon Kindle vs Sony Reader Touch: how do they handle PDFs?

Wednesday, September 29th, 2010

The latest generation of eBook readers from Amazon and Sony proves that, finally, the technology has come of age. They boast the latest E Ink screens with improved refresh rates, and a whole lot more besides. The Kindle, in particular, with its built-in Wi-Fi and 3G turns the consumption of novels into a totally new experience.

But there’s a hidden side to these eBook readers. They’re often used to consume dense, technical or academic material, usually in PDF format, and these documents are often awkward, containing diagrams, figures organised in tabular form and text organized in columns.

In the US the Amazon Kindle DX covers this sort of scenario perfectly, but over here you’re stuck with the smaller devices, so it’s critical that zoom features, text reflow and panning are easy to use. We’ve already noted in our full length review that the Sony Reader Touch PRS-650 does all this well, and better than the Amazon Kindle at that, but at the request of a handful of readers (human ones), here’s a more in-depth analysis and comparison. (more…)

Hands on: Sony’s superb Reader Touch

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

“I want my books to be made of paper, to have a spine, and a cover. I like the feel of them in my hand”

This was the first comment I heard this morning when I returned to the office after visiting the British Library to play with Sony’s new Reader Touch. As an eBook advocate, I’ve been hearing this refrain ever since the original Sony PRS 505 dropped on my desk last year. People who like to read adore paperbacks. They’re cheap, perfect at what they do and are pleasingly tactile. We like how they feel, the way they smell; we like to run our hands over them in a book shop.

eBook readers have failed to convince because books don’t need upgrading. It’s brilliant that an eBook reader can hold 350 books, but the majority of people don’t carry around 350 books. The majority of people won’t read 350 books in their lifetime. If eBook readers are going to break out of their niche and really scar the public psyche they need to start offering useful features their paper brethren don’t. And with the curtain raised, let me usher the Sony Reader Touch to centre stage.

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Getting started with eBooks

Thursday, July 23rd, 2009

If you’re in the market for an eBook reader and are baffled by the dozens of models on offer then hopefully I can help. Having reviewed a good number of the eBook readers on offer in the UK, I’m well placed to help you wade through the morass of marketing terms, claims and sheer nonsense that comes with every launch.

The first thing to note is that the UK eBook market isn’t actually as packed as it first appears. In fact it can be boiled down to the Sony PRS 505, the iRex range and the rest. And when I say “rest” I’m talking about the BeBook, Cool-er, Cybook Gen 3 and the Elonex eBook now on sale through Borders. Don’t be fooled by the slight modifications to their cases; beneath the exterior they’re all essentially the same device.

Basically, manufacturers buy the reference design from US-firm Netronix, tweak the hardware and software, slap their name on the case and sell them on. Currently at the top of this pile of identi-books is the Cool-er which is based on Netronix’s latest spec and so boasts double the RAM of its compatriots, a nicer screen and a faster processor making it noticeably nippier than the rest. If the Cool-er’s lurid colours and dedication to sexing up reading aren’t to your taste, then I suggest you take a gander at the elegant Sony PRS 505 – which sits at the top of our A List.

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The Kindle Swindle? It’s the book publishers who are conning themselves

Monday, March 2nd, 2009

Luddites of the world unite – you have a new leader. Step forward Roy Blount Jnr, a man who has one too many Os in his surname, in my opinion.

Blount is the president of the US Authors Guild, and last week wrote an opinion column for the New York Times entitled The Kindle Swindle? Blount argued that the new Read-To-Me feature of Amazon’s latest eBook reader was akin to the end of mankind as we know it; a computerised text-synthesiser that was going to leave the audio book industry as burnt out as a carelessly parked Porsche on a South London council estate. 

“You may be thinking that no automated read-aloud function can compete with the dulcet resonance of Jim Dale reading Harry Potter or of authors, ahem, reading themselves,” Blount argued.  ”But the voices of Kindle 2 are quite listenable.” 

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Ebooks: A bad idea getting worse

Friday, July 25th, 2008

Don’t get me wrong, I quite like technology. I’m the kind of person who’d be admiring the massive metal foot of the Terminator even as it stomped my skull into the dirt. But when it comes to eBooks, not only am I not sold, I’m sat on the shelf hiding my price tag behind my back and shooing people on towards the muffins opposite.

And it’s not just that the entire eBook market is beset with ridiculous proprietary formats, clunky readers and expensive texts being pushed by companies whose only knowledge of books is a hazy memory of drawing moustaches on sperms in science class. Even Amazon, which built an empire on the blighters, seems to have forgotten why we love them – digital texts cost more than paperbacks, you can’t share them and its reader looks as if it were built in 1893 and runs on steam. Amazon, quite contrary to its claims, doesn’t have an eBook strategy so much as a series of really bad ideas all lined up in a row.

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