In Which I Bow To The Inevitable
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No, I haven’t bought an iPhone, don’t be silly. Anyway, I’m happy with my Symbian based Nokia 5800XM and when I tire of it I’ll get an Android based phone.
No, the inevitable is a little different. For background, I love to read and always have done. As a child, if I didn’t have a book, I would read the back of the cornflake packet. And that is not an exaggeration. As a result, despite losing/giving away/selling/etc many many books over the years, I have more than 700 of them at home. And there is no sign that this number will reduce. Serendipitously, I read something that meant that this could change…
Amazon have finally brought the Kindle to the UK. In fact, if you go to the Amazon UK homepage, there’s an announcement stretching down the centre of the page. We can finally read books on a book sized device that isn’t a book! In fact, there are two models on offer – the all-singing, all-dancing 3G/Wifi version and the Wifi only version. I have gone for Wifi only as I can only imagine needing to download books via a wifi connection and not when I am out of range. Also, I am cynical about the “Free 3G Wireless” offer – in this country it usually means for a time or as long as you don’t use it more than we like.
So, with a capacity of 3,500 books, from late next month, I can stop clogging up our house with dead-tree media and can also carry loads of books with me. The only problem will be “which one do I read first?”
everything in this post has been written by me as a personal post. I am not being paid by Amazon or any of their businesses to write this. though if Amazon do want to give me money and gadgets so that I’ll write about them, I will not complain or stop them.
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Posted on 31 July, 2010, in Books, Computer Stuff, Idiot's Journey and tagged 3G, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com, book, E-book, Kindle, Nokia, Shopping, Wi-Fi. Bookmark the permalink. 11 Comments.
Place of Stuff 
I am also one of those who haven’t bought the iPhone yet, and see no need to. I’m happy with my old Nokia, while everyone else seems to have the latest and the most trendy handphone. Cannot understand today’s consumerist culture; can you?
I understand it perfectly, I just don’t need an iPhone and don’t want to get one just because the cool kids have them 🙂
I also refuse to get an iphone, although I am dying to get an android. As for the Kindle, I bought one of those about two days after hearing about them. It took me that long to justify spending 300 bucks on a book reader. It was completely with it, though. At least, it is saving me from having to buy more bookshelves.
Exactly. The only thing I will miss about switching to the Kindle is displaying the spines.
If I got a kindle or eReader of any type, I’d probably just stick to finding the public domain books where I can download them.
I’m old fashioned and like reading books the old fashioned way. I still check out books from the library. I figure, if my taxes are supporting the local branch, I might as well utilize it and it saves tons of money.
Most libraries will order a book or get it from another branch if they don’t have it, even new releases.
If I do buy a book though, it’s a book I intend to read more than once or use as reference and usually can find them at the 50% off book stores that resells used books.
I quite agree. I support my local library by using it very regularly and using the inter-library loan function. But I also like to buy new books and hopefully this will mean that we don’t have to move to a different house!
No Ray, you need to buy a bigger house because books are that important. 🙂
I don’t buy many books myself, only ones to keep for reference or I know I’ll read more than once but my kids might force me to buy a bigger house to accommodate their own book collections. I think we have well over or at least close to 1000 books just for the kids. 🙂
Looks as though i have some catching up to do!
Don’t worry about catching up Ray, remember, kids books are short and sweet. I’m sure you have at least one book that contains more words than all of the words combined in my kids books. 😉
I feel pretty much the same way.
I was thinking about buying the Kindle as in some ways it’s more comfortable than a normal book. But giving up the smell and the texture of paper…I’m still not convinced that Kindle can make up for it.
Valid point. Of course, you could remedy that with an aerosol canister that emitted a “book” scent, similar to what used car dealers use when they detail a car…