GrogHeads Forum

If you own, or have useful experience with, more than one please choose all that apply. I'm looking to replace my eReader (older, second gen Kindle w/ 3G) with a newer device and I do like the ease of access to the Amazon Kindle Store. I have an iPad wich serves nicely during the day indoors but is hard to read in sunlight and too heavy for nightly reading esp/ in bed. I was actually interested in another e-ink device since there seem to be some improvements so I purchased a Pandigital Novel eReader with touchscreen. The device is a bit awkward with text that is too light (unadjustable) and a touchscreen that is unresponsive. Now I know why it was going for $35... live and learn  :-\. I'd like to know others' experiences, especially with regard to e-ink and touchscreens. Also, for those non-Kindle devices, how easy is it to get Amazon ebooks loaded? Can you just D/L them directly somehow or do you need to use a conversion program such as Calibre? I wasn't impresses with the B&N store app preloaded on the Pandigital device as it seems not to have any search function and appears to be solely there to push New releases and Bestsellers. Is the B&N Store on the various Nooks a lot easier? How deep is the content selection?

If I can't find a comfortable, easy to use device I may have to resort to a cheap 7" tablet but I'd like to get others' feedback first.

I have an old Kindle with the e-ink and the whispernet that downloads books directly from Amazon's own internet server.  I've had it for two-three years now.  I also got a Kindle Fire for Xmas this year.

I find that I spend most of my reading time on the old school e-ink Kindle.  If I had to have one for just reading...whew, that's hard, but I'd probably go with the e-ink Kindle over the Fire.

The e-ink Kindle does what it says- it displays books with no fuss and you can read it at the beach, outside, in the sun, etc.  It's great for when I eat lunch outside and then read for a few minutes before going back to work.  The Fire simply cannot do that.  There are a ton of classic books out there that you can download for free, and in my opinion it's worth the price for just that.

The Fire is nice if you want something that can do stuff besides reading.  Like, I can lay in bed and surf the internet, play simple games, and also read books.  But the battery on it sucks- about 7 hours or so- and you simply can't see the screen in the sun.  My e-ink Kindle's battery lasts like 30 days or something; when I'm going to use my Fire I have to make sure I've charged it recently.

I like having them both and I find that it's a nice solution because the e-ink really doesn't do anything but read books and it doesn't really work well with pdf's in my opinion. 

Hope that helps.

Thanks for the input, Toonces. I don't have any issue with my old e-ink Kindle other than not being able to read PDFs on it easily if they contain images or are those ever popular 'page side by side' scans of older paper manuals (or, worse yet, both).
I'm just intrigued by the newer generation of touch screen readers and want to know if you can swipe pages to the left and right as can be done on tablets, pinch zoom, etc. Also, the size of the Kindle DX is attractive while it's price is not.

I read books on my e-ink kindle.  It's easier on the eyes and just performs better for that purpose.  I read PDFs for game manuals for example on my iPad, because it displays the text and images better.  If I could only have one tablet style item, it'd either be a Kindle Fire or iPad.  They offer more versatility.