ipad vs kindle: CAGE MATCH!

[rmd]

OKAY YOU OVERLY OPINIONATED INTERNET PEOPLE! CONVINCE ME! OR SOMETHING.

I need to choose a $SIGNIFICANT_MILESTONE gift for someone. iPad? or Kindle?

iPad has the advantage of doing much more - apps! widgets! other stuff!
Kindle has the advantage of not requiring a separate pay-by-the-month data plan for cell access. Plus more battery life.

thoughts?

I figure either an ipad and a small itunes store gift card (and possibly a small amazon gift card for ebooks), or a kindle and a larger amazon gift card.

Comments

[johnromkey.livejournal.com]

I'm very happy with my iPad but I don't particularly enjoy reading books on it. That's mostly because after spending all day staring at a backlit display I don't really want to read a book on one as well.

That said, you've got a huge set of options for book reading on the iPad. Amazon, B&N and Borders all have ebook readers for it that talk to their respective stores, along with Apple's iBooks (which I have to say has a sadly small selection and somewhat distressing UI). And Apple's ebook reader happily works with non-DRM'd epub and PDF files. There are also quite a few comic book readers available, including the big companies.

Kindle may not have pay-by-the-month cell access but it also can barely do anything with its cell access and in order to get some documents to it over cellular data you have to pay a premium.

Cellular data on the iPad is contract-free and can be turned on and off as desired (at monthly increments). You can also start with the cheaper plan and it will warn you when you're going over the limit and give you the option to pay the difference to go to the bigger plan, which is very nice.

Note that I don't have a 3G iPad because it pisses me off to pay AT&T for data twice (my iPhone and iPad) and only use it once.

Two very interesting upcoming iPad features: it's getting wireless printing in a November software update. It's also getting the ability to push audio and video to Airport Expresses (audio only), Apple TVs (the new cheap ones), and upcoming 3rd-party devices that will support "AirPlay" (supposedly Denon is doing a firmware update for my amp that will support it). This seems to work with any video or audio played back using iOS' UI for doing so - videos, YouTube, Photos, Netflix, Pandora, whatever... these are both coming to the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 as well.

The iPad is great for light-weight gaming and media, has a first rate email client and web browser and can do almost anything people write software for it to do.You can do photo manipulation, edit Office documents, do presentations.
The Kindle is very good at being an ebook reader for Amazon's ebooks, and not particularly good at anything else.

So the question is, would this person want a general purpose device that's an okay ebook reader (but can read a great many ebooks from multiple sources), or do they want a great ebook reader that doesn't do anything else particularly well?

Then again, the cheapest iPad (WiFi only) is $499 (you can get them refurbished for $449 now), or $629 with 3G support. The cheapest Kindle (WiFi only) is $139, or $189 for 3G support.

[deguspice.livejournal.com]

For that sort of price you can buy a nice netbook for less money than an iPad.

[johnromkey.livejournal.com]

"Nice netbook" is an oxymoron.