As an early birthday gift, my wife purchased for me a Kindle DX.
See, I'd been keeping an eye on the various eBook readers for a while. And, after looking at the current options, I had decided on the Kindle DX.
The main thing I wanted was a long battery life, and native .pdf support.
See, I have a number of (completely legal) RPG eBooks. And I keep getting more. I have trouble reading - just sitting and reading - on a computer. My eyes get tired, and the rest of me follows. Or I get distracted. Either way, a dedicated eBook reader seemed the way to go.
The Kindle DX had the largest screen on the market - when the bulk of my reading is gaming books, the larger screen seemed wise. The extremely long battery life will only be aided by the fact that I am unlikely to leave the Wireless on.
Either way, this makes IPR the most dangerous site on the web for me. I once referred to it as "The Punk Movement for Roleplayers" - and I stand by that statement. Most of their products are thought-provoking and all of them are distinctive and unique.
Interestingly, it looks like they are moving more and more towards selling physical books (and book/PDF packages), and their PDF's are being carred on DriveThruRPG. Examples of this include Mouse Guard and Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space.
DriveThruRPG is less dangerous, due to their DRM-protected files which many eBook readers cannot read. I do salute their recent change of most (if not all) of their files to watermarked .pdf files, however, as those can be read on eBook readers. And it's the best source to get legal PDF copies of out-of-print and more mainstream RPG books. Of course, you won't find D&D there.
But, oddly, I can download back issues of Dragon legally directly from Wizards themselves with no watermarking or DRM - and those will fit on my Kindle just fine. So will the character sheets I created on Character Builder and then converted to .pdf files.
The addition of a Kindle to my life means that I'll probably actually manage to get through Houses of the Blooded, so I can see what all of the stir was about.
I'll let you know in a few weeks how the Kindle is working out for me.
Wherein Eric discusses Games, the Game Industry, Gamer Culture and anything else which catches his eye.
I look forward to hearing how the DX works out for you; I ended up getting the Kindle 2 for a little more portability, but it works well enough for my usage. Tiny, but mostly legible.
ReplyDeleteThe 2 really got hung up on the Houses of the Blooded pdf, though, so I hope you have better luck there.
I also plan to access our Traveller campaign's wiki with the web browser. That's what finally tipped me to a Kindle of some variety.