Them "New-Fangled" E-Reader things???

[wildlands1]

i dont no nothing about them, but it seems like for an RTW trip if i had many lonely planets loaded onto one it'd be a heckuva lot easier than haveing a stack of books in my pannier? how do they hold up on a ride, with vibrations and all? worth the money to buy one and load a stack of LP's on it? where can one buy many contry guides for cheap? if they make counterfiet ones itll put lots of kid vendors out of business on the streets of, say, Phenom Phenh, won't it?

[TravellingStrom]

They are useful as a book reader, they are not useful for lonely planet type things where you need to look back, change pages, look ahead and they dont have maps.

You can pack them with books to read at your leisure, so they are useful

To tell the truth, the LP are not a very useful book for a biker, they do not have anything bike specific, I usually ignore them, the ones I have bought I have not opened more than twice, only because I was stuck in town for a while

Cheers
TS

[itchyfeet38]

I agree with the above. They are great for novels and general reading materials but not for guide books were you want to be able to flick back and forth between pages. I tried it and it just didn't work.

Re durability we had an old sony e-reader which held up fine and a kindle. The kindle did get a crack across the screen but they swapped it under the warranty. If you do take one make sure you have some kind of rotective casing. Treat is as you would say a GPS.

[olionel]

not an e-reader input but an LP experience. Once we turned up at a hostel "recommended" by the famous LP.. it was shut.. so we waited for a couple of hours as a local guy said it opened at 6pm. Anyways, when it opened it turned out to be a homeless shelter and we weren't allowed in. It was in Bari.. oo what a hole that city was... (sorry if any Bari-ans are about)

[chris]

I concur on the fact that LP guides are sh!te in all respects and that pdf (digital) versions of the guides are a big PITA to read on a Kindle.

Ditto that Kindle-format novels are great on a Kindle.

Last summer, on my Central Asia/Mongolia trip, mine seem quited rugged to vibrations, but didn't seem to work any more after being submerged in a river for 10 minutes. Can't explain why!

Paper LP guides are however very useful when you have to park your bike in the mud when the sidestand is sinking into the quagmire.

[J-P-W]

A not very well publicised feature of the 3G version of the kindle is that under "Experimental" there is a web browser.... and it works across the world without cost!

I use it when abroad to check Facebook [sad I know] and emails. You can reply by email, but if I need a better reply I know to hunt out some wi-fi and use my phone of netbook.

Oh, and you can read books also!

JOn

[TravellingStrom]

Originally Posted by J-P-W

A not very well publicised feature of the 3G version of the kindle is that under "Experimental" there is a web browser.... and it works across the world without cost!

I use it when abroad to check Facebook [sad I know] and emails. You can reply by email, but if I need a better reply I know to hunt out some wi-fi and use my phone of netbook.

Oh, and you can read books also!

JOn

Very interesting, had mine since xmas and never knew this LOL

Thanks
TS

[backofbeyond]

Originally Posted by J-P-W

A not very well publicised feature of the 3G version of the kindle is that under "Experimental" there is a web browser.... and it works across the world without cost!

I use it when abroad to check Facebook [sad I know] and emails. You can reply by email, but if I need a better reply I know to hunt out some wi-fi and use my phone of netbook.

Oh, and you can read books also!

JOn

If you were really stuck I suppose it's better than nothing but good luck trying to access just about any site on it though. It's so slow you'd be quicker flying home and using your own pc.

A Kindle in a good case is just about as rugged piece of tech as you'll get and I've used mine on quite a few trips but it's not suitable for books like L.P. where you dodge around from section to section as you can't really do that on a Kindle. Great for novels and such though and if you turn the wi-fi etc off the battery will last weeks.

[J-P-W]

Originally Posted by backofbeyond

If you were really stuck I suppose it's better than nothing but good luck trying to access just about any site on it though. It's so slow you'd be quicker flying home and using your own pc.

A Kindle in a good case is just about as rugged piece of tech as you'll get and I've used mine on quite a few trips but it's not suitable for books like L.P. where you dodge around from section to section as you can't really do that on a Kindle. Great for novels and such though and if you turn the wi-fi etc off the battery will last weeks.

Perhaps you've had a poor experience. Sat on a Royal Caribbean ship in the middle of the sea and quite happily checking emails and gloating to my friends on FB worked for me! I find that sites that have a mobile version are better. Certainly fantastic compared to the shipping operators $0.65 a minute for wi-fi!!!

[backofbeyond]

Originally Posted by J-P-W

Sat on a Royal Caribbean ship in the middle of the sea and quite happily checking emails and gloating to my friends on FB worked for me!

Sounds like the promised land to me! I was going to try and do this reply on the Kindle but I gave up after half an hour as I needed to go and scrape the ice off the car and drive my daughter to school. Maybe if I had a bit longer....

Seems to work well the other way though - Amazon got a book to me in about 15 secs last night!

[navalarchitect]

Hallo,

I took an ebook reader (just a cheap one from my local discount store) on a 6 month trip last year and was really pleased with it. Just loaded it up with free out of copyright books and had plenty of reading for the whole trip for less volume thanone paperback.

The downside is it didn't handle .pdf with pictures so I still had to carry hard copy Lonely Planets (which despite others experiences I find quite useful).

The solution I'm now trying is a 7 inch tablet computer. As well as having an ereader function this will read and display .pdf fine and also allows me to leave my netbook computer at home. Like all things it is still a bit of a compromise but for me it looks like it is a workable solution.

[itchyfeet38]

I agree that the browser is a really useful feature. Speed was usually rubbish (in Africa) but it did allow access to emails with some patience. So for example, we hadn't thought it likely that we would be able to get internet access deep into the Turkana region but lo and behold ...

[LukasM]

Free browser is really nice, I use mine all the time when I am outside the EU and I don't have a local phone. Only available on Kindle Keyboards 3G as mentioned..

[becsta]

If you want to read PDF's and books with pictures/maps your best bet might be a tablet. I have a Samsung Galaxy 7.7 it is a great size I read off it, surf the net, send emails, read magazines. It is great with iteractive books/magazines as you can click on a link and it will take you to the webpage/youtube video. You can book mark pages or hi-light text to review later.

[reallybigtruck]

tablets and ereaders handle about the same while on the road. In other words, make sure it is well protected from shocks and vibrations, it is definitely not rugged equipment.

If only for reading books ereaders are great. Some have Wifi/browsing/mp3player capabilities, but that seriously degrades battery-life. Expect to read a few books on one battery charge, so that's handy. Search around the web and you end up with a serious collection of ebooks, including recent books, but they might not all be legal (downloadwise)...
Tablets are also fine for reading, but the backlit screen may be tiresome on the eyes. Tablets are much better at surfing, though. And more expensive....