E-Readers in Demand As Tech Gifts 29 November 2012, by Edward C
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E-readers in demand as tech gifts 29 November 2012, by Edward C. Baig In the five years since Amazon.com released its on one machine and pick up where you left off on first Kindle, the market for dedicated electronic another. readers has been transformed. What's more, you can virtually borrow e-books With Kindles starting today as low as $69, it's hard from the public library and in Barnes & Noble's to remember that the then-brand new device case, lend some e-books to a friend, albeit under commanded $399. Still, it gave a major boost to stringent restrictions. Loans are 14 days for certain what had been a slow- to-take-off market. Before titles. Kindle, reading books electronically was highly uncommon, even for the most voracious How do you choose the proper electronic reader? bookworms. Today, of course, it's anything but Here are key things to keep in mind: novel. -Sizing up the screen. The screens on today's Helped by ever-lower prices for Amazon's many most popular dedicated electronic readers are rivals - notably, Barnes & Noble Nooks, readers based on glare-free monochrome or gray-scale E- from Sony and Kobo, among them - dedicated e- Ink technology. They do a bang-up job of readers make popular gifts. replicating the experience of reading on real paper. You can read without eye strain. Text is crisp. Page People who love to read can tick off the major turns are getting faster. benefits, chapter and verse: E-readers are light, paperback-size, easy traveling companions. Conventional models have 6-inch displays, with the major companies in the space claiming You can schlep hundreds of books at once, supremacy for their own high-contrast screens. The enabling you to choose what to read according to truth is screens on the latest models are generally what strikes your fancy at the moment, almost as if excellent. If possible, visit a retailer where you can you were picking which songs on your MP3 player compare one display with the next. to listen to based on your mood. You can change text sizes and fonts, look up words in a dictionary, Kobo thinks an even smaller screen size is in and bookmark and highlight pages and passages. order, thus the recent introduction of the $79.99, 4.7-ounce Kobo Mini. It has a 5-inch E-Ink touch These days, there's often a social component, too display and is billed by the company as "the world's - with the ability in some instances to share reading smallest and lightest full-featured e-reader," one recommendations on Facebook and Twitter. you can easily stash in your pocket. Of course, that's discounting the fact that your even smaller- If you have wireless connectivity, most likely screen smartphone can easily double these days through Wi-Fi but sometimes (on certain Kindle as an e-reader, too, provided you download the models) cellular, you can search for and browse free reading apps from Amazon, Barnes & Noble books in massive online bookstores, even fetching and others. Of course, battery life is a concern on a sample before committing to buy. Those e-books smartphones, but the battery on Kobo Mini may typically arrive in a minute or less, often at give way before the battery on e-readers. reasonable prices. You can read newspapers and magazines, too. -Touch vs. physical buttons. The move in recent years to touch screens lets you go from page to If you own multiple reading devices - and that page through swipes and gestures, plus do other means computers, smartphones and tablets, as things such as changing margins or line spacing. well as dedicated readers - you can start reading 1 / 3 If you prefer to navigate with old-fashioned least one other advantage over the dedicated physical controls, the entry-level Kindle has a readers: the ability to read in the dark. On E-Ink 5-way controller, plus physical page turning devices, you needed to provide a lamp or other buttons. The aptly named Kindle Keyboard 3G has reading light if you were in dim surroundings. a physical QWERTY-style keyboard that's useful for typing the names of authors and titles as you On the flip side, you could at least make out E-Ink search for something to read. It starts at $139 with screens in direct sun, something that's nearly what Amazon refers to as Special Offers, shorthand impossible on most tablet screens. for ads and sponsored screensavers. In the past year or so, that's changed. Barnes & Other Kindles are also priced lower with ads. The Noble, Amazon and Kobo have all introduced entry level Kindle is a bargain at $69 with Special conventional readers with built-in reading lights. Offers, $20 more without. Special Offers don't Barnes & Noble got there first with the $119 Nook provide major distractions, but competitors still try Simple Touch with GlowLight, since matched by the and make hay out of the fact that their readers don't $130 Kobo Glo and the Kindle Paperwhite. have ads. For its part, Barnes & Noble's Nook Simple Touch costs $99. The Paperwhite costs $119 with Special Offers, or $139 without the ads. -Dedicated reader vs. tablet? A question you hear a lot these days is, why purchase a dedicated Amazon also sells a pricier version called reader at all, especially a black-and-white or gray- Paperwhite 3G, $179 or $199 with or without ads. scale model, when you can immerse yourself in a The 3G refers to cellular wireless, useful if you want color tablet with souped-up multimedia capabilities? to browse Amazon's vast online bookstore when you can't connect to Wi-Fi. Amazon doesn't charge In other words, if you're not reading on a tablet, additional fees to use the 3G network. But before you can use the thing to watch movies, admire splurging on the extra hardware cost, ask yourself photos, surf the Web, play games and more. how often you envision needing to download books Moreover, on the tablets, you still have access to from an area where you can't connect through Wi- the same online bookstores and same e-books and Fi. periodicals that you do as an owner of a dedicated reader. Paperwhite provides a couple of other bright features. One is called X-Ray, and it's an easy way Lots of consumers are taking the more versatile to jump to passages in a book where a particular route and choosing Apple's iPad (or iPad mini) or character or idea is mentioned. Another is Time To picking an Android tablet, such as the Google Read, a feature that can tell you how much time is Nexus 7. left in the chapter you're reading and/or the book itself, based on your reading speed. The feature is Amazon and Barnes & Noble have been hedging particularly useful at bedtime, as you try and their bets, too, with their own entries in the tablet determine if you have enough stamina to finish market. Amazon sells the Kindle Fire and Fire HD what you're reading. models. Barnes & Noble sells NookHD or Nook HD + tablets. (c)2012 USA Today Distributed by MCT Information Services But there are trade-offs. Battery life on tablets with color LCD screens is measured in hours. Battery life on dedicated E-Ink readers is measured in weeks, if not months. You pay more for a full- fledged tablet, too. -Seeing the light. Until recently, tablets provided at 2 / 3 APA citation: E-readers in demand as tech gifts (2012, November 29) retrieved 1 October 2021 from https://phys.org/news/2012-11-e-readers-demand-tech-gifts.html This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only. 3 / 3 Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org).