Anyone here have any experience with E-books? Like the best place to buy one, the best models and downloading books?

i cringe at the thought. it would be convenient if you wanted to travel with a lot of books, but i find it hard enough to read long editorials on a computer screen, let alone one less that 15".

that said, you cant go wrong with apple these days it seems. the ipad does everything an e-book does and then some. although it's quite pricey and hard to get one at the moment.

an ebook will only do just that, and most of em that i've seen have a 5 or 6 inch screen, the better ones have a 7" and are widescreen. they run up to $400, so if i absolutely had to have something like it, i would save for the ipad.

I tend to read a lot of books on my smart phone, but they are all PDF format so not exactly purchased from amazon.

As for the ebook readers such as the kindle and other such devices, I generally hear good things from those who have them. I believe amazon now sells more ebooks than paper books.

It really comes down to the question of if you can read off a screen... some people don't like to, others like me have no issues with it.

I use eBooks all the time and read them through an app called Aldiko on my smart phone. I download them through torrents and have not paid for any books yet. I love reading this way as it is very convenient. I always have my phone with me so whenever I have time to kill, even if only for 5 or 10 minutes, I can read.

that might not be too bad, but i still cringe at reading for too long on such a small screen. i like to scroll with my eyes, not with my hands.

Foxrun, are you asking about e-books or the e-reader devices? Are you looking just for the books (to read on a device like a laptop or a phone you already have) or for a machine on which to read them?

There's a great forum at http://www.mobileread.com that we checked out extensively before buying our e-readers. In a nutshell, if you generally stay in Canada and read mostly popular fiction/non-fiction like you'd find in a physical bookstore, and don't care about things like wireless web browsing, then the Kobo from Chapters Indigo is a decent choice. It's pretty cheap, very light and decent hardware, and of course, it's easy to buy books from Chapters: http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/kobo-eRea ... l?colour=0

Hubby ended up going with the Kobo and other than the fact that the screen is a "smidgen" smaller than perfect, he's happy with it for basic reading. (We have enough gadgets that he really just wanted a basic, simple e-reader. He didn't need it to do anything fancy or connect to the web.) It weighs next to nothing! We got it on the recommendation of a friend who loves hers for mostly paperback fiction reading.

I, on the other hand, went more high end with the Entourage Edge:


It's 3 pounds and a real multi-tasker: a wifi Android tablet on the right side and an e-ink screen on the left that you can actually use a stylus on to write in a journal or write directly on e-books/pdfs. I wanted a machine to replace a book, pad of paper and laptop all in one machine (which is how I normally read).

So there really is a wide range of options out there, and http://www.mobileread.com is a great place to get information on the different devices available and the different places you can purchase/download the e-books themselves.

Thanks Sarah.....I think I'll drop into Chapters Indigo and have a peek at their Kobo.

I have a friend who uses Kobo. I prefer reading a physical book but the Kobo has a brilliant screen. Very easy to read in all light conditions.

As for downloads, if you are in to the classics at all you will find all you want for free at http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

Any particular torrent sites in mind?......I'd like to make sure that I have a wide enough selection of authors and books to make the ebook worth while.

Audio books are another great option. I listen to them on long trips on the car stereo and they make the journey much more enjoyable than music ever could. You can find lots on torrent sites or at http://www.audible.com/.
Most are read by actors and I think of it as kind of a cross between a movie and a book. Where your imagination sort of draws the picture and the actors doing the reading add the mood. Sort of like the old radio stories. The titles are almost endless.

hey fox, did you end up getting something??

As in a good website for downloads or an ebook?

E book

I went with the Kobo ebook.....turned out to be one of my all time best birthday gifts.....well in terms of how much use she gets out of it anyway.....!

I have a Kobo, and I love it. We got my mother one of the Sony E-readers, and she likes it, but wishes she got a Kobo.
Mine came with 100 books already on it, and I added a bunch of free books from the Kobo site, as well as a few that I bought. I find it very easy to read, and it doesn't have backlighting, so I bought a book light to go with it for when I read in bed. Works great!

Does anybody know of a good torrent site for ebooks?

try this forum....and I believe you have to be an active member to share the ebooks.

Viprasys.org

When I hear about a good book, I just Google the title of the book, and the word, "torrent". I also use "Calibre" software to convert the books I download to epub format so I can load them onto my reader.

I choose to be under a duvet reading my few chapters a night with my silver haired man beside me, maybe reading to him or listening to a snore. It's about togetherness. E books aren't sexy, are they?

They're as sexy as you want them to be.....LOL