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…)

The next killer smartphone feature: a decent battery

Friday, March 18th, 2011

I got an Amazon Kindle for Christmas. I charged it for only the third time yesterday, despite using it almost every day. In fact, my only problem with the Kindle is remembering where I left the charger several weeks ago.

Similarly, I can’t remember the last time I ran out of juice on my laptop. Until a couple of years ago, I could barely complete a train journey home without peering at the Windows battery meter and praying the laptop didn’t abruptly conk out mid-way through a match in Football Manager (I do work on the train sometimes, in case my publisher is reading).

Yet, with the extended battery pack on my Dell XPS M1330, the battery lasts about three or four hours – plenty long enough to get me to and from the office. And by today’s standards, that’s even starting to look pretty feeble. The 13in MacBook Pro lasted for in excess of 10 hours in our light-use battery tests, for example. Like the Kindle, it’s practically reached the point where you barely need to worry about the battery.

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Textbook service from Kindle tech support

Thursday, March 3rd, 2011

Customer service really is rubbish, isn’t it? I mean how often have you rang a support line, or stared into the glassy eyed bubble of human-shaped ignorance that is 98% of this nation’s support staff and seen nothing but the next ten minutes of your life being rolled up and thrown out of the window.

That was my attitude until last night, when I took out my Kindle to discover the top two thirds of the screen had frozen, while the lower third of the screen worked perfectly. It was the Dolly Parton of eBook readers, and I rang Amazon fully expecting to be ushered onto the usual treadmill of pointless questions and obfuscation.

Instead I got Rose and Simon. Not together. They weren’t dueting support queries or anything – though that would be awesome.

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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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How to lend eBooks with your Kindle

Tuesday, January 4th, 2011

One of the major downsides of eBook readers is the price of books — they feel like they should be cheaper than they are. The Kindle’s portability means I take it everywhere, and am therefore tearing through twice as many words as I used to, but the costs are adding up as eBooks aren’t actually cheaper than the average paperback.

With standard paper books, that’s easy enough to get around: just borrow your friend’s copy. However, as with any DRM content, digital books can’t be easily shared — unless you’re happy handing over your Kindle to your friends, possibly not a smart move given the tendency for loaned books to never find their way back home.

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Sick of reading? Five cool things you can do with your Amazon Kindle

Monday, December 27th, 2010

While the Amazon Kindle is pretty handy at reading eBooks, it has a few other functions that help you kill the time between Christmas day and heading back to work after New Year’s. Here’s our top five: let us know any others in the comments below.

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Kindle newspapers: slower than print

Thursday, August 5th, 2010

I’m not a great eBook advocate, but the one thing that might tempt me to splash out on the new UK-friendly Kindle is newspapers. If I could download the latest issue before I jumped on my train every morning, saving me the dirty look from my newsagent when I try and pay for The Times with a £20 note (why do I never have change in the mornings?) then all power to Amazon’s elbow.

So when Amazon opened the doors on its UK Kindle Store earlier today, the first section I headed for was the newspapers.

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Kindle Killer stalks eBook market

Thursday, September 11th, 2008

Jon blogged about the Sony eBook Reader yesterday, which arrived in the office on a bed of rose petals and angel feathers, carried aloft by chanting Seraphim bedecked all in white. Or by grubby postal courier, one or the other, I wasn’t here to check.

 Well I’ve finally managed to wrench it from his cold dead hands after some surprisingly challenging gladitorial comabt and will be writing up a review in the next couple of days. But almost to the second I laid the killing blow on Jon, my wandering eye caught sight of a potential rival, the Plastic Logic reading device, and I’ll be honest I’m already worried for my lovely little Sony.

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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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