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Kindles: Basic vs Fire? Yesterday's Classics & Heritage History books?
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I am looking at taking the plunge into e-readers. Currently, we primarily use Chromebooks in our home, although we do have an old Mac and PC. We are considering buying a Kindle Fire and the basic $69 Kindle. I like the idea of the cheaper one because I can see myself being more relaxed about the kids reading it. lol (Kids at home are 8,6,4.) We are also considering a Nexus (Google) tablet with a Kindle Reader on it (and Google Books, of course).
So my big questions on the Kindle….
– Obviously a color, touchscreen interface is wonderful, but does anyone have the simple $69 Kindle? How does it handle illustrations? Readability? Would you recommend it as a just a good, solid reader?
– If you go this route, do you think it’s reasonable to actaully GET RID of hard copies of books? Obviously not all books, lol, but have you parted ways with the bound books for the most part when you have Kindle copies?
On the topic of sources….
– What do you think about Yesterday’s Classics and Heritage History e-books on the Kindle? Are these all high quality versions? (linked Table of Contents, illustrations… what else should I be thinking of here? like that highlight a word and define it thing?)
– What about bundles from YC adn HH? Are these the way to go versus invidual books? What recommendations do you have? I know they have sales from time to time, but haven’t really paid attention to what is a “good” sale — thoughts on that?
– Other sources? What about Project Guttenberg and that type of thing? And what is the disadvantage of buying from these 3rd party suppliers versus Amazon directly?
*Waving Hand* We have TWO Kindles. Mine is an older one with a keyboard and my 11yo has one of the $69 ones. Both work perfectly for reading books, which is all we want to do on them. (We’re not interested in color graphics, games, and apps). Even my younger children have read books on the Kindles.
Readability is great, you can adjust the text size if you wish and can sit in direct sunlight and still read the screen perfectly. The only drawback to them is that because they are not backlit the screen does not glow to read in the dark/at night. We both have book lights for our Kindles (and the rest of the kids have booklight for books). I happen to do a lot of reading at night while awake with the baby, so having the light is nice.
Have we actually gotten rid of printed books if we have them on the Kindle???
YES (gasp!). And I never thought I would like an ereader but I love it. We have kept a few print books we have for kindle, if they are a nicely illustrated copy. For example we have an illustrated copy of The Hobbit that we hold onto, even though we have it on Kindle. But in general if we get it for Kindle we pass the printed book to someone else.
I have BOTH Yesterday’s Classics Bundle and several CDs from Heritage History. Both are great, love them. If they had illustrations originally then YC keeps them in. And yes to linked TOC. A good sale on YC is $50 I think, and I think they have one going on right now. Bundles are the best way to buy I think.
Check out HH for a free ebook to see what they are like.
I’ve gotten books from Project Gutenberg too. Main drawback is they may not be well formatted/linked, though most of the ones I’ve gotten are decent. Secondary drawback is just that when you buy from anyone but Amazon you have to download the file and transfer it via USB cord to the Kindle. That’s not a big drawback, just means you need to be at a computer for a minute.
I have the 3rd Generation Kindle (similar to the Kindle-keyboard) and I love it. It is really easy on the eyes, and works great. I think it would be like the $69 one now – but it does NOT have ads and I think the $69 does. But I believe the ads are just on the screensaver. Illustrations are really clear, but obviously black and white.
I haven’t gotten rid of hard copies – but if I had space issues, I could.
Everything I have heard about Yesterday’s Classics ebooks are that they are high quality. I did a sample from amazon, and it was really nice. I think YC has a $49 special right now which is a great deal. (I’d buy it if I could…. sigh.) They have the tofc, illustrations, etc. (The highlight a word and define it is in any book on a kindle.) I haven’t heard as much about the Heritage History books, but the couple of people I know who has them really like it too. I think there may be some duplicate books between the YC bundle and the HH bundle.
