#nokindle - Introduction

My name's Tom, and I'm a Kindleholic.

I acquired mine last Christmas as a gift from my mum, and I love it. If I could have received some level of commission for each one that friends and acquaintances have bought since I've had mine, then I'd have a little more beer money to hand.

[If you don't know what a Kindle is, take a look here: Amazon's Kindle Store. Other e-book readers are available, but whilst specifics differ, the principle remains fairly consistent.]

Aside from these folks, however, I have heard a number of arguments from people who are opposed in varying degrees to the very idea of an ebook reader. Far be it from me to try to change the minds of those who wish to stay faithful to the classic book form for their own reasons; I wish only to iron out some creases in what I see as misconceptions and some outright fallacies harboured by those who haven't truly experienced the technology.

Don't get me wrong; there are some very good reasons not to buy an e-book reader which include, but are not limited to the fact that you have to download and read an inordinate amount of books before the device comes close to paying for itself; we've all already got huge stacks of real books that we haven't read yet (so you can at least wait before parting with your readies); some of us don't read that much anyway. Some of you may feel that I'm cherry-picking the silly and/or misinformed arguments against Kindles and other e-readers, and those of you who do will be absolutely correct: why would I bother attempting to debunk a perfectly good argument?

So I shall be posting my responses to some of the more prolific misguided ant-ebook sentiments under the "nokindle" tag. As a brief disclaimer, my own experiences are mostly specific to Amazon's Kindle device, but much of what I have to say is, I assume, applicable to many electronic book readers.

As always, feel free to comment, agree, disagree, and ask questions!