Why the Kindle is the king of the ebook readers ^Featured

One little trick that I learned is saving interesting web pages and blogs as PDFs and transferring them to my e-reader to read at my leisure wherever I am in the world.

 When I bought the Sony it was widely considered the best e-reader on the market and while later versions have added many more features, when it came to buying a new e-reader my research showed that nothing could compare to the range of features offered by the Amazon Kindle.

Before I go any further let me explain for those not familiar that e-book readers use technology called e-ink which mimics the appearance of ordinary ink on paper causing no eye strain and can also be read in bright sunshine. 

Computer screens or tablets like iPads are not suitable for reading books. So don't confuse an ebook reader like the Kindle with an iPad which is a tablet computer and not a dedicated ebook reader.

At the moment, you can only purchase a Kindle in Ireland directly from Amazon through its US website  - amazon.com. And like every purchase on Amazon it is painless and the Kindle Wi-Fi, 6" E Ink Display arrived in just four days.

The new e-reader comes in two versions - the Kindle with Special Offers which has adverts on the home page and costs $79 and the version without adverts costs $109 - excluding charges.

Virtual library

And while I opted for the advert free version, many purchasers of the Special Offers version report that the ads are not at all intrusive - so anyone looking for a real bargain can save themselves at least €30 by opting for this version of the Kindle.
 
Also, since I bought my Kindle from Amazon in October, it has gone on sale at leading electronics stores in Ireland for €109 which is cheaper than you can buy it directly from Amazon - so save yourself some money by visiting your local PC World store.

In my experience over the past month, the new Kindle e-book reader does everything it promises and much more.

It is incredibly light, and small and can easily fit in a jacket pocket unlike a book.

 

With the built-in Wifi you can download books from Amazon's store in seconds provided you are connected to your home Wifi. There is a huge range of books to download from bestsellers to free out of copyright classics.

One feature Amazon offers that I particularly like is it allows you to download a book sample before you decide whether to buy it or not.

This is a real bonus in my opinion and is like having your own virtual bookshop to browse at your leisure in the comfort of your armchair.

Other services available in the Kindle Store allow you to subscribe to newspapers like the New York Times or just  download an individual copy. The range of quality magazines available is also extensive.

One important point to make here is that newspapers and magazines downloaded to our Kindle - or indeed any e-reader - contain very few pictures for copyright and technical reasons.

I don't find that shortcoming a problem, but some people might miss the images and graphics.

On the slightly negative side, unlike prevous versions of the Kindle the new Kindle 4 does not have a keyboard which has been replaced by an on-screen keyboard, and, like many other users, I have found it not to be the very user-friendly.

Also you can browse the web using the Kindle but the on-screen keyboard makes it a little tedious - and it's a really unecessary feature of an e-book reader at any rate.

And what about the price of e-books?

From my experience so far many popular titles can be downloaded instantly for less than you pay in a  bookshop.

For instance two of my purchases were The Help ($5.64) and John Giles: A Football Man - My Autobiography ($8.48) - cheaper than from a bookshop.

The Kindle is packed with features, including one month battery life, adjustable text sizes, stores up to 2GB or 1,400 books, free cloud back - lots of social media features to interact with other e-book readers via Twitter etc.

It is also advisable to buy a cover for the Kindle to protect the screen. However, these are not cheap bought directly from Amazon so some shopping around on eBay might be a good idea. Just make sure you buy a cover that matches your Kindle 4 and not an earlier version.

Free downloads

It is also possible to read news for free from around the world on your Kindle without ever visiting the Kindle Store.

In order to do this you need to download a great piece of free open source software called Calibre that I have been using for years. Calibre is an e-book library management application developed by users of e-books.

Among its many features it will allow you to download from a wide range of news sources on the web and convert it to ebook format.

I firmly believe the ebook reader is the way that we will read books, newspapers and magazines in the future.

Already many libraries in the United States are loaning ebooks via the Kindle. It's surely only a matter of time before libraries in Ireland start to offer this service.