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Hi folks - i want to pick up between Nook/Kindle for my wife and would need your feedback. What is recommended?

care about:
Weight: the lighter the better
Reading : as close to book experience as possible (eInk)
Battery Life: more the merrier (hence Kindle)
Screen : would be good to have color, she reads magazines as well as paperbacks (hence Nook)

dont care about:
Cost : dont care as long as it one doesn't cost over 300$. No iPad, i need the book-reading experience and i am happy with my Mac too.

dont care about Wifi etc, i will sync rarely - even USB cable is more than good enough.

Sorry if i am digressing a little - thanks for your time!

Get the nook colour brother. it's a beauty!

thanks FM. I will probably do that!

If you want a book reader, e-ink is a must. Only Sony e-reader and Kindle have that.

As Samurai said, do note that Nook would have a backlit display. Hence very small battery life as compared to Kindle.

I got my dad a Kindle (WiFi + 3G) last October. Here is a review based on my limited experience.

Pros:
E-Ink Pearl display is awesome - indoors and outdoors. Pretty close to a printed book.
Excellent for single-handed operation (either hand)
Font size adjustment / line spacing work great and help you find the setting you like
Inbuilt Dictionary / Wikipedia integration are great
Highlights, Bookmarks and notes work very well
Text-to-speech for those lazy times
Nice keyboard and 5-way navigation key
Excellent battery life
Personal document service via email is very handy and easy to use - Simply email a book or document to have it (converted and) sent to your Kindle for free
If you have multiple Kindle devices (physical or Kindle for PC / mobile), you can add them all to the same Amazon account and share books between all of them


Cons:
Proprietary format limits you to the Amazon Kindle store (workarounds are possible but not practical for everyone) - of course, they have a huge selection but things could change (e.g. Google has just started selling ebooks in the US market)
Books aren't really "cheap"
Great for reading but definitely not for browsing
Non-user replaceable battery
Amazon math: Free = 2 USD for Indian readers (That's what they charge to deliver each book from the "Free" list to non-US readers)
No "Page" numbers - Kindle uses locations (128 byte blocks) to refer to absolute points in a book. This can be confusing for some people
Text-to-speech option is good but doesn't sound great
Needs separate lighting for night time reading
Pretty ordinary audio output

What i heard is there is a kindle app for people using other tablets. Any idea?

Not true, just install Calibre (calibre - E-book management) on your PC and you can convert virtually any format into Mobi and export it to Kindle. It is a very slick app.

Get a the cover with the light.

Kindle App by itself is nothing great, what about e-ink display?

There are several sites from where most books can be downloaded absolutely free. You might have to do some online searching. I have managed to transfer some 400 ebooks to my Kindle and they have all been free.

That is their major advantage. Others being number of books on store and battery life.

Was watching an interview of Jeff Bezos the CEO of amazon and the language felt like the company wants Kindle to target primarily reading and may move into the email space but it would not compete directly with the tablet makers.

But being amazon you never know. May be shocked sometime soon. Who knows!

My point was about options for purchasing eBooks - the other readers that use PDF / ePUB have the benefit of a large (and growing) seller base and that could be important to some people.

Thank you for the firsthand information about Calibre! I will definitely begin using it.


I have heard those are good but they were unavailable when I ordered the Kindle. I personally don't miss it, but had mentioned it 'cos there are other readers (Sony) that come with an integrated LED lamp.

Absolutely - the app certainly isn't great. It is OK for when you want to catch up on a book but are away from the Kindle.

Yes. For legal (public domain) downloads, there are many sites - e.g. gutenberg and feedbooks. I was referring to the "free" books on Amazon.com as some people have been nastily surprised by them.

Do share any good sites that you know of.

The "free" books on Amazon are not free if you are outside the US. There is the $2 fee that you mentioned.

Some useful free ebook sites:

FreeBookSpot | Download e-books for free
Ebookee: Free Download eBooks Search Engine!
Smashwords - Ebooks from independent authors and publishers
World Famous eBook Store - Diesel eBook Store
ManyBooks.net - Ad-free eBooks for your iPad, smartphone, or eBook reader
Free Novels,Ebooks
Free Download ebooks and Softwares
free ebooks download from obooko - Romance, Thriller, Horror, Historical, Science Fiction and more!

Gutenberg is restricted to classics alone as far as I have seen.

Are you sure about this $2 fee? I have been downloading a lot of free books, but have not been charged a penny. I have the address on my Amazon account as the "US Address". Downloading over 3G or Wifi should not matter since they charge only for periodicals over 3G outside the US.

That is the key. If you have an Indian address, they will charge $2 and many books won't be available to you.

Finally we get page numbers...