The Project Guttenberg books are free – they vary GREATLY in quality. Some have been scanned and OCR used to get the text – and that can cause bad typos, weird characters, and headers/footers in the middle of the text. (or mixed up words if there were columns or other complicated formatting.) That said – some are pretty good, with illustrations, and some have tofc’s. They are really hit and miss. That said – the same is true of the free ones on Amazon. many of those are the same as PG’s… but some are worse. and some are better. There are other good ones from places like manybooks.net and archive.org – but again it varies by book. Often when I’m looking for a free book, I download it from various sources to find the best one. You can also make your own in Word and email it to the kindle and it will convert it. (use the free email address for the kindle.) – some of my word documents (where I made a word tofc) have a linked tofc, and some don’t. Not sure why.
The disadvantage of using the free suppliers versus Amazon is it is a touch harder to put on the kindle (but not to much) – and it is (in theory) not backed up on the “cloud”. That said, I downloaded a utility from Amazon that sends documents to the kindle (instead of emailing it) and I can indicated if I want it backed up on the cloud or not. but either way – it is backed up on my computer anyway.
Hope that helps!
I think I actually went to Project Gutenberg on the Kindle’s experimental browser and downloaded a book direct to the Kindle… so that is possible.
btw – my Kindle was updated recently to add some parental controls! I can password buying books, and things like the browser.
I have a Kindle fire and much to my surprise, I really like it. I am even ok with the backlit screen. If I had the funds I would definitely buy the YC bundle.
Tristan–Did I read your blog correctly? You’re having morning sickness, Congratulations!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have a Kindle – Black and White with 3G and I have just recently gotten the Kindle Fire HD. I LOVE my Kindle Fire! I had formatting issues with the black and white Kindle with the gutenberg free books and I’m not sure why, but those formatting issues are not there when I read those same books on the Kindle Fire. As far as the Nexus, I was sold on it and in fact bought one, but returned and exchanged it for my Fire. The Nexus had app issues and sound issues. If apps worked then sound was messed up and if I got the sound to work the apps would not load. Weird issue I guess, but it was too expensive a product for it to not work correctly. I love, love, love my Kindle Fire!
As far as YC books, I had been saving up to buy the package and just purchased it but haven’t loaded my kindle with it yet. If you purchase the $49 deal now, you get a bonus of ten extra books, including Jack’s Insects for free! As far as getting rid of books, I’ve thought of it seriously, but haven’t taken that step as of yet…
I have a $69 version of the Kindle and have the Yesterday’s Classics on it. I LOVE it. I have had access to more interesting and readable books since I got it, and I spend my personal reading time reading those books. LOL
The illustrations are great – black and white – but they are just fine. I also just recently found the illustrations in color for all the books on the Balwin Project – Yesterday’s Classics. The link is here: http://www.mainlesson.com/ The story I actually found the pictures of is The Story of Greece – I have enjoyed that so much, we are using it as the spine for our Ancient Greece studies.
I have studied the Heritage History for several months. After my experience with the Yesterday’s Classics, I want the whole set. =) My dh gave me permission to get them.
My older kids are getting the cheap Kindle for Christmas, so I think that we are going to ba happy with them.
The other thing I found to not be an issue – the ads are simply a screen saver and doesn’t effect the Kindle at all. The screen is easy to read – the font is adjustable, and I love that I can read a story to my little kids while holding them and then flip to my story with one hand and without moving while they fall asleep or have snuggle time. =)
Calibre (it’s free) is a great resource for getting free ebooks and converting them to use on the Kindle.
I am editing this to say that we played with a Fire today, and now the kids want one. However, they will want to play the games instead of read! Haha And, my 4 and 5 year old are very careful with the Kindle and handle it with “reverence and respect” 😉
Forgot to mention that both Heritage History and Yesterday’s Classics are having sales. You can get YC for $49.95 right now. Even if you don’t have a Kindle or eReader, you can still download them and use a free Kindle download on your computer to read them.
Thanks so much for all the great replies! It is very encouraging from so many about this. I really think 1-2 basic Kindles would be great and not completely break the bank (…of course, buying the Yesterday’s Classics and Heritage History bundles too just might! lol). Part of the added expense on the Kindle Fire and tablets, at least I feel like, is I think I would feel compelled to get a better cover, a Square Trade warranty, etc. With the $69 basic Kindle I feel like I can get a $10 flip case and we’re good to go. (Do you guys with those Kindles even use covers on them?)
OK, so a specific follow-up question for Sheraz (or whoever): You already have the YC bundle, and you are planning to get the “whole” HH set. What do you mean when you say that? I’m a little confused on some of their options. And how old are your kids who use these?
