So being the little nerd that I am, I’m quite interested in the Amazon Kindle bookreader gadget. You see, putting gadget and book in the same sentence is like putting candy in front of a child. I love books, and I love gadgets, that means the Kindle is a go-er!!!!

So looking at it, I have come across some things worth considering:

• Books available for Kindle – not all books that are published have a kindle version, so its a matter of sticky beaking around amazon.com (and elsewhere) to see what books I could get
• Available formats – thankfully the kindle doesn’t only support special kindle format stuff, it supports: Kindle (AZW), TXT, PDF, Audible (Audible Enhanced(AA,AAX)), MP3, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively; HTML, DOC, DOCX, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP through conversion. This struck me as particularly useful when I came across I book I am interested in that can be purchased in mobi format.
• Publisher restrictions – Digital Rights Management is a really big deal for publishers of electronic material (and I can understand why). What this means for a kindle user is that there are restrictions on how times you can download a book that you have purchased, and to how many of your own devices you can download it. One guy had a huge rant about it, and spent heaps of time dealing with Amazon customer service to understand what was happening. I think the end result was that it is up to the publisher to decide how many devices you can share your purchased book with, and if you exceed that – typically exceeded by upgrading your devices – you need to contact Amazon to get them to release a ‘contract’ with an old device, and issue a new one to your new device, so that you can access the books you paid for. Sounds a bit nightmare-ish!!!
• Geographic restrictions – depending on where your device says you are, you may have to pay more for your books, or you may not be able to get some books at all. When books are published, they are published in a certain area, and that can prevent people from other regions having access to the digital version (obviously with hard copies you can just post them anywhere, and they can’t be tracked so easily) I found some really great comments on the geographic thing and publishing laws, but I can’t find it now – sorry.

THEN once I decide whether or not I want a kindle, which I am still going for the nerd option of..its a book gadget and I want it…then I need to choose WHICH kindle I would want.

Because its a gadget for the sake of a gadget I certainly wouldn’t want to pay a whole lot of money, so I have been weighing up the two cheapest options.

The factors that affect my decision include:

They both use WiFi, are roughly the same size and weight, they are both ad version (you pay more to get one that doesn’t push advertising to you).

Fingerprints on the Touch could get annoying, but for the extra capacity and battery life (for not much extra cost), I’m willing to give it a whirl. Actually I briefly played with my sister-in-law’s non-touch screen kindle on the weekend and I kept trying to poke the screen, because thats obviously how I felt it should be used..so I think the Touch would probably suit me better!!

The Touch also does audiobooks, not that that rates highly on my lists of ‘wants’. Also I do wonder how the cost (and possibly availability) will change based on me being in Australia.

So after all that the Kindle Touch I’m keen on won’t be released until November 21st!!So I have downloaded the free kindle app for my iPhone, and have started downloading free kindle books that sounds vaguely interesting, to see if I like the concept of reading on an electronic device (though a shiny small iPhone screen won’t really compare to the slick matt finish of a kindle).

Being a nerdy lover of gadgets is surely terrible for my bank balance!!!

Let me know your thoughts on the whole kindle thing, and … I’ll keep you posted!