I have a Kindle, which I love. Just a regular Kindle. At the moment I have 10 "pages" of samples saved on it. I love that I can hear about a book somewhere, grab a free sample on my Kindle, and just have it saved there so when I'm ready to read a new book, I have a huge selection of choices. Of course, usually by the time I get to a book, I can't remember WHY I saved it (where did I hear about this book? from a friend, book review, what?) but then I can just click on the description to remind myself. I also have an Ipad. DH does too, and that's where he does all his reading. I seem to have ADD brought on by perimenopause, so I'm afraid if I read books on my iPad, I'd be constantly stopping to go check my email, pop into this forum, check the weather, etc. So I don't read books on my iPad. Also, I take my Kindle to the beach, in its leather cover, slipped into a gallon size ziplock bag (sounds weird, but I can read through the bag!). I think I'd be worried about doing the same with the iPad because it seems more delicate, and also more expensive to replace if something goes wrong.

Yes, you absolutely cannot trust coverage maps. According to all the major carriers we have 3G/4G here, and we actually don't have any service at all. In the winter when the tourists come, it's like that old "can you hear me now?" commercial outside in the parking lot. I'm actually pleased about this. I have a real dumbphone (not even texting), prepaid, for $100 a year, landline plus internet for $104 a month (I'm jealous of your rate, oakleyok), and then for traveling I have a mifi which costs $5 only in the months when I use it, plus a fairly high per MB charge, but since I only use it occasionally in the car or when I'm in a place where there's no wifi network, that comes to about $50 a year.

I didn't have Block Tool but now I do! Thanks! What a great way to alter the size of blocks. I've never seen so many size options. I have quiltfab and quiltref and use them all the time. When I was doing the hand quilting on my wallhanging before the holidays I used the stitch length diagram constantly to compare against and keep consistent. I just upgraded from the Touch (w/out camera) to the Phone - it was an early birthday present. It was a refurb purchased from at&t and very reasonably priced. It looks brand new and like it's never been out of the box before I got it. Even more than the camera, I like the map feature. When I was quilt shop hopping yesterday, we had trouble finding one of the new stores. I was able to look them up, click on the location link, and POP! There was a map, with a little moving dot for me and a dot for the store. I didn't even have to call them for directions. I guess I should have known it had that ability but I hadn't used it before. So cool! Kate (aka Techno-Twinkie)

Fran1523 -- Nook owners can lend each book only ONCE, for a period of 14 days. And if you "make the offer to lend" a book but the recipient doesn't accept it within 7 days, or rejects it altogether, you cannot lend it to anyone else. You cannot retract an offer to lend once the offer has been made. The lending feature will be available to Kindle owners very soon, so it is no longer an "advantage" for the Nook. Taigen -- The following is from the Amazon web site: "We are excited to now ship Kindle to Canada. Customers in Canada will enjoy: Books in Under 60 Seconds: Think of a book and you could be reading it in under a minute. Free Wireless: Free 3G wireless lets you download books right from your Kindle. No monthly fees, service plans, or hunting for Wi-Fi hotspots. For non-U.S. customers, there are also no additional charges for wireless delivery in or outside your home country. See Coverage Map. See Wireless Terms and Conditions Growing Selection: Over 530,000 English-language books to choose from; plus U.S. and international newspapers and magazines are available for your country. Because publishers give us eBook rights on a country by country basis, available titles for your country will vary from our current U.S selection. We are actively working with publishers to get the rights to all titles for every