On 13/01/2011 4:50 PM, Darren New wrote:
> Yep. And Qualcomm is coming out with one that's fast enough to play
> video and full color, that they claim uses even less power than the B&W
> e-ink screens. That'll be cool.

Sounds good.

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     Stephen

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Stephen escreveu:

> starter, and I took to it like a duck to water. One of the things I like 
> is the weight, no more sore wrists when reading a tome in bed.

oh, the irony of seeing a 50-years old book reader enjoying new fangled 
tech and the geek youngster bashing it... LOL...

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On 13/01/2011 4:41 PM, Invisible wrote:
> (I have no idea about other e-readers, but the Kindle range is very
> small indeed.)


Unless of course the Kindle cannot upload from a PC.


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     Stephen

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Invisible escreveu:
>> I've got no respect for /real books/, their large volumes messing around
>> with home space, their smell and yellow pages as they get old and the
>> forests killed to make them.
> 
> Uhuh.
> 
> Last time I checked, most paper comes from renewable sources these days. 
> People grow trees as crops, much as they crow wheat or barley as crops. 
> There's a lot of profit to be made from renewable wood and paper.
> 
> Electronics, on the other hand, requires large amounts of energy for its 
> production, and lots of exotic and usually toxic substances that are 
> rare and difficult to find, and difficult to deal with once the device 
> is no longer wanted.
> 
> And, uh, /which/ one of these is more sustainable?

Trees are consumed much faster than grown.  20 years to grow one, 1 
minute to bring it down to create some, what, 1000 books?  How many 
books are consumed over 20 years, let alone paper for office printing, 
toilet paper, comic book paper, newspaper paper etc?...

eInk doesn't consume much energy.  OTOH, I'm unsure about its 
durability... not that it matters if it's cheap.

>>> Besides, who wants a system that can delete the books you've paid for
>>> at any time, for no defined reason?
>>
>> that's plain FUD last time I heard, both from tree killers and
>> traditional book publishers.
> 
> Erm, no, it's a documented fact. People actually have had their books 
> deleted. Twice.

once.

> That is quite neat, but given how often I buy books, hardly persuasive. 
> Plus there's the utterly tiny range of books available for the Kindle. 
> (I have no idea about other e-readers, but the Kindle range is very 
> small indeed.)

http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/

that's one good reason for the web browser, BTW.  Another is wikipedia 
always at hand... :)

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nemesis wrote:
> work in kindle?  They are all playable through this javascript 
> interpreter, which I'm afraid won't quite run...

It doesn't seem like it, but the browser has a "basic" mode and a "desktop" 
mode, plus you can turn off javascript. So I'm not sure I have it configured 
right and I don't have time to play with it at the moment. :-)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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Darren New escreveu:
> nemesis wrote:
>> work in kindle?  They are all playable through this javascript 
>> interpreter, which I'm afraid won't quite run...
> 
> It doesn't seem like it, but the browser has a "basic" mode and a 
> "desktop" mode, plus you can turn off javascript. So I'm not sure I have 
> it configured right and I don't have time to play with it at the moment. 
> :-)

no prob.  It'd be just a cool bonus.

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On 13/01/2011 5:02 PM, nemesis wrote:
> Stephen escreveu:

>> starter, and I took to it like a duck to water. One of the things I
>> like is the weight, no more sore wrists when reading a tome in bed.
>
> oh, the irony of seeing a 50-years old book reader enjoying new fangled
> tech and the geek youngster bashing it... LOL...
>

Indeed!
But you got the years wrong. It is 60 and I did say that I was a late 
starter. ;-)

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Regards
     Stephen

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Stephen wrote:
> On 13/01/2011 4:50 PM, Darren New wrote:
>> Yep. And Qualcomm is coming out with one that's fast enough to play
>> video and full color, that they claim uses even less power than the B&W
>> e-ink screens. That'll be cool.
> 
> Sounds good.
> 

That's the link I was looking for.

http://www.slashgear.com/qualcomm-mirasol-color-ereader-hands-on-0869191/

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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nemesis wrote:
> 20 years to grow one,

Not even close to 20 years. Nobody cares if your paper comes from a GMO. 
Think 2 to 5 years.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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Invisible wrote:
> Well, with most devices, either there's a bunch of status lights and 
> stuff lit up, or it's all blank. The Kindle is /never/ blank.

It is if you turn it all the way off.  Hold the power switch until the 
screen goes blank, and it turns off the radio and everything else.

> And the 
> power light only comes on momentarily, so you can't use that as an 
> indication either... It takes some getting used to.

I'm not sure how hard it can be. If you want to read a book, and it's not 
showing text, hit the switch.  If you're done reading the book and you want 
to put the kindle somewhere the buttons might get pressed, hit the switch.

> Do all books provide a free sample?

I've not seen any that don't. I just checked 10 of 10 do, so I assume they 
all do.

> I thought it was only a tiny 
> minority of them. (In particular, I don't recall seeing a button for it 
> anywhere on the website...)

On the right, right under "buy" and "add to wish list".

> Like I say, I clicked the big yellow "1-click order" button, and waded 
> through a dozen screens to make the purchase. I assumed that would be 
> just the first time, but... no. /Every/ purchase was the same.

You didn't turn on one-click ordering. It's a separate step. And one-click 
from the web site can be off even tho one-click from the kindle is on. 
Security, remember?

> As I say, that only works if every book has a sample chapter.

Find me one that doesn't.

> Yes. And it's intractably expensive to build one. And virtually 
> impossible to build one with good coverage. So....... how?

There's a cell phone modem inside the device. I thought you already knew 
this. You pay for the coverage as part of the books you purchase. Amazon 
buys minutes in bulk from whatever service provider, and give them to you.

> Well, given that I'd already linked the Kindle to the account and I was 
> logged into Amazon with that account, I had expected "1-click order" to 
> immediately order the thing... but no.

It does, on the kindle. It does, if you turn it on on the web site.

You have to actually read the instructions, perhaps, to turn it on.

> are still asking me "so how do you work it then?"

They *expect* it to be difficult.

> (In particular, apparently it has a web browser. Why you'd want that, I 
> don't know. But I'm being urged to find out how it works - I'm guessing 
> "badly". :-P )

It's under the "experimental" menu on the home page. It works fine for 
static pages like google or wikipedia. You're not going to be playing flash 
games on it.  I use it to get to gmail when I'm traveling abroad where I 
don't have other internet connectivity.

It works OK if you use it for *browsing*. It's not that good if you try to 
use it as an application interface.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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