Digital book readers - Kindle, BeBook, etc - Opinions please

[American Patriot]

Amazon’s Next Kindle Fire Will Ship in Q3 With Improved Display


July 8, 2012 at 1:41 pm PT

With sales of the first-generation Kindle Fire petering out, Amazon is gearing up to launch its successor, a tablet that seeks to improve on the original while retaining a similar form factor.
Sources familiar with Amazon’s plans tell AllThingsD that the company hopes to debut the next iteration of the Kindle Fire in the second half of this year; the current launch window is late in the third quarter. To do so, Amazon has been approaching developers to bring them up to speed on the new hardware.
Here are a few key changes in the device that we’ve learned about from talking to sources who have been briefed:
The next iteration of the Fire will be thinner and lighter than the original. It will also have a built-in camera and a much-improved display.
And, more importantly, developers familiar with the device have been instructed to build their apps for a display with a 1280 x 800 pixel resolution, which is a bit different than the 1024 x 600 display of the current Kindle Fire.
Not only will that apparently make it sharper and more vibrant, it will give it a different aspect ratio, as well. In other words, the display has an entirely new width-to-height ratio.
“The really interesting thing here is that the screen shape is changing slightly: From an aspect ratio of 1.71 (tall and narrow in its standard Portrait mode) to an aspect ratio of 1.60,” DisplayMate President Raymond Soneira told AllThingsD, when asked about what that means.
Notably, that’s a fairly common aspect ratio in the tablet market. The 10.1-inch Toshiba Thrive and the Acer Iconia tablets both use 1280 x 800 displays. So, too, does Google’s new Nexus 7 tablet.
And while raising the Fire’s resolution from 1024 x 600 to 1280 x 800 might not sound like a much of an increase, Soneira said it is an improvement.
“That’s a 67 percent increase in total pixels, and it is visually significant,” he said. “It gives the display a PPI (pixels per inch) of 216.”
That’s a pixel density 29 percent greater than that of the current Kindle Fire, which should improve visual clarity and image crispness.
So, how will that increase in resolution affect the new Kindle Fire’s battery life or its overall design?
Not all that much, apparently. Said DisplaySearch senior analyst Richard Shim, “The increase in pixel density isn’t as drastic as it was in the 1024 x 768 iPad 2 to 2048 x 1536 new iPad, so it’s less likely to significantly alter battery life or thickness.”
Sounds like a reasonable improvement, if not a significant one. What other changes that Amazon has made to the device are unclear, although presumably we’ll see a faster chip, improved graphics, and an updated version of the company’s fork of Android to support that new display.
That Amazon is developing an improved version of the Fire for launch this year isn’t huge news; folks have been speculating that the company has been working on just such a device for months now.
But with Apple, the market leader for tablets, said to be prepping the so-called iPad “Mini” — a smaller version of its hugely popular tablet — for a fall launch, Amazon’s effort has become that much more urgent.
If Apple debuts a sub-$300, 7-inch to 8-inch iPad later this year, as has been rumored, Amazon will have a new and formidable rival in the “tablet-light” market that it hoped to split off from the high-end, feature-rich tablet market that Apple created with the iPad.
In other words: It’s on.

[American Patriot]

New stuff for you kindle readers!

(By the way, I'll be releasing a book soon in Kindle Format, so be ready!)

Amazon Issues Kindle Update With Family Sharing, New “Word Wise” Feature

By Todd Haselton | November 14, 2014

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Amazon on Friday announced that it’s releasing new Kindle software that will begin to roll out over-the-air to the new Kindle, the Kindle Voyage and the Kindle Paperwhite eReaders. It includes several new features including “Word Wise,” family sharing, new X-Ray features and more.


The most compelling part of the update is a new option that lets you share books among family members. It allows two adults to share books while also managing the libraries of up to four child accounts. Technically, this should let you swap books with your husband, wife, roommate, highly educated dog, or whomever else you live with.


Amazon is also adding a new “Word Wise” feature that it says will help you discover the meanings of difficult words. The definition will simply hover above words that Amazon thinks are tough to understand, which will be particularly useful for children and folks learning English.


Another option, Kindle FreeTime Unlimited, provides unlimited access to books for a $2.99/month subscription fee, though it’s mainly targeted at children and includes “hand-picked chapter books and early readers.”


Finally, Amazon is also improving the Goodreads social-network integration, adding previews to search results and adding a new timeline view to its X-Ray for Books feature. The update should hit over the next couple of weeks.

[American Patriot]

Anyone who doesn't own a kindle and maybe would like to try one on for size....

https://recode.net/2014/11/14/amazon...e-for-a-month/

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Philip Newton

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Amazon Will Let You Use a Kindle for Free for a Month

November 14, 2014, 6:46 AM PST

By Jason Del Rey


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With the holiday season fast approaching, Amazon is bringing back a special offer for some customers in its Prime membership program: 30-day free trials for Kindle tablets and e-readers.


The offer, which is shown below, appeared on Amazon’s homepage when I visited it this morning. It’s good for the Kindle and Kindle Paperwhite e-readers, as well as two models of Fire tablets. Customers who redeem the offer aren’t charged anything at checkout, but will be automatically charged if they don’t return the device before the 30-day window expires. Delivery and returns are free.





The promotion comes a year after Amazon rolled out a similar offer to Prime members and six months after it did the same for its Fire TV streaming device. Strong sales of these devices this holiday season could help offset Amazon’s disastrous launch of the Fire phone, which led to a $170 million write-off.


An Amazon spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond to questions about the promotion.

[Malsua]

In late September, I dropped my old Kindle Keyboard and that was all she wrote. It stopped working....I even took it apart, inspect the switches, batteries..etc.

I ended up replacing it with a Kindle Paperwhite and I have to say I love it. Not only is the battery life astonishing, it feels better and in general just works better. It's a great reader.

On the subject of Battery life, my old keyboard kindle would last around 2 weeks on a charge, perhaps a bit more. It does not have a back light.

My Kindle Paperwhite has been charged 2 times since mid September and that only because I thought it was due. It HAS a backlight, although I keep it on low.

I generally have the wifi off, so I don't know how much that affects the paperwhite, but wifi would blow through the battery on the Keyboard model.

[American Patriot]

I have seen and handled the paperwhite, but I thought they were just bright e-ink readers.

My DX, while was great technology when it came out, doesn't have any kind of a contrast and the gray background is darker than I wish it was while the letters are lighter - so, like I said contrast. Bad eyesight + crappy contrast = eyestrain.

I have the DX, the Fire (original) and my Galaxy Note and use the DX mostly for reading books, the tablet for PDF files (of which I likely have thousands now of collected material, in fact, I should check what's on the terabyte drive!)

I know the wifi blows up the battery, so I keep it off on the DX and the Fire when I'm not downloading (I don't use the fire all that much now).

Most of my books reside as copies on the computer's giant hard drive and I move them over either via copying on cable or using Calibre to make up specific sets of books that I want to read (like, if I'm studying something, like-type books on say, sailing, might go on the DX)

The article today that I posted gives me access to already-bought books (my wife's stuff) and her to mine. Some of our reading tastes cross in certain areas, so being able to read a book without "Lending it" will work out very nicely for us!