Have thought of buying a tablet for wife and kids to use -- email, facebook, "casual" on-line type gaming (solitaire, kongregate, etc) plus downloadable games (angry birds, etc - that style of game). Hard as hell to justify 400 to buy an iPad to get on the internet - seems ridiculous at best, foolish waste at worst, since it is so limited in use. Kindle Fire interests me becaues of low price, hackability....but I need to wait for more reviews. Have already seen some bad reviews -- wifi issues, but I suspect (hope) that is a firmware upgrade to fix....

Will be interested to hear your further thoughts.

In short, I have two "good" computers in the house for "serious" gaming (which will be probably running SWTOR with my daughter come Decemeber...and some decent FPS when I do an upgrade...) So one is wife's computer...meaning if i am playing a Jedi with my daughter....wife needs something to keep her happy on FB and such...So....Should I Kindle her?

@Obi --- Love books, have stacks of them all over the house, in book shelves,in boxes inteh basement. i love books. My wife and I now own our own Nook Touches, kids each own a Sony reader 0-- my 13 year old actually reads now on her own without pressure (the other one has always read on her own). I **love** my reader and will never go back. I walk around with 100's of books in my pocket, with built in highlighter, ability to take notes, set bookmarks, establish book "shelves". I love it. Complletely. We can use the library to download book from home. We can shop for book on the couch - though we still visit book stores irl. And...if you are so inclined, torrents are full of what you might be looking for. And my hand hasn't ached from holding that book open in bed...where I eventually fall asleep and drop it and lose my page. NO more!

I gotta say: for reading purposes, nothing beats the Kindle screen.

Books are best used for fueling fires.

I've been considering buying the MSI WindPad. Dual-core AMD processor with a little more guts than the newest Intel processors, 2 Gig RAM standard with 4 Gig available (I'm going for the 4 Gig), 32 Gig Solid State HD and a better video processor than the typical Intel integrated ones. It runs Windows 7 and costs just under $600 at Buy.com.

@Krellin - Are you signed up for the SWOTR beta this coming weekend? I'm waiting to hear if I made the cut.

Oh, and the WindPad is a tablet. All touch screen, although you could connect a keyboard and mouse if you wanted. It weighs abotu 2 pounds, so not too heavy and has an HDMI port for output to a HD TV, a USB 2.0 port, and both bluetooth and 802.11g.

I got my wife an iPad for her birthday. Huge hit, now my kids want their own (and I kinda want my own too!). I think it is across-the-board superior to laptops in every respect except for work-related functions. I can't use an iPad for serious work. If I didn't have to take into account work stuff, I'd ditch my laptop and go with an iPad. I haven't tried other tablets. Since iPad has a Kindle app, I don't understand why people would still buy Kindles (and I have no familiarity with Fire, so maybe it is more souped up) beyond price point.

I typically carry a Blackberry and a laptop with a mobile hotspot (Verizon MiFi).

Tablets and eReaders are awesome. It is so quick and easy to buy books and much cheaper than buying a traditional book. You easily carry around several books with you anywhere (or even thousands). Click on a word and you can read the definition. You can make clippings and highlight sections.
Don't get me wrong paper books are feel nice and look good on a bookshelf but you can't beat eReaders for convenience.
As far as surfing the net, for most purposes, an iPad beats a laptop. Once again the convenience factor. Sure an iPad doesn't replace a laptop but you don't always need a laptops full capabilities. Sometime you just need something you can hold in your hands and which is always on. And then there's the battery life. 10 hours for iPad and up to a month for an e-ink kindle.

Now Kindle Fire... The price is good. But the initial reviews suggest that it is a bit buggy. iPad or one of the better Androids (Samsung Galaxy etc) have a much smoother experience. Still the Kindle fire is great value for money.

e-ink is better for reading novels and in sunlight. LCD is better for books with illustrations, such as technical manuals. LCD Is also good for poor light conditions.
But if you can only buy one device an LCD tablet is fine for reading.

I would agree about the iPad except for certain games that won't run on iOS.

People buy Kindles for the paperlike screen. I have yet to see an iPad or Android based tablet that had the glare resistance and readability of the Kindle. For book reading the original Kindle and the black and white Nook can't be beat.

Tablets are a very niche market right now. They're for watching movies, playing games, and browsing when you can't do any of those at your desk or home. The Fire is not a $200 iPad and the iPad doesn't come close to the laptop. Maybe Windows 8 changes that, I think it might, but right now, they're just toys.

And they are NOT for reading. Reading on an LCD does not replace a book. And it strains the eyes. E-ink however is an amazing technology and with the prices so low, I can't imagine anyone not wanting to own one.

Pay $99 for a Kindle Touch and your mind will be blown.

The fact that libraries can now lend to Kindle users makes it a no-brainer for people looking to buy a dedicated e-reader. Selection is still bad, though (mostly popular new fiction). Being a librarian, though, I'm a bit biased towards paper books, although I'm really excited for more e books and tablets to be integrated into libraries and schools.

If Jean-Luc Picard can see fit to read an actual, paper-bound book in the 24th century...

He's always looking at his tablet with some strain...that's just for work...

We all know, when it comes time to relax with a good book, there are only two possibilities:

1. Get a good old-fashioned book, some tea, and curl up on the couch, or
2. Create a holodeck simuation and experience the world of sHerlock Holmes or Dixon Hill firsthand.

;)

Obi, stick to the paper all you want, but it's obsolete and will go away. So many advantages to a Kindle and no disadvantages.

Really, Geo? No disadvantages? Like the battery is dying and you don't have access to a power source? My batteries have never died on my books...

I would take the holodeck over Kindle/Ipad any day.
I hope books won't be obsolete any time soon. One good EMP and there goes a lot of good knowledge...

