iPad or kindle?

[bct15]

I am currently working on my PhD in mechanical engineering here at Mississippi State University. There's several books that I need to read, and the cost of books is starting to add up. I was considering purchasing an iPad or kindle for a few reasons but wanted to hear from seasoned users;

Lower the cost of my textbooks (required and supplementary reading). Does anybody use on for this purpose and how many texts are available for each (relatively speaking), when requesting to add one to the kindle database is it usually added. Does one have more texts available than the other and which one is cheaper to download books.

Make night reading easier, I'm assuming these are both backlit so I don't need to use my iPhone to light up the pages I'm reading as I'm falling asleep.

Reduce the amount of clutter when researching or working on a problem. All of my books in one place so I don't have to rifle through stacks of books. I was wondering can you highlight notes and bookmark pages in either of these rather easily. Can you have more than one book open at a time?

If I buy one or the other I will only be using it to read as I have an iPhone already and a really good laptop. Which would be the better investment, I'm leaning more towards a kindle due to the lower initial cost but I don't know much about available books for the iPad and how much they cost. A lot of the books I have now are not yet available in the kindle versions.

Thanks,
Brandon

 

[perryxcore]

Being that I work at an Apple store I am biased towards the iPad. Looking at your needs for reading material iPad is wonderful. Both Kindle and iPad are making great efforts to add more and more educational texts to their online databases, and on iPad you can easily download a free Kindle app and have access to both bookstores. You can easily highlight (multiple colours), annotate, and bookmark on iPad, when you leave a book to another it remembers where you last were for you and has several fast location features to find a specific part of the book. Also seeing that there are great note taking apps (and with a stylus some amazing freehand apps) plus the ability to open, edit, save, email, and wirelessly print Word, Excel, and Powerpoint files, I believe the iPad has infinite room to enrich your life.

Hope this helped,
perry

 

[mfinn]

The kindle is not backlit, ( suppose to reduce eye strain).
I bought my wife a kindle and she loves it. She has been a book avid book reader all her life and this works perfect for her.

 

[btkrausen]

I'm going with iPad2 when it gets released. According to CNN, its in production already.

 

[Paul_N]

I am as anti-Apple as you can get and I would get the iPad over the kindle.

 

[RogerWilco357]

you are anti-apple ? but want to buy the ipad an apple product? I like the ipad but they forgot alot of things on it like the ability to print off it and the camera which even the itouch has so hopefully the next ipad will have both options if it does I will be buying it for sure. As the kindle goes not to familiar with it , if you want only to read then i would buy the cost is worth it for what you want just to read .. if you want to read and maybe go online to do further research maybe type some notes and do alot more than i would go with any of the tablets out there that do just that and print and are using the droid os which I love .

 

[jabberkaycee]

I have a Kindle and love it but I got it before the ipads came out. I would probably seriously consider an ipad now, but I don't want it backlit for reading. The Kindle remembers where you left off, you can bookmark, highlight, take notes, etc. but the ipad has so much more to offer above and beyond reading.

 

[clowns101]

I-pad all the way...so much cooler,I love apple products!

 

[Paul_N]

you are anti-apple ? but want to buy the ipad an apple product?

Never said I wanted to buy one. I said I would pick the iPad over the Kindle. I am waiting for the perfect Android based tablet for me...:tongue:

 

[marcof]

What about all the Droid based tablets? A bunch out there and they are a fraction of the price compared to an I-pad. Kindle is also nice because of the battery life.

--Marco

 

[marlin]

there is also the nook which is sold by barns & noble i don't know what it is like but it is more like an ipad with the color touch screen but it is about half the price. just my 2 cents