Membership My Account. Rewards for Good. Share with facebook. Share with twitter. Share with linkedin. Share using email. Getty Images. Read between the lines Whether you go with an e-reader or tablet boils down to what you want to do with the device, where you're going to use it and what your budget allows. All buyers of electronic devices should beware. How to score free books While you can buy books for your e-reader or tablet, you also can borrow books for free from your local public library.
The first step is to get a library card if you don't already have one. More about Reading High-tech innovations for low vision Reading glasses get cool Smart glasses promise to make reading easier.
Family Caregiving. Financial Planning. Leaving AARP. Got it! Please don't show me this again for 90 days. Cancel Continue. Thank You. Your email address is now confirmed.
Continue to AARP. Offer Details. Some e-readers have audio functionality. The Kindle Basic, Kindle Paperwhite and Kindle Voyage all have Bluetooth and have the ability to connect up to the Audible store to purchase audiobooks or download past purchases.
Barnes and Noble has a 3. Pocketbook devices tend to either have a 3. Onyx Boox and Boyue have Bluetooth and Google Play, so Spotify, Audible, Overdrive or ther popular apps can be installed and can be listened to with wireless headphones. Kobo currently has no audio functionality, ditto with the Remarkable and Sony Digital Paper. E-reader processing speeds are one of the things that are holding the technology back. The only e-reader to use the Freescale IMX7 dual core processor , which came out in , is the Kindle Oasis, one of the reasons why it is so expensive.
Digital Note taking devices normally forgo Freescale processors and normally go with more generic ones, Onyx has been experimenting with Qualcomm based processors for the MAX 3 and Note 2, which is why their performance is really good. Internal storage are a contentious issue in the e-reader world.
Virtually every major company involved in digital note taking devices or commercial grade e-readers have abandoned the SD card and just have one option available for storage. Amazon and Kobo offer 2 different storage solutions for select e-readers. Most companies still use SD cards to power the internal storage, but they are normally soldered right onto the motherboard and connect be upgraded. There are no e-readers with a solid state drive, one of the things that hamper performance.
Can e-readers ever get as fast and responsive as tablets? We use this information to create a better experience for all users.
Please review the types of cookies we use below. These cookies allow you to explore OverDrive services and use our core features.
Without these cookies, we can't provide services to you. These cookies allow us to monitor OverDrive's performance and reliability.
They alert us when OverDrive services are not working as expected. The Amazon Kindle gives you wireless access to an electronic store that includes millions of books, newspapers and magazines.
Amazon provides wireless service without a monthly subscription fee on some devices — you just have to pay a little more upon purchase of the device. The cellular devices also allow for WiFi access to the e-book store but the non-cellular devices are WiFi-only.
The Kindle allows you to buy books directly from the device. Alternately, you can browse books in the Kindle store using your computer's web browser and purchase them from your computer. Amazon will send the electronic books directly to your device. Amazon maintains a subscription service called Kindle Unlimited. Despite its name, however, Amazon Unlimited does not include most of Amazon's electronic titles.
Amazon claims the service has more than 1 million e-books. As part of its Prime subscription, Amazon also offers Prime Reading. The service is similar to Kindle Unlimited, but while you do not have to have a Prime account to use Kindle Unlimited, an account includes access to a rotating catalog of e-books and audiobooks and one free pre-release e-book chosen from a list of editors' favorites.
Prime Reading includes magazines and comic books, but you may prefer to use a computer or a tablet like the Kindle Fire series to enjoy books in color. These files include digital rights management DRM that prevents you from sharing your files with other users.
Kindles can handle Audible files. Amazon also can convert several other types of files into the AZW format so that the Kindle can read them. These file types include:. Each Kindle has a unique email address. You can send compatible files to your Kindle by e-mailing them as an attachment to this address. You can also connect your Kindle to a computer with the USB cord to transfer files. Every purchase you make from Amazon goes into a special folder called your library.
Amazon uses a cloud storage model where the file lives on one of Amazon's computer servers. That means even if you delete a book from your Kindle to conserve space, the record of your purchase will still exist on Amazon's servers.
You can download the book again to your Kindle for no additional charge. There are also free Kindle reading apps for many devices, including iPhone, iPad, Android devices and Mac and Windows-based computers, so that you can buy and read Kindle books without purchasing a Kindle. One advantage to all the available apps is that you can partake of Amazon's Whispersync technology, which synchronizes the last page you read on one device across all your Kindle readers, including your physical Kindle if you have one or more, so that you can read on multiple devices without losing your page when you switch.
There are also libraries of free e-books available online, many of which are in the public domain. And some public libraries even let you check out e-books and read them with your Kindle.
What if you've lost your Kindle, or some unscrupulous person has taken a kindled interest in it and stolen it from you? You should go to your Amazon profile and deregister your Kindle as soon as possible.
Otherwise, the thief may use your Kindle to download a library of books on your dime. While some critics said the price tag was too high, the demand for the Kindle soon depleted Amazon 's stock of the device. He claimed that the company sold out of its stock in less than six hours. Some web journalists and bloggers suggested that Bezos' goal wasn't to offer a sincere apology — it was to drive up more interest for the device. Amazon didn't release sales numbers to the public, leaving many to question exactly how popular the device was.
Amazon got a huge publicity boost in October when Oprah Winfrey named the Kindle as her favorite gadget. Oprah devoted most of an episode of her show to promoting the Kindle. She invited Jeff Bezos to the show to talk about the device, explaining its features to her audience. Oprah also announced an electronic coupon for the device. Kindle readers usually rank at the top in journalists' lists of best readers. Amazon's advantages help fuel this, especially against other companies with similarly equipped e-readers.
But the company hasn't been free of criticism, and the integrated bookstore is often a topic of complaint. Electronic copies of books sometimes cost about as much as physical copies, something that seems unfair to some people. Unlike a physical book, there are very few production and distribution costs associated with an electronic file. Amazon also got into hot water when it remotely deleted copies of George Orwell's "" and "Animal Farm" stored on customers' Kindles. It turns out the publisher that made the books available didn't have the proper rights.
Amazon credited customers the money they spent on the books and apologized for the situation. The incident brought to light a potential problem with electronic copies of books — a gray area for consumers when it comes to owning digital information. Turns out these companies doesn't own these e-books, they license them.
If something happened to the company you bought these books from, the content would no longer be available to you. You also can't read an e-book you bought via Amazon Kindle on a rival e-reader like Nook [source: Warner ]. In , Amazon was accused of terminating a woman's account and deleting the books from her device, stating that her account was linked to another that had abused its policies. The company didn't provide much information and gave no recourse for resolution.
While this is one isolated incident, it has prompted renewed concern about digital rights management DRM [sources: Aguilar , Mosbergen ]. But despite criticisms, the Kindle certainly has appeal.
Amazon reported in May that e-book sales were surpassing physical book sales on its U. As of , Kindles enjoyed 72 percent of the market in the U. But sales of e-books overall dipped in the s , only to be revived during the COVID pandemic when bookstores were closed.
Libraries were also closed, and e-book borrowing skyrocketed. E-books are still behind print in terms of revenue , but it's clear that publishing companies and self-publishers aren't going to quit anytime soon.
0コメント