Cnet's good E-reader comparison won't post my Kindle information

CNet's John F. Falcone, in his otherwise excellent new overview of several e-readers, which I recommend, has posted a brief comment I made about the difference between Sprint and AT&T access in the various Kindles.

 For some reason he has decided not to publish my earlier longer general comment - even though he specifically asked us for our experiences.  I had signed it with "kindleworld.blogspot.com" and figured that this was the problem, so I re-uploaded it without that identifier at all.  But after almost an hour and a half, he has not published it.  Although it gives him extra information which I think is extremely important when comparing models, I have to think he does not want this information added to his e-reader comparison, for whatever reasons.  Maybe he wants to verify that the info is correct and that takes awhile.

 But in the interests of not having the differences hidden by some gadget sites, when they can be important to those looking for an e-reader today via reading comparisons and overviews in a good publication, here is what I wrote to his invitation for our own experiences.

 That way, the added information is available at least here, though I wish more serious gadget sites would note some of these differences.  It could be they don't spend enough time with the many e-readers to explore these types of differences.

' That is an excellent overview, with a lot of things caught that other reviewers don't.

I want to add a couple of important items though, since you guys are even asking for what we think (which is not that usual).

The Kindle includes, in its Free 3G mobile-network access, a (now much faster) web-browser that has no limits on where you can use it.

It's of course useable (as e-ink is slow) mainly with mobile versions of websites such as ESPN's, CNN, BBC, etc. That means you can use this for lookups at Google, Wikipedia, Yelp, etc wherever you are, while camping or sitting on some park bench, at no added cost.
Using it is a bit of a drain on the battery for a session though.

But no other e-reader does this, and for sure, not for free.
The Kindle's web browser is now working officially in about 56 countries and unofficially in about 65 countries.  (I asked people to write me if it was enabled in their countries and Amazon's product pages show 56 countries officially enabled for that.)

About 100 countries that get wireless do get at least the free Wikipedia accessible from their books.  It used to be very slow but they improved it recently.

Also, functioning needs to be looked at.  The nook is beautiful and has better screen contrast than the Kindle, but if you've used their directory and Search functions you'll see how many menu steps you have to go through to use them.

With the Kindle you just start typing the keyword or phrase for Searches while reading, and you get a list of results with context and links to the pages.  The inline dictionary has a summary definition of the word your cursor is on at the bottom and if you want more info, you press Enter to get it.

With annotations, the nook software currently is a problem for the person trying to find the annotation later, because you have to page through again until you reach it.

With the kindle you can get a list of your annotations with links that get you to them, and the Kindle features include a customer's private password-protected webpage that holds all the annotations made for each book, displayable to you on one page for each book, and it's copyable and editable.
This is available to us only if we don't "Disable Annotations backup" backup .

The new software update also allows you to highlight a passage you're reading and send it to friends at Facebook and/or Twitter, with an intro note, even if you're sitting on a bus.

That is not possible w/other e-readers either (except the iPad with 3G, which as you point out costs more).

- Andrys '

Two hours later and it's not up, though the later short note is, so my information is posted here instead.  I recommend his article, nevertheless, because it is more thorough and more accurate than I've read elsewhere.  It was just missing the information on the differences between the Nook and the Kindle when it comes to what the 3G wireless does and does not include.

Experimentation with the Kindle Basic Web browser today shows Amazon has really sped it up quite a bit from only a month ago.  Some of us won't pay for web-data plans on our smart phones, so the Kindle's no-added-cost 3G can be quite valuable when we're outside the home or office.

---

Check often:  Temporarily-free late-listed non-classics or recently published ones
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers. Below are ways to Share this post if you'd like others to see it.
-- The Send to Kindle button works well only on Firefox currently.

Send to Kindle

(Older posts have older Kindle model info. For latest models, see CURRENT KINDLES page. )
If interested, you can also follow my add'l blog-related news at Facebook and Twitter
Questions & feedback are welcome in the Comment areas (tho' spam is deleted). Thanks!