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Does Kindle Spell The End For Books In Print?
Other | Tuesday 6th August 2013 | Osh
Does Kindle Spell The End For Books In Print?
Kindle is the best new invention for booklovers since well, the book! It's a device that threatens to change publishing forever. What makes Kindle better? Is it really the end for books in print?
THE PERKS
You can carry around hundreds of your favourite books on the move on just one small, lightweight device that fits easily into any bag or backpack.
Books get delivered to your device over Amazon Whispernet, their own 3G service which comes included with all Kindles, meaning you can order books and have them delivered to your device within a matter of minutes. No more trekking to the book shop only to find they've run out of stock!
You can also find over a million books free on Kindle including all the classics and lots of books by unknown authors. Kindle also do daily deals where you can pick up a bargain for 99p. Except for maybe a McDonalds cheeseburger what else can you buy for that nowadays?
WORK
Kindle is also great in the workplace. Whether this be at uni or a full time job, you can store manuals, revision books and whatever else you need in different folders away from the books you read for fun.
You can highlight quotes, bookmark pages, and find certain words and phrases via the search tool.
As an English Literature graduate, Kindle has been so helpful when looking for quotes and finding bits of the book that would take me ages to find if I was only flicking through.
There's also definitely some sort of satisfaction in seeing the percentage of how much you've read increase at the bottom of the screen, especially when it's a dull book that you've got to cram in before your next lecture approaches!
My personal favourite feature is the dictionary tool. Any word you come across that you're not quite sure what it means, you simply highlight the word and the definition will display itself on the screen. You'll soon be a sesquipedalian who'll no doubt be gasconading about what an eloquent wordsmith you really are. See what I did there...
SO WHAT'S THE CATCH?
Kindle isn't totally without problem. Unlike kindle, physical books don't ever run out of battery if you forget to charge them up. Then again, kindle battery does last weeks, even months depending on how often you use it and what features you use. Obviously keeping the wifi or the 3G enabled will eat up your precious battery life but even then you'd have to be unlucky for it to run out on you before you noticed your battery was running low.
Other problems that users have had with Kindle is the glare from the screen in sunlight. I must admit, I have one of the older versions and on holiday I did find myself rolling around on the sunbed trying to find a spot where I could actually see what I was reading. But living in England this isn't exactly a problem that affects me often. Kindle have however taken this on board and their newer versions, such as the Kindle Fire HD, come with anti-glare and a backlight to read in the dark.
It seems that now, Kindle has forgotten its original purpose with more distractions that ever including apps, games, photos movies and more.
The new Kindles are actually classed as tablets as opposed to simple e-readers and now just function as a cheaper alternative to the Ipad.
The Verdict
Sometimes it's just better to stick with the good old fashioned paper version. No distractions and no worrying when you forget your charger. After all, when your jet setting this summer, you'll be the one laughing when the Kindle readers have to put their electronic devices away for the first half hour of the flight.
So what do you think? Is kindle the way forward or should we stick to books in print?
Christina Hirst
