(no subject)

[avendya]

Has anyone had any experience switching ebook ecosystems? I have a Kindle DX, but I think the GlowLight feature on the Nook is probably a killer feature for me. I don't own a great deal of Kindle books, and (honestly) the vast majority of my books are pirated.

However: I'm still a bit nervous about the purchase, especially because I'd buy a backlit Kindle in a minute. While Amazon is likely to introduce a backlit Kindle in the next year or so, but I also have arthritis, and it's hard for me to deal with my Kindle DX at some times. Help me make a decision?

Comments

[shana]

I mostly use my Kindle DX to read PDF files. (I have loads of rpg files in PDF.) I use my Kindle keyboards for everyday reading. Attaching a booklight is easy enough.

As a former Rocket ebook consumer, I make a point of keeping DRM-free backup copies of all my books -- but I have tons of books I bought from Baen and Fictionwise that don't have DRM. Not to mention the stuff from Project Gutenberg.

While a backlight would be nice, more memory and even more battery life would be the killer apps for me.

[ephemera]

I don't know how useful my experience of shifting from random e-reader brand no one has heard of to other only slightly more popular brand is, because ultimately my "ecosystem" is still Calibre, which is what I use to organise my library purchased from a wide variety of systems, and I try very hard to avoid DRM-encumbered things.

[rhi]

Given that most of your books aren't purchased through B&N, you may not want any of the Nooks. Nook dedicates all but 1Gb of the memory to items purchased through B&N. To make much use of other books from whatever source (I have a lot of Gutenberg, AO3, & works bought directly from the author), you'll probably have to buy an SD card as well as the Nook.

That said, B&N also has a two week trial period: if you buy a Nook, try it for a week and don't like it, you can return it and get *all* of your money back. I had Nook, warranty, cover, and screen shield; they refunded everything when I went back after 10 days. (Just keep the receipt to be sure.)

Good luck with whatever you do!

[elf]

If you use Calibre to manage your books, it's fairly easy to just export them in whatever format you need--mobi or epub, mostly, with the option for other filetypes if you want.

Technical bit: e-ink readers can't be backlit; the screens have an opaque filling. They can have light from around the edges, or potentially a cover-sheet that somehow provides light, but the light isn't coming from behind the words.

[kate_nepveu]

If you bought new-release Kindle books, you can almost certainly get them onto a Nook or other reader: download them with one of the Amazon apps and then use Calibre + plugins to break the DRM/convert them, a quite simple process. (There are some Amazon books, scans of older ones basically, that it is a much bigger pain to convert.)