Crowdsourced Shopping

[ase]

Captain Vorpatril's Alliance is available in electronic format, and I want something to read on the train, so I'm looking at ereaders. Are there overwhelming reasons to go with a Kindle Touch over a Nook Simple Touch? Available free / cheap books, breadth / depth of compatible file formats, convenience of downloading internet content, marginal non-reading bonus features? I'm leaning toward the Nook. I'm also eying the Sony ereader in reflexive anti-crowd attitude, but I'm not buying without trying.

Comments

[scifantasy]

Downloading Calibre (http://calibre-ebook.com/) solves all the problems--file conversion, organization, and you don't want to download straight to the reader anyway.

[sraun]

I probably would have bought a Nook, except for the fact that I wanted an ereader right now!, and the recently released Kindle had a clearly superior display. If I were making the same purchase today, the Nook Simple Touch would be a strong contender.

If you have access to see and touch them both, do that before you make a decision.

[loup_noir]

We were given a Kindle for Christmas. I find it so annoying to use that I've abandoned it. albionwood will occasionally use it to read "Science News," but I notice he's not using it very much these days. Me? I'm holding out for the next big price reduction on tablets. The 7" size of the various ereaders I've looked at is too small. I'd like a 10" reader with some kind of manual paging or a gesture screen. The poking and prodding on the Kindle doesn't do it for me.

[cahn]

I get the vague impression that kindle is easier to buy/load books onto, but I've only ever used a (old-generation) Nook for about five minutes, so don't know. I definitely get the impression that the number of books available is much higher for kindle than for nook.

I find myself, these days, using the tablet much more than I use the kindle... if I were to get one device, I'd actually get a used ipod touch (or android equivalent), which I think are selling for about $50 -- it's like having a smartphone only without the "expensive" and "charge you every month" part. But that form factor may be too small for you.