PRODUCTreviews
•;Amazon Kindle
•;Barnes & Noble nook
•;en Tourage eDGe
•;Apple iPad
E-Book Readers
Iam a gadget guy, book editor, and avid reader. When I got the chance to review four of the most
popular e-book reading devices—the
Apple iPad, Amazon Kindle, Barnes &
Noble nook, and en Tourage eDGe—
I jumped at the opportunity. E-book
readers are widely touted as the future
of publishing, and education is a huge
market for each of these devices. The
high cost and relatively short life span
of printed textbooks have made digital
alternatives extremely attractive to
With its experimental text-to-speech feature,
Kindle can read content out loud.
cash-strapped schools. Additionally,
a growing number of parents, teachers, and medical professionals have
expressed concerns about students
carrying heavy, book-laden backpacks all day. E-book readers have the
potential to cut costs and enable fast
and easy textbook revision, and they
have the added benefit of significantly
reducing weight. Finally, they have the
undeniable coolness factor that can
provide motivation and engagement
for young readers.
Amazon Kindle 2
The Kindle is not the first dedicated
book reader, but it is among the first
to incorporate wireless communication technology. The original Kindle,
Kindle 2, and the larger-format Kindle
DX all feature integrated 3G cellular
(GSM) technology. It’s the same technology behind most smartphones,
but the service, called Whispernet, is
free—no service plan required. Whispernet enables Kindle users to connect to Amazon’s immense collection
of Kindle format e-books, magazines,
and newspapers. It is limited, however. Outside the United States, you currently can’t use the service for general
Web browsing, voice, or texting.
You’ll find more than 600,000 titles
(and that’s growing rapidly) from
major publishers at the Kindle bookstore, including most New York Times
bestsellers at only $9.95 a title.
Kindle can display an impressive array of file types in addition to
Amazon’s proprietary e-book format
(AZW), including DOC, PDF, HTML,
TXT, RTF, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP,
PRC, and MOBI (AZW is Amazon’s variation of MOBI).
