Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Paper or Plastic?

     My wife for the last few years have been trying to get me to buy a reading tablet (Nook of Kindle). I don't know if this was for my benefit or if she was tired of books and magazines scattered around the house.  I have aways put it off. However, before going on vacation my brother gave me his old Kindle Paperwhite. After using it I was hooked. What's more easy than just downloading books wherever you happen to be? What's more the likes of Osprey is making their books available on Kindle.  Once I found out that other Kindles could do other things besides just download books so I upgraded to a Kindle Fire.

    And while I am happy with the purchase, I find myself trying to decide which books to buy in paper form and which ones to download.  Now one Osprey I came across was "Lincolns 90 Day Volunteers", which, dealing with militia, was a must have and so downloaded it to the Kindle. I am happy with the purchase, but in the future I will buy Ospreys and other uniform books in paper form. (By the way one BIG drawback on the Kindle copy is that there is no direct link to the uniform plates. Might I suggest to Osprey that for now on they have the plates listed in the table of contents with a direct link to them.) Books that will in all probability be a one shot read will be a Kindle purchase.

2 comments:

  1. John, I have had one of the original Kindles for a while now and love it. Did you realise that aside from what Amazon offer, you can get a load of free, out of copyright books in Kindle format from the Gutenburg project or the Open Library. I downloaded things like English translation of Moltkes war plans for the Franco-Prussian war from one or the other of those

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  2. Ian, that is one of the great things about Kindle. Among other free books I've downloaded is " The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard"," In the Irish Brigade A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain", "Our Soldiers Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign", and both "Little Wars" and Floor Games". Also the free samples before downloading is also a big plus to me.

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