Kindle

[richw911]

All good if it's a £10 voucher that doesn't require you spending a certain amount. I.e you'll only save £10 if you spend another £50 with them.

Very true 

[DubFan]

You pay £100 or whatever for the unit itself which, admittedly, is nice to read on but is never going to match a real book and then you pay a hefty  premium over the price of a real book which you can keep forever (rather than lose it due to software corruption, hardware obsolescence, etc etc)

Wrong.
Ok it doesn't feel the same as a paper book, but then it wont.
Vast majority of the time you pay less for a Kindle book because they don't have to add printing and shipping costs. EG a brand new fiction hardback could cost £15, but the Kindle edition will be less that £10, often £8. Within 20 books you've covered the cost of your device.
You don't lose your books, once you've paid for them (or got them free, there are lots for free) they are all available on any other Kindle reader if you log in as yourself.
EG, my wife just broke her Kindle, but all her books are available on her iPad Kindle app, and will be available on her replacement Kindle when it arrives.
Update: In fact her replacement just arrived, and all her old stuff is there to use. Brilliant service from Amazon and the replacement was free under the 1yr warrantee even though it was broken by the user.

As for the issue of whether you want a keyboard version... sure if you want to be able to type stuff on it then thats fine. But mostly you use a Kindle for reading. Besides if you want to search for a particular book, you can actually do that from your computer from the Amazon website and when you purchase the Kindle edition of a book, it will then be available on your Kindle as soon as it sync's (via Wifi or 3G). In practice this is pretty quick and it's much easier browsing the Kindle store on a computer.
So the lack of keyboard isn't a major issue.
But one other difference is that the keyboard version can read books to you, text-to-speech menus, play audiobooks and mp3s and it has a web-browser. It also has twice the memory of the standard Kindle.

[DOA]

Wrong.
Ok it doesn't feel the same as a paper book, but then it wont.
Vast majority of the time you pay less for a Kindle book because they don't have to add printing and shipping costs. EG a brand new fiction hardback could cost £15, but the Kindle edition will be less that £10, often £8. Within 20 books you've covered the cost of your device.
You don't lose your books, once you've paid for them (or got them free, there are lots for free) they are all available on any other Kindle reader if you log in as yourself.

Hmm, you must be buying some different books to me as most of the books I have looked at on Amazon are more expensive on kindle brand new hence my attitude towards them but that doesnt tell the full story as most of the books on amazon are available much cheaper brand new or second hand through alternative sellers. You still get the same book, it may just have been lived in a touch (although most of the time they are in as new condition from my experience). Fair do's you mention hardbacks but I only ever buy hardbacks with pictures in or of a technical nature which would never get onto a kindle in their current form anyway.
 As far as the, the books are there for life issue and free books, fair play, you have educated me but Im still not remotely convinced. Anyway, opinions are like arseholes and I think I shall stick with the smell of my own though I recognise you are under no obligation to convince me otherwise .

[bobotheclown]

You pay £100 or whatever for the unit itself which, admittedly, is nice to read on but is never going to match a real book and then you pay a hefty  premium over the price of a real book which you can keep forever (rather than lose it due to software corruption, hardware obsolescence, etc etc)

Wrong.
Ok it doesn't feel the same as a paper book, but then it wont.
Vast majority of the time you pay less for a Kindle book because they don't have to add printing and shipping costs. EG a brand new fiction hardback could cost £15, but the Kindle edition will be less that £10, often £8. Within 20 books you've covered the cost of your device.
You don't lose your books, once you've paid for them (or got them free, there are lots for free) they are all available on any other Kindle reader if you log in as yourself.
EG, my wife just broke her Kindle, but all her books are available on her iPad Kindle app, and will be available on her replacement Kindle when it arrives.
Update: In fact her replacement just arrived, and all her old stuff is there to use. Brilliant service from Amazon and the replacement was free under the 1yr warrantee even though it was broken by the user.

As for the issue of whether you want a keyboard version... sure if you want to be able to type stuff on it then thats fine. But mostly you use a Kindle for reading. Besides if you want to search for a particular book, you can actually do that from your computer from the Amazon website and when you purchase the Kindle edition of a book, it will then be available on your Kindle as soon as it sync's (via Wifi or 3G). In practice this is pretty quick and it's much easier browsing the Kindle store on a computer.
So the lack of keyboard isn't a major issue.
But one other difference is that the keyboard version can read books to you, text-to-speech menus, play audiobooks and mp3s and it has a web-browser. It also has twice the memory of the standard Kindle.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html

[DubFan]

You don't lose your books, once you've paid for them

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html

That's a different matter entirely. That's someone putting up books for sale on the Kindle without having the rights and so Amazon removed the illegal copies.

[DubFan]

Wrong.
Ok it doesn't feel the same as a paper book, but then it wont.
Vast majority of the time you pay less for a Kindle book because they don't have to add printing and shipping costs. EG a brand new fiction hardback could cost £15, but the Kindle edition will be less that £10, often £8. Within 20 books you've covered the cost of your device.
You don't lose your books, once you've paid for them (or got them free, there are lots for free) they are all available on any other Kindle reader if you log in as yourself.

Hmm, you must be buying some different books to me as most of the books I have looked at on Amazon are more expensive on kindle brand new hence my attitude towards them but that doesnt tell the full story as most of the books on amazon are available much cheaper brand new or second hand through alternative sellers. You still get the same book, it may just have been lived in a touch (although most of the time they are in as new condition from my experience). Fair do's you mention hardbacks but I only ever buy hardbacks with pictures in or of a technical nature which would never get onto a kindle in their current form anyway.
 As far as the, the books are there for life issue and free books, fair play, you have educated me but Im still not remotely convinced. Anyway, opinions are like arseholes and I think I shall stick with the smell of my own though I recognise you are under no obligation to convince me otherwise .

I'm not trying to convince you. You like paper, so do I. The Kindle is my wife's, I buy all my books from charity/secondhand shops. And if I don't want to keep them, I donate them back to a charity shop. I'm also a fan of libraries, I read the entire original set of James Bond books all borrowed from the library.

Of course, the cost of the Kindle books will vary, it depends on what sort of book you're after.
I like crime fiction, and one of my favourite series is by Henning Mankell. Here's one of the books:
One Step Behind
The paperback is £4.95, Kindle edition is £4.49 (not much of a saving) and I paid less than £2 for a s/h copy.
If the stuff you want to read isn't available on Kindle or is more expensive than the paper kind, then that's fair enough. And stuff with photos don't work well on the Kindle, unless you're using the Kindle app on a computer or iPad.
If you're looking at the more popular fiction genres then the Kindle versions are mostly cheaper, but for less popular stuff, there isn't so much of a saving.

As you said, each to their own. I don't like Macs and have no desire to have a games console, but lots of people do. Whatever is said, it's unlikely to change your opinion just like that.

[richw911]

Interesting stuff guys 

[Rhyso]

Interesting stuff guys 

In a nutshell, buy one!!

And keep the receipt just in case 

[Guy]

Interesting stuff guys 

In a nutshell, buy one!!

And keep the receipt just in case 

i want one!!! 

[richw911]

Interesting stuff guys 

In a nutshell, buy one!!

And keep the receipt just in case