I recently spent a little over 3 weeks in hospital. No cellphones allowed (nominally; several staffies and docs were plainly in violation). l didn't have a cellphone, iPad or computer.

But I had my Kindle.

It's a first-generation one. I was an early adopter. It downloads and uploads via a Sprint channel I don't pay for. Does not need to connect via WiFi. My only cellular account is an ATT GoPhone, rarely even turned on. All I ever pay Amazon for is e-reading I select.

Bottom line, the Kindle's self-described "experimental" Basic Web service works well enough that I could read, sign on, post, and logout of Aantares; browse headline news stories at my leisure; keep track of the soccer and tennis that got started while I was sick; and use Google, Wikipedia and the BBC world service from my bed.

The staffies who could see what I was doing didn't shut me down and those who couldn't figure out what I was doing were fascinated. Most had only heard about and not actually seen an e-reader in operation.

Amprof...

I'm sorry that you have been in the hospital. Three weeks is a LONG time and I hope you are on the mend and not posting from there now. Geesh, I hope it was just your knees, everyone seems to be getting new knees lately!

We are looking into Kindle for my husband. A voracious reader, he doesn't like the computer much...never has. Your information is most helpful.

When my son had surgery three years ago, he was on the table over five hours and we were encouraged to bring a cell to the hospital for the doctor to communicate with us.

I'm getting the new I-Phone shortly because I dropped my good one in dishwater. Arghhhhh. I can get it on my husband's number with just a short contract extension at a reduced price. My boys are advising the best approach. Both are in telecommunications.

I'm cutting back expenses on the condo because it has become too costly to keep in this economy. Although we are wireless on the telephone, (saves a LOT) we have cable TV and internet in two places. As it may take some time to sell the condo, my thinking was that when I am there, I can use the I-phone to check the news, news clips and email without having to pay for a months worth of Cable charges ($125 without premium channels!)and not be totally out of touch with civilization when I'm there. I don't enjoy TV that much anyway. The net savings, including the AT&T charge would be about $100/mo.

The Kindle sounds useful for such purposes as well....Not to mention that he has read every book in the Frogville library and we have no more room for bookshelves.

Thank you so much for sharing this information and please take good good care of yourself. We need you. You do tend to keep us on our toes here.

Peachy

 
AMProf...

You're the first/only person I know who has a Kindle, and I've always been very jealous.

Is yours the first version, or a v. 2?

I didn't even know you could browse the Internet w/ a Kindle, much less that it had a keyboard to facilitate posting.

Have you compared it to a netbook... and if so, if you could only have one, which would you choose?

I hope you're home again, home again, jiggity-jig and well on the mend.

*CJ

Peachy, thanks for the good wishes. I'm home, moving slowly but able to function.

I suspect your husband might like to have a Kindle or something like it. Keep in mind the Kindle does NOT require a computer hookup for ANY of its core purposes. Several E-readers require that you use a computer to download content. Not so with Kindle. If you can get Sprint signals you're home free (literally free — Amazon pays Sprint, I don't).

Eliminating shelf clutter is one of the most attractive features. I subscribe to a monthly magazine (Reason) on Kindle at a price within pennies of the print subscription. The back issues take no physical space at all; I can bookmark/highlight/clip anything I want to look up later.

Battery life is a non-issue. I've left it on for a week and still shows 75% of full charge. It puts itself to sleep in non-use. The Sprint connection has a separate on-off switch; it uses power at a much higher rate than simply reading.

quote:

Originally posted by *CJ:
 
AMProf...

You're the first/only person I know who has a Kindle, and I've always been very jealous.

Is yours the first version, or a v. 2?

I didn't even know you could browse the Internet w/ a Kindle, much less that it had a keyboard to facilitate posting.

Mine is the original version. The newer ones have somewhat larger screens and both the page turn and keyboard interfaces are better engineered. There's no internal light in any of them. Mine has an SD card, I think the newer ones might not.

The browser is very crude, but it works, and doesn't need either WiFi or a computer. With a lot of state-of-the-art websites it is impossible to navigate fluently; some mobile-specific ones (Google, MSNBC) are designed to work with minimum browser features.

quote:

Have you compared it to a netbook... and if so, if you could only have one, which would you choose?

No, I haven't. I don't need or want a netbook. I'm a Macintosh aficionado, but even that has not come close to persuading me to want an iPad, I still have no idea why anyone would.

quote:

I hope you're home again, home again, jiggity-jig and well on the mend.

Got home Friday. Weak but functioning. I seem to have a mystery bug.

quote:

even that has not come close to persuading me to want an iPad, I still have no idea why anyone would.

Read this comparison of the two:

http://ireaderreview.com/2010/...dle-ipad-comparison/

Here are a few of the iPad advantages. It has a backlit COLOR LCD screen with adjustable brightness, so you can read at night without a separate light. The screen is bigger and has a two-page view option. It has thousands of games to play and movies to view, plus you can listen to music and use its text-to-speech feature to read the books to you. You can also load it with PDF files AND you can use its wordprocessing features for everything. It runs almost all the hundreds of thousands of apps available for the iPhone/iPod Touch, with more coming along for the iPad alone.

The Kindle has advantages too...but don't diss the iPad. I lust after one.

I have over 65,000 books stored in my computer right now, I think. I even read some of them. I'll never catch up.

Sorry to hear of your illness--hope you get better!

Jeff/CompGuy

Here's to a speedy recovery, David!

quote:

Originally posted by CompGuy:
The Kindle has advantages too...but don't diss the iPad. I lust after one.

Thanks, Jeff. I don't mean to diss the iPad, but simply can't see any advantage in it over my present modest suite of internet terminal access and recreational hardware in terms of both need and interest.

quote:

Originally posted by Zoot House:
Here's to a speedy recovery, David!

Thank you, Zoot. I'm being tortured with twice-daily physical therapy exercises but they tell me that's how to extend my 69 years of life by some unknowable amount. I'll give it a try.