I'm with obi.

@Drqug -- re: SWTO:R played in last weekends Beta and enjoyed myself enough that I will buy the game for me and my kid

+1 zultar

2Zultar -- I'm not sure how you equate "reading on a Nook/Kindle/iPad" to "books are obsolete". a "book" to me is a new world I enter that is provided to me by an author. I do that just fine on my Nook. I wonder if you long for phones with cords on them, too? Or music on CD? Or Tape, for that matter...

The "I love the feel of a book" crowd only exists because they have yet to try a quality e-reader, I suspect. As someone before mentioned, an e-ink (NOT a color screen!! and NOT LCD/LED....but a true e-ink screen) is like reading a book page. It's just lighter to hold.

ereaders obviously have some big advantages -- carrying lots of books with you, etc. In fact, I'd say that _for travel_, they may be preferable.
That's about it though. I think that otherwise, people's instinctive preference for them is just the same tired gut preference for new technologies over old ones, instead of better ones over worse. Just take navigating around in one. You have, what, a couple buttons that you can use with a couple fingers (perhaps, on an ipad, you can brush the screen with a couple fingers).
Compare to a book, which you can hold, manipulate, flip through, and interact with with all ten fingers. Clearly a technology better adapted to humans, who feel and work best with their hands.
And as obi suggests, it's just aesthetically far more awesome.

@Draug -- My Nook touch goes a month without a recharge. It notifies me when charge gets down to 20% (which is still a TON of reading as long as you keep WiFi off) and they charge very quickly via USB...which means with the included adapter, I cna charge from any wall plug or computer. I've NEVER had a problem with battery and won't, barring the decline of Western civilization or I get lost in the woods.....well....that being said....I suppose it is possible I will run out of battery in the near future...

@krellin, "book" has two different definitions. Zultar's post obviously was using the "physical book" definition. His EMP point, which you did not address, made this clear.
As for music, I doubt people are pining for CDs. There has indeed been a resurgence of interest in LPs, though (analog as opposed to digital), as people decide they sounded better than the undersampled digital alternatives.

semch83 -- you clearly have not used a decent ereader. Can I "flip" through the pages? No....but I can open up a screen and "scroll" through pages numbers to jump ahead. I can key-word search so I can see when a character was first introduced and re-read his background. I have a built in dictionary. does your book have that? the idea that a book in inherently more valuable than an ebook is simply not true. Yes...it is a matter of preference....but apart of a tactile sensation (which you will have forgotten about in the first 15 minutes of enjoying an ereader) I'm not sure what fantastic advantages there are. I have a table of contents to jump to chapters. I have....a book....just in e-ink.

try one before you disparrage them with ignorance. Of hold a ream of paper in your hand while you read your far-suprerior e-reader if you need some tactile sensation to enjoy a book...or find a better book to read so that you aren't so fixated on the feeling of paper and instead are enjoying a good read. lol that the most hillarious part...this idea that reading a book is about how it feels, instead of the content. I'm glad I'm not reading what you read.

@semck -- I know the two definitions of a book, for god's sake. I was ignoring the emotionally charge, tactile definition of a book because it is archaic and adds o value to why you REALLY read a book...which SHOULD be the content, not the feel.

@krellin, I have used a kindle (briefly). And yes, I am obviously well aware that you can scroll with an ereader, and have done so.
My point is precisely that binary scrolling (forward or backward, at one or perhaps two speeds) is FAR less efficient and honed to humans' abilities than the incredibly fast process of flipping through a book. Let's compare.

Ereader: I'm at page 100 of an 800 page book. I want something toward the end. I open up a list of page numbers and scroll through it. The page opens, it's a little too late in the book. I open up the list again and scroll back... etc. etc. It works, but it's clunky.

Real book: I open the book to a late page, say 700, at a glance tell it's too late, quick flip back and I'm honed right in.

Basically in both cases you're doing a binary search algorithm, but the steps in the real book case are much faster at each step.

As for dictionary: I rarely actually use a dictionary while reading, but for those occasions when I do, I easily would prefer to grab the nearby dictionary -- which I have chosen because I like and respect it, not because it came on my ereader -- and flip with great speed to the word I want rather than typing it on screen.

For travel, again, it is of course more convenient to have it all on one ereader. I was referring to home.
Finally, yes, word search is one of the truly great features of an ereader that books lack. I wouldn't use it super often but I don't deny it's nice. For me it just doesn't make up for the many disadvantages, though.

I still like physical books. They do have a nice feel (and smell) and it is possible to flick through the pages. BUT the latter is one area an iPad tab beats an e-ink book (if not a paper book). Scrolling backwards and forwards through the pages is much faster. Navigating through a book on an iPad (or similar decice) is very good.This is one way that iPads better for reference books and technical manuals than an e-ink reader. For those who talk about the eye strain on an iPad, I have to wonder ifyou have actually ever read a book on iPad. I have read several. It's not really an issue, not like people think. As I said though, e-ink is better for reading novels - page after page, where you don't jump around in the book (like one does with a manual).

Oh, and yes, I realize the point is the content. We're just arguing over which is actually the preferable way to get that content, so saying that isn't really that relevant.
I realize here there are just ultimately different preferences. I consider the book a superior technology, but if somebody wanted to do word searches a lot, and rarely moved around in a book from where he was, he'd probably disagree.
I'm glad you know there are two definitions, but you responded to a post about EMPs without addressing it, so you didn't make that clear.
Finally, regarding my last post, I should have clarified that, while some do claim a difference between vinyl and digital sound, I am not one who claims to be able to hear any difference.

semck83, regarding e-reader dictionary's - this is the best part. You don't have to type the word to check it. You just highlight the word and voila you have your definition.