kindle or paper? pros/cons help?

I’ve tested every e-book reader I could get my hands on and we decided to own both a Kindle and an iPad. We use the iPad constantly every day and the Kindle only occasionally. They are both great devices but their style of use is different. The iPad happens to fit our lifestyle better, but that may not be true for everyone.

The Kindle is really good at reading Kindle format books. It reads PDF files but it doesn’t handle them really well. It works well in direct sunlight and is inexpensive. The Kindle is lighter weight, smaller, and probably a bit more durable than an iPad if you drop it.

The iPad is a really good multi-purpose device that is also a great book reader. The increased capabilities come at a higher price, though. It’s very responsive, feels very natural to use, and has great color. It’s hard to see the display in direct sunlight, but I don’t read on the beach so it doesn’t matter to me.  Some say that the backlit display is more fatiguing, but I’m not convinced that everyone who points that out has actually tried one. The iPad has a much higher quality display than a cheap PC monitor so you can’t base it on that experience. We actually find it very gentle on the eyes. Everyone is different so the only way to know how it works for you is to try one and see how you like it.

The Kindle DX has a larger screen that makes reading PDFs much nicer. However, the mediocre PDF reader software on it still doesn’t support links within the document (like in a table of contents or index), highlighting, or dictionary look up. With the DX you’re getting much closer to the iPad price so it’s not such a large jump to get a huge increase in capabilities.

The great thing about these devices is that your really can’t go wrong with either choice. Pick what fits your budget and lifestyle and you’ll love it.

By the way, I got a good chuckle out of my little video being referred to as the infamous Choosing an E-book Reader for Your Homeschool video in the other forum thread.  I hadn’t noticed that before.

I love my Kobo but I sure wouldn’t say no to an ipad..my sinlaw who teaches at a Childrens Hospital in the city says they are developing apps for them to use in classroom, lecture, lab settings, pretty much for everyway learning! Looks very tempting.

Having said that, I love the Kobo for its portability, ease of use, ease on the eyes ( except when trying to read at night while dh sleeps- not so great!) love love love all the free stuff, and it can handle PDFs pretty well and the epub format books so I can borrow from my library on it. The book stays ‘active’ for I think 4 weeks or so and then you have to resubmit for it..

I love it! My techie DS says the color Nook has some glitches and he is also prone to migraines and sensitive to screen displays..he loves his kindle but says the color nook makes his eyes hurt? may just be him but..

Doug, what DO you think of the Nook Color, especially for those of us who have an approximately 0% chance of accumulating enough birthday money and gift certificates for an iPad (at least before they become utterly obsolete!!!)??

It’s not a bad device but you don’t gain much other than color for the significant price increase. The screen is still a bit small for PDFs, so the text will be shrunk uncomfortably small in many cases. And you don’t have all the apps like the iPad has, which is where the color really becomes useful. It’s nice for the few books with color pictures, but that’s probably not the majority of what you’ll be reading.

I’m also turned off from the Nook by it’s artificial limitation they’ve put on it restricting how much you can load on it that you haven’t purchased from their store.

If I were constrained on the cost, I would probably go with the Kindle and save the money.

Speaking of cost, did you all know you can get Apple educational discounts as a homeschooler? It doesn’t take a huge amount off of something like an iPad, but every little bit helps. You can find it by going to the education store page, select k-12, and type “homeschool” for the name of your school, and click the search button.

You can also get deals on refurbished iPads that are certified by Apple and come with the full warranty.