Kindle?

[gavin]

Has anyone used a Kindle for instruction books/ manuals etc? It would be v handy to have various reference books available electronically, but I am not convinced the screen size of a Kindle is big enough for diagrams and pictures.

If you have used one for reference books with diagrams, please advise which books you have downloaded and how useful you found the format

[SeanHellman]

Does not appeal to me one bit. I am a big user of electronic stuff, but I far rather my info comes in the form of a book. I would think very seriously about publishing to electronic media, could be another revenue stream. I have a feeling that most of us here would like our reading in paper form, or am I just old fashioned? If I wanted reference in the workshop I would probably print the relevant bits out, far safer that way.

[gavin]

If I wanted reference in the workshop I would probably print the relevant bits out, far safer that way.

That's interesting. Recently we got a big-screen lap-top and it is Wi-Fi enabled from the shed to the house. So I can take it to shed. I have found this VERY useful e.g for searching images on this forum, or instruction manuals on operating a Record planer/ thicknesser.

[SeanHellman]

Variety is the spice of life, I like to celebrate differences. How very boring if we did the same thing in the same way.

[Whittler Kev]

I've got loads of PDF's I've made up and as you can go up to two words per line (about two inches tall) is ever so easy to read off and the battery life is about a month without the free wifi turned on. Makes sense to me

[ToneWood]

HI Gavin, Kindle is not really my thing (unless they publish Wille Sundqvist's Swedish Woodcarving book for it ) but my wife got a Kindle for Christmas (Wifi-only version) - she loves it. Less clutter, the screen is crisp (but not colour) and you can enlarge the fonts (which appeals to me) - but I don't think you can print from it. Lots of free and cheap titles available from Amazon too (and some more expensive ones). I'm afraid I haven't used it much, nor seen diagrams in it. However, for you, there is something which might work even better - or which you might find a very useful complement: Amazon offer a free Kindle viewer for Windows - so you could view Kindle books on your big screen laptop in your shed (talk about shed heaven! ).

* Kindle Wi-Fi edition (no 3G).
* Kindle - free Windows viewer

I came across a guy who has written 3 books (on diving, inc. one on spearfishing) exclusively for Kindle - self/Amazon published. The ability to self-publish for profit strikes me as potentially revolutionary, especially for low volume, v. specialist topics.

[Whittler Kev]

The new kindles are Kindle touch which has made them better . Last year I went on Amazon.com and the US version was colour then . No idea why its not here yet as they have just released this new monochrome model

[ToneWood]

Early reviews of the colour ones that I've seen were not that great. The cost of colour seems to be a loss of reading clarity - not good for what is primarily an ebook. The cost might be a deal breaker too. If you need colour it might be better to just get an iPad or Android tablet, then you can do a whole lot more besides. I know a couple of guys who read books on their Orange San Francisco Android phones, which cost £90 with discount - they can also make calls with it, play games on it, watch youtube on it (they upgraded the OS for that), take photographs/film movies and it has a GPS & compass built in which works with Google maps. If you ground down the edge, you could probably carve spoons with it too .

Compared to that, Kindles seem rather overpriced for what they are - they should be about half their current price. However, there is a competitive product, that I think Barnes and Noble and W. H. Smiths are promoting. Bigger in the US than here I think but it got pretty good reviews.

Kindle Touch WiFi
Kindle Touch with "free 3G" - Interesting bit: "Amazon pays for Kindle Touch 3G's wireless connectivity. "