{"id":1237,"date":"2010-11-04T22:18:24","date_gmt":"2010-11-04T22:18:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paulgoodchild.net\/blog\/?p=1237"},"modified":"2012-02-19T19:38:08","modified_gmt":"2012-02-19T19:38:08","slug":"how-i-compute-part-4-e-books-amazon-kindle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paulgoodchild.me\/blog\/how-i-compute-part-4-e-books-amazon-kindle\/","title":{"rendered":"How I compute \u2013 Part 4: E-books and the Amazon Kindle"},"content":{"rendered":"

[AMAZON_AFF item=”kindle” text=’\"The‘]<\/p>\n

I recently bought myself a funky new device that would aid me travelling<\/a> in the future since carrying around all those books, and searching everywhere for 2nd-hand book stores was a real thorn in my side.<\/p>\n

The device in question is the [AMAZON_AFF item=”kindle” text=”Amazon Kindle”], and I have to say it’s one of the nicest things I’ve bought for a long time.\u00a0 But, not only that, I haven taken to revamping my whole e-book collection and this article is here to relay to you, yet again, another one of the ways I do “computery” stuff to make my life much easier.\u00a0 Here goes…<\/p>\n

If you’ve been following along you’ll be familiar with my other “How I compute” articles in this series.\u00a0 Please do check them out, starting with Part 1<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

What is an e-book?<\/h2>\n

It’s simple…they are basically books that have been published in digital format.\u00a0 They may either be available only<\/em> in that format, or may be the digital edition of a printed book.\u00a0 You can even consider your collection of PDF files as e-books.\u00a0 I’ve come to regard all PDFs that are manuals, stories, novels, guides or otherwise, to be e-books for the sake of organisation.\u00a0 The reason for this will become clearer a little later on.<\/p>\n

What is the Amazon Kindle?<\/h2>\n

Note, this is not<\/strong> a full Kindle review, but you can check out the links below for some of the reviews and comparisons with alternative e-book readers below.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Amazon Kindle is an e-book reader – a device that stores your collection of e-books and allows you to read them in a manner not all that dissimilar to normal books.\u00a0 The difference between reading on a Kindle, or other such readers, is the quality with which it displays the text so as to be easy on your eyes. The Kindle screen uses “e ink” technology<\/a> that aims to make it as readable as any other paper printed book.<\/p>\n

Compare this to reading on your glossy computer screen, iPhone or iPad, and you’ll notice how they can leave your eyes feeling tired and strained after prolonged reading sessions.\u00a0 The Kindle, and other e-book readers, are designed to get around this and the Kindle does it very well indeed.<\/p>\n

So there’s the great screen, but perhaps one of the best aspects about it you can now carry with you hundreds of books and it doesn’t take up any extra physical room in your bag.\u00a0 You can reference any book in your collection at any time, run searches throughout your library and even make notes and annotations just as you do with “normal” books.<\/p>\n

The downside?\u00a0 Nothing’s perfect, right?\u00a0 But I decided in the end they weren’t show-stoppers for me.\u00a0 For the record, here are a couple of my reservations:<\/p>\n