miscellaney

[bedlamsbard]

One of those days when my computer is making me froth at the mouth; I have had to shut it down and reboot it five times today because it's gone unresponsive. I should have just bought a new computer yesterday while we were at Costco. (Yeah, I'm still on the Dell Inspiron 1525, it's functional most of the time, except for today, apparently.) This weekend, I guess. *pets laptop hopefully* Don't die, baby!

My cousin and her kid were here all weekend, which was...trying. K. is about a year and a couple months, and I've never been in sustained proximity to a kid that age. It's really not my thing. (And of course, my parents and cousin are all, "Oh, Katrina, doesn't this make you want to have a baby?" "NO. NO IT DOES NOT." "Ka-chan, you're not going to be one of those only children who doesn't have kids, are you?" "YES. YES I AM. AND THAT'S OKAY." *parents look doubtful*)

Am watching Hornblower, since my local library has the DVDs. BABY JAMIE BAMBER AND IOAN GRUFFUDD OMG. Gruffudd has such an expressive face, it's really amazing. And is occasionally really sexy, I think it's my usual competence + duty kink. (And for some reason I've been getting all hot and bothered about cute dudes, this isn't typical for me. I blame The Avengers, because have you seen those guys? homg. /shallow)

I'm thinking about buying an eReader to take to England, since I obviously can't take my usual collection of books with me. I'm not very keen on eReaders? But it seems like a good idea. Texas has a Nook Color, which she also uses as a tablet, so that's what I'm thinking about. But I don't know a whole lot about eReaders.

Comments

[bedlamsbard]

I'm pretty sure that I'd like the option of the tablet function -- Texas also had her computer go down during the school year (it's catching! okay, hers died way before mine did), and she used it to check the internet, watch TV, etc.; since my laptop basically functions as a desktop and I don't have a smartphone, it'd be nice to have the functionality/travelability/now I'm just making up words. So that's my logic.

I hadn't thought about a Kindle Fire, since the only one I've had personal experience with is the Nook Color. But are there formatting differences or something between different devices? *frown*

[lady_songsmith]

Yeah, there are for the ebooks; all the tablets have their own DRM (digital rights management) format. Which means if you buy a Nook book you can't read it on your Kindle, and vice-versa (uhm, straight out of the box. You can side-load or root and get it on there).

Free ebooks you can put on either, and you can convert non-protected things with calibre (free program) to suit your format or send your documents to the device. (I take along a doc of the notes for whatever fic I'm working on.)

I didn't like the Nook when I was looking at them, but the newest model came out after I'd gotten the Fire, so I don't know about that. It was just a hand-feel thing, I couldn't see myself holding one for a while. The Fire has some real heft - all tablet capable ones are going to be heavier than the book only. The book only ones are REALLY light, as light as a phone or better.

Uhm, let's see... formats. Kindle Fire will take these types of files via USB transfer or other upload methods:
* Documents: AZW, TXT,PDF, MOBI, PRC, DOC, DOCX
* Music: MP3, Non-DRM AAC, MIDI, OGG, WAV
* Images: JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP
* Video: MP4, VP8

If you've bought digital media from Amazon before, that should be available to you. Oh, and if you have Prime there are some perks, like some of the videos stream free.

One significant drawback to the Fire as tablet is that its net connection is Wi-Fi only. Now, I think the Nook is also? But I'm not sure. Basically that means that, unlike a phone or an iPad but like your average laptop, you need something else providing the internet signal. So some of the streaming features and cloud storage stuff aren't as useful as they might be, because you might not have internet. OTOH, it also means that you don't need to sign up with a wireless carrier and have monthly bills, like you would with an iPad.

[bedlamsbard]

Thanks!

Hmm, will it read files off a flashdrive? Like, say, could I watch vids that are on a flashdrive or that sort of thing?

[lady_songsmith]

It doesn't have a standard USB (USB A) but rather a USB micro-B (a lot of phone chargers are this size) so you couldn't do a flash directly