Kindle anyone?

Anyone have experience with a Kindle? The wife wants one for X-mas. Should I go for the regular kindle or the high octane "DX" model with the bigger screen?

I asked the same question, learned a lot!

http://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/off-topic-discussion/kindle-me-this/16127/page1/

I'm headed towards the Nook only because some of the older books are free.

Dan

got my wife a Kindle for her b-day. she really likes it, even though she also really likes actual paper. i like it, even though i'm a closet techno-phobe.

it works pretty well, and the e-paper is incredibly easy to read...very unlike a computer screen. also nice to have the newspaper waiting for you on it in the morning.

i got her the "regular" sized one. while many times bigger is better, the larger version seems much more difficult to carry along with you, which is kind of the point (she commutes by train every day). the screen is plenty big as is.

i know some people don't get why you can't just "give" a copy of a book you bought to someone else, but those people somehow understand that you can't buy a paper book, copy it, and distribute it. the digital format doesn't change anything. maybe someday they'll add a feature that allows you to transfer the file to someone else so that you no longer have it, just like a paper book (but that's why they sell you a "license" instead of the actual book). until then, i figure that copyright holders have the right to control who copies and distributes their stuff.

anyway...thumbs up for the Kindle.

It's been shown that giving away free e-books spurs sales of print books. You give it away for free and let people copy it and trade it around, and the copyright holder makes more money.

you certainly could be right, but that's a business decision and is entirely separate from the idea of intellectual property rights, and whether someone has the right to copy and distribute someone else's work.

it might be a good business idea for FM to give away free products to spur sales, but that doesn't make it OK for someone to take parts from the warehouse to share w/ friends.

If it didn't cost us anything to produce more copies of those parts, it would be OK.

I wasn't looking to start an intellectual property discussion - the current system is badly broken, unfortuntely - just pointing out that it would be in the best interest of all involved if you COULD simply give a copy of a book you owned to a friend. Your friend would benefit, the publisher would benefit and the author would benefit. There's a reason that iTunes removed DRM from their store.