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Matthew Miller & Joel Evans
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2010 Holiday Gift Guide: E-book Readers

By | October 25, 2010, 6:05pm PDT

Summary: A lot has happened in the world of ebook readers since the 2009 holidays. At the beginning of 2010, we saw ebook readers in all shapes and sizes at the Consumer Electronics Show. Then as the year went on, the iPad shipped, the Kindle and NOOK saw new models released, and now just about every smartphone has a NOOK or Kindle reader available for free. All of this means that there are plenty of eReader options to choose from this holiday season.

2009 ZDNet Holiday Gift Guide

A lot has happened in the world of ebook readers since we posted our 2009 Holiday Gift Guide.

At the beginning of 2010, we saw ebook readers in all shapes and sizes at the Consumer Electronics Show. Then as the year went on, the iPad shipped, the Kindle and NOOK saw new models released, and now just about every smartphone has a NOOK or Kindle reader application available for free.

It’s been a wild ride, to say the least. We also saw a MAJOR drop in price for dedicated ebook readers that now start at $139, including wireless connectivity support. The magical $99 price for ebook readers is not far off and there is a chance you might find some this holiday season on sale.

I’ve been using ebook readers since their inception, and even today I still alternate between a NOOK, Kindle, iPad and even iPhone, when reading electronically. As you can tell from the variety of options, there’s a dedicated ebook reader to suit just about any preference and every situation.

Amazon Kindle

This year we saw the introduction of a Wi-Fi only Kindle, and an overall restyling of the Kindle, delivering an ebook reading experience in a lighter package. The new Kindle comes in three flavors: Wi-Fi, Kindle 3G + Wi-Fi, and Kindle DX. Each version offers something unique, and all versions include both an E Ink screen and integrated hardware keyboard.

Kindle 3G + Wi-Fi

The original Kindle with 3G has been revamped and now includes a choice of colors (graphite or white), 50 percent better contrast, courtesy of a new high-contrast 6″ E Ink screen, new crisper and darker fonts, a 21 percent smaller body, and a weight reduction, putting it at just 8.7 ounces. It’s also now boasting better battery life, rated up to one month with wireless off and 10 days with wireless on. To help differentiate itself, Amazon has also equipped it with the ability to play games, including Scrabble, and even an experimental WebKit-based browser, The new Kindle is still just as full-featured as its predecessor, offering up a one-time fee of $189 for a lifetime of global 3G access.

Price: $189.00 MSRP

[Check out the ZDNet Reviews page for the Amazon Kindle]

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Topics

Amazon.com Inc., Wi-Fi, E-book, Holiday Gift Guide, E-book Reader, Amazon Kindle, Kindle, NOOK, Price, NOOK Arriving, E-books & E-Readers, 3G, Wireless And Mobility, Personal Technology, Cellular Phones, Consumer Electronics, Joel Evans

With more than a decade of mobile, Internet and wireless experience, Joel specializes in taking existing brands and technologies into the mobile and wireless space.

Disclosure

Joel Evans

Joel is a serial entrepreneur with his most recent business, CronkSoftware (cronksoftware.com), focusing on consulting and building games and applications for mobile devices. Joel has consulted for Microsoft’s Windows Mobile division and advises other companies on how to incorporate mobile into their existing brands and products. Joel purchases many of his devices and others are sent for review on a 30-day loaner basis and then returned to the supplier. If any devices are provided as “keeper” Joel will clearly disclose this in his reviews.

Biography

Joel Evans

With more than a decade of mobile, Internet and wireless experience, Joel specializes in taking existing brands, technologies and services into the mobile and wireless space. Joel is currently serving as the Managing Director of Cronk Software, Inc., a company he founded to offer full-service, end-to-end mobile strategy, design and development services.

Joel is the former founder and "Chief Geek" of Geek.com, a website praised by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and others as one of world's best sources of information for technology professionals and enthusiasts.

Joel also serves as a technology expert for a number of well-known publications and regularly advises corporations, analysts, journalists and bloggers on what the future of technology will bring. He brings decades of relationships with leading game publishers, online communities and publishers, along with both hardware and software product management and delivery expertise. Joel can be found online as "JoelGeek" and you can follow him on Twitter @JoelGeek.

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RE: 2010 Holiday Gift Guide: E-book Readers
FAULKNE 13th Oct
Good day to confirm this comment I would appreciate T h e b e s t o f Z D N e t d e l i v e r e d your website very nice to everyone Yes, Oracle is the only one with shared-disk architecture, but that is there advantage. It means you can add or remove nodes and the database lives on. In a shared nothing architecture, if you lose a node, you lose the system. I'm sure Oracle appreciates EMC highlighting their advantage.I also desire to signal in your RSS feeds. Thank you as soon as once again and maintain up the great operate Awesome post! Thank you very much || thanks for nice content this is really benefit to me.
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What about the....
Scubajrr 26th Oct 2010
The:
CRUZ Reader, $199 through Borders
Augen Reader, $99 through K-Mart
Augen Tablet, $149 through K-Mart
Aluratek Libre, $129 through K-Mart

The first 3 listed are all resistive touch screen color, android based and offer tablet functions as well. Most of these come in well under the price point average in this article, and while are not as slick as the iPad for other functions they serve the reader function just as well as the iPad does.
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RE: 2010 Holiday Gift Guide: E-book Readers
eco733 15th Nov 2010
Nook Color is better for reading than iPad and better for everything else than Kindle. Nook Color is better for $249. Nook Color screen is supposed to be better (less reflective) for reading than iPad thanks to new LG screen with anti-reflection coating. It allows to watch videos, listen to the music, view Office documents and PDF's. The Nook Color will not run apps straight out of the Android Market, but that does not mean it cannot run them. In fact, they have done a lot of tests on apps from standard Android smartphones and they pretty much run on Nook Color, which has Android 2.1 under the hood. (The Nook native interface and apps are just standard Android application layers.) Barnes & Noble special Nook SDK runs on top of the standard Android one and gives developers access to exclusive extensions and APIs for the Nook and its interface. So porting Android apps is not difficult. B&N says it is more like optimising them for Nook than porting them. If you prefer e-Ink screen, the original Nook is still available from BN.
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RE: 2010 Holiday Gift Guide: E-book Readers
Peter38 Updated - 3rd Sep
@eco733 I thought that maybe it was about last year's X-mas, but from the $150 to $200 average price of ereaders that he mentions, and the fact that the article was viewed 9 times, I guess that it is pretty safe to say that it should be recent.

As I read on, the comment started to make sense. He wants eink because "It's supposed to be like reading a normal book". He wants a small one because order cipro online , order amoxil online , order lasix online , buy keflex online , buy diflucan 150mg , buy clomid online , buy lipitor usa , buy synthroid online , brand cialis cheap order , order brand name viagra , buy neurontin online Kindle DX is "more suited for newspaper and comics really" and it has to weigh less than 8 ounces, otherwise "it starts to make [his] arm ache after an hour or so".

If you include file formats and price, not much is left.
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Kindle May Not Be For Everyone!
dxg19 2nd Jan 2011
There are many eReaders on the market. Before I bought my eReader, I went to the following site to get a fast and simple review of the different eReaders: theebookreport.net
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RE: 2010 Holiday Gift Guide: E-book Readers
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