Bank Run at Borders

I ordered two books from Borders Australia online last year, they offered free shipping and I decided to keep my shopping in the country unlike so many Australians. They took 6 weeks to arrive! When they did they were both sent from DeutschePost out of Germany..... Low price and free shipping from Germany! so much for my attempt to keep my purchase local....
 
Naphthalene Man said:
This is good news for independent bookstores that offer better service anyway. Kinda like Coles and Woolworths closing and then the butchers, newsagents, health food stores, chemists, greengrocers and possibly others would rejoice.
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+1
 
Nugget said:
My kindle gets up to a month from a single charge. It uses extremely little power.

These stores went belly up because whilst they were sleeping the world changed. They turned up to a gun fight with a musket and a bright red uniform in a desert whilst the enemy used a Predator drone from an airconditioned bunker. I can research a book, read reviews from real people then if I decide I want it I can have it on my Kindle in about 2 minutes (slow computer at my end). What'd be the process to buy from their store? Far more cumbersome. Speaking of online stores did anyone have a look at Borders online store for eBooks before they went belly up? They didn't even have them in categories! And they wonder why they got creamed :rolleyes:


I'm actually glad they got what they had coming to them. Maybe the other dinosaurs will wake up to the internet age but I won't hold my breath. Loud mouths with deep pockets will convince authorities to act in big businesses favour.
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You've piqued my interest there mate.

What's the Kindle like on the eyes? I find the contrast of black text on a white page very easy to read, one reason I favour books.

What about book avaiability. Can I assume any book that I can technically buy on Amazon I can get on Kindle as well? Or is there only limited books in the library? This is especially important regarding the more obscure books stackers tend to have their nose in...

What's the pricing on downloaded books like?

What's the software backend to purchase books like? I personally dislike iTunes - please tell me it's nothing like that?

Can you put your own PDFs on the unit, or do they have to be specific formats and downloaded 'officially'

Sorry to drag this off topic, but I'm not one to shy away from exploring better options and I definitely like to read - a lot!
 
Ive got the Kindle2 and the Sony 650.

PDFs were very important to me. On the Kindle (including the new 3) forget it. You need the DX at $379 for that imo.

On the 650 PDFs are awesome because of the viewing modes available. Its also way quicker because I think it buffers previous and next pages ahead of time.

I used to hate Sony because of their proprietary lock in. The 650 is the first real Sony I've bought in close to a decade. It has SD card, allows PDF and epub books.

Touch screen. Absolutely awesome. Best $300 I ever didnt spend on silver.
 
I bought the 650 on release before the sheeple found out. There are now waiting lists through to April to get them locally. Sony hit a home run with this one. My favourite gadget by far.
 
Kindle is excellent, book selection is currently a little patchy because of our shit import laws.

book ordering is excellent, nothing like itunes, occurs on the device, very simple

edit: oh yes, as said previously, pdf's suck on kindle 3, but the wifi version is so nice and cheap.
 
Kindle doesn't handle PDF's well at all. But I just read them on my laptop at home


eBooks - Freakin' awesome. It's NOT black on white screen though - it's grey scale. VERY easy to read. Without a word of lie the screen is so clear that you almost try to peel the imaginary plastic off when you first get it (I didn't because I read it had that affect on people). The battery life is unbelievable. Imagine it this way - you load a screen then it stays there permanently until you load another. The only battery use is to load a screen then it stops. VERY minimal. The kindle itself can handle a phenomenal amount of books BUT I don't load them on as scrolling past two pages is a PITA.


Amazon has DRM *BUT* there's a freeware program called calibre that converts all formats to all formats. Free market win there. A lot of potential for this to be the mp3 of books ;)


I researched hard before buying the Kindle but it was this interview that sold me on it (scroll down 1/5 of the way to the interview) http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Wirele...Y27P3M/ref=sa_menu_kdp3w3/182-0481249-5028351

For my money I bought the WIFI only model. $139 delivered!!!!!! My delivery took 4 days! A&R / Borders took that long to answer their phones (exaggeration).


Seriously - watch that interview and see the amount of thought that went into the design. He says why he didn't go touch screen or back lit screen.

Oh and Amazon says that if you buy an eBook you own it forever. That means you can redownload it forever. F**k you iTunes and your single downloads. Personally I store them on my laptops HD as well using Calibre :)

Amazon *did* make a mistake a while ago where they deleted a book off peoples Kindles before but that was a one off mistake that Amazon learned from. Still, seeing as I use a 3rd party software to manage mine it's not an issue.

I bought the case with a light. Fantastic product and very innovative. I don't use it though because it adds to the Kindles weight and the amount of space it takes. Let's face it. $139 delivered - if I break mine (I treat it right so not likely) I'll just buy another one.

Reading eBooks though *is* different to a traditional book. It is harder when the book says "refer to table X" when it's on another page. But to be honest - it's a small thing.

One problem I have encountered is people not knowing that I'm reading. They'll talk to me at smoko. "Dude - I'm reading!". Nah, I just throw some headphones on ;)


2ds said that it can be a little patchy because of import laws. That is true. Some books I've been blocked from downloading because I'm in Australia (I prefer to think they're blocked because they know I'm smart :P ). That sucks but it's not a deal breaker. Those books have been few.

Got a book you want (and allowed in Australia)? About 2 minutes and you've got it. A&R and Borders wouldn't have acknowledged you'd entered the store in that time


***************

EDIT TO ADD


I turn off WIFI - it eats battery life
 
With hard or otherwise impossible to get books, the great pdf feature of the Sony has paid the difference in price for me, many times over.

I actually like that it doesnt have wifi or other distractions as I'd be too tempted to browse the web or do a spot of this or that if it did.

With the kindle i just had a US account and could buy from the entire range. You buy a electronic gift card with your credit card and send it to your US account. Then spend on US store books.
 
intelligencer said:
Is "American Psycho" still a banned book here?
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I remember that years ago it was allowed for sale here but had to be plastic wrapped, not sure now but I believe that I have seen it on the shelves in bookshops in Sydney.
 
Called recently someone stupid for buying books when u canm get m for free online and the person is on the forum hope they read this :P
 
Ha - just poking around on the Qantas frequent flyer store - they're still selling Angus & Robertson gift vouchers!
 
goldpelican said:
Ha - just poking around on the Qantas frequent flyer store - they're still selling Angus & Robertson gift vouchers!
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Saddists.

:)
 
I bought a Kindle DX expecting not to buy paper books again.

This is my opinion only, but for me, electronic books just don't do it for me, and I'm back to buying the real things. I'm as surprised as anyone, as, when it comes to picking up new technologies, I'm usually right there, I haven't bought a CD since before 2000, and my last DVD that I bought was several years ago now, but e-books, at least at the moment, just don't do it for me.
 
hawkeye said:
I bought a Kindle DX expecting not to buy paper books again.

This is my opinion only, but for me, electronic books just don't do it for me, and I'm back to buying the real things. I'm as surprised as anyone, as, when it comes to picking up new technologies, I'm usually right there, I haven't bought a CD since before 2000, and my last DVD that I bought was several years ago now, but e-books, at least at the moment, just don't do it for me.
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Do you want to swap your kindle for some metal, or perhaps some economics books. (see list above) :)
 
Captain Kookaburra said:
hawkeye said:
I bought a Kindle DX expecting not to buy paper books again.

This is my opinion only, but for me, electronic books just don't do it for me, and I'm back to buying the real things. I'm as surprised as anyone, as, when it comes to picking up new technologies, I'm usually right there, I haven't bought a CD since before 2000, and my last DVD that I bought was several years ago now, but e-books, at least at the moment, just don't do it for me.
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Do you want to swap your kindle for some metal, or perhaps some economics books. (see list above) :)
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Metal, maybe. Books, no.
 
eBooks just aren't going to work until they sort out the Digital Restrictions Management issues - the prices are nearly equivalent to physical books, you can't lend them, the seller can lock you out of them (or in Amazon's case, remotely delete them from your reader device) and many of the ones I've seen have been badly OCR'd so you get text that reads "...and then hemotostscoblin down to theroadand waited forme [????] at the end..." or some sort of random gibberish.
 
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