theorangeandblack.net

I recently posted on my blog on the subject of the Kindle Touch vs Nook Touch contest in the ebook reader market. It’s important to be even handed when writing reviews, and I felt that I produced a fair comparison of the two readers.

However, one reader – a fan of the Nook I suspect – took issue with the fact that I had used – as Amazon do – the price for the “Kindle With Special Offers” rather than the higher price charged for the Kindle “Without Special Offers”. $ 99 gets you a Kindle Touch “with special offers” complete with adverts on the screen saver pages and at the bottom of the home page menu. With the ads removed, the price of the Kindle becomes $ 139 – exactly the same as the Nook Touch.

It’s a valid point, but after a little thought, I believe the original comparison to be a fair one. A quick glance at Amazon’s sales figures seems to suggest that not many customers view the ads as annoying enough to make the additional $ 40 to get rid of them worthwhile. As mentioned previously, ads appear only on the screen saver pages and near the bottom of the home page menu. They won’t be popping up whilst you are enjoying reading a good book – so they shouldn’t interfere with your actual reading pleasure in any way.

However, if you find that, having treated yourself to a Kindle with Special Offers, you really don’t like the adverts, you can remove them at any time. All that you have to do is log into the “manage my Kindle” page on the Amazon website, click to have the ads removed and pay the extra money. At the moment, there are no stats on how many people are using this facility.

However, according to Amazon’s bestsellers list, the “Special Offers” Kindles are proving to be more popular than the ad-free Kindles. Which is why, in my opinion at least, it seems perfectly reasonable, and logical, to use $ 99 as the base price for the Kindle Touch.