I do feel like my kids can and will be responsible with whatever we get. I worry about the 4yo mostly, and know that if we got the Kindle Fire or a tablet he would obsess about playing games on it. <sigh>
OH!! Forgot to ask: I know that whole WhisperSync feature keeps track of where you are in the book. But what if you have more than one person reading the same book at the same time — but you are in different spots. Can you just manually set a bookmark, like with your initials or something, to differentiate your bookmard from a sibling’s?
A huge THANK YOU for all your help! (And congratulations to Tristan on your sweet baby news!)
I got a flipcover for mine to protect the screen when we are traveling (I take it in a pocket of my purse when kiddos are in therapy, etc.) Also, after I read that LDImom sat on hers and cracked it, I decided to get a re-inforced cover “just in case”, lol.
So – the Heritage History site has 8 different curriculum choices – covering Ancient Greece and Rome, Middle Ages, Early America, etc. through Modern Europe. In each curriculum choice there are dozens of books, timelines, maps, study aids, etc. It even has a teacher guide. The book themselves may be read online for free, but the whole curriculum is only $25 per course CD. The books are available in 3 formats, so I can print, have it on my Kindle, whatever I need. If you buy all 8 of the history CDs on the bundle, you save over $40. It seems worth it to me.
While I may not follow the curriculum presisely I am excited to have access to so many wonderful resources. I like the visuals that help my kids and I picture what we are reading about. It is so reasonably priced for history! And it is flexible, which is wonderful. I love the color illustrations available in the books too. I sometimes use the website to look at the color illustration after we’ve read the story. Then my girls are like, “oh, that’s when….and it leads to a great narration. 😉 Here’s a link to the CDs:
http://www.heritage-history.com/www/heritage-store.php?pid=curriculum
There are many books that overlap in the Early Readers and the Yesterday’s Classics, so I may just do individual downloads of those.
I use it for all my kiddos, but my 11 and 12 yo will have their own. I do not have games or things on mine, so the littles who aren’t reading don’t need to use it. They love holding it for me though and getting it out.
I mainly want to reply about your question about bookmarking and whispersync, but first I’ll give you a quick background.
In our five family we started with 5 of the kindle keyboards (my mom bought one for every for Christmas). The kids were all able to read on them and even did a few words games. Some of the words games are great for extending vocabulary and spelling. Now my husband and I have the same Kindles but my mom bought each of the kids a Kindle Fire HD. They definitely like playing the games and they use the digital Bibles. However, I wouldn’t say that they do much reading on them.
We have used cases on all of ours devices but they were not really fancy ones.
About the bookmarking: we have had all of our Kindles registered to one account. It is wonderful because we buy one copy of anything and everyone can use it. However, you will need to turn off the syncing feature if 2 people are reading the same book at the same time. It isn’t a problem though. Each device will remember where you stopped in any book, it just won’t update from one device to another. For example, if you had the kindle app on your phone or another device, it would not sink with your kindle. Or if you’re reading a book on your kindle and then open it on your child’s kindle, it would not be on the same page.
I’m not sure if that comes across very clear, but the main point is that it is no problem and your place will always be saved on the individual device.
Thanks for the last response, dztamra. I was wondering about the ‘sharing’ of books. I have several books for the upcoming year on my Kindle, but we’re talking about getting one (or more) for the kids so there is no fighting over needing the book.
Just to make sure I understand, I have a Kindle. If I buy another I can link it to my account and we can all use the same books. How many devices can you have on one account? Is there a way to block certain books from other Kindles? Let’s say I have a ton of cookbooks and finance books and such on my Kindle, but don’t necessarily want them on the kid ones. Can I block that?
You can have 6 devices on one account. Right now on mine I have my kindle, my daughter’s kindle, my Ipod’s kindle app, my computer’s kindle app, and my husband’s android tablet kindle app. We can all use the books in the account (yay!). You choose what to download to each device, so if I buy a cookbook it does not automatically get downloaded to all our devices, just to the ONE I tell it to go to. If my daughter decides she wants it too we can send it to download to her Kindle in our amazon account or she can use her kindle and pull it through the ‘archived books’ spot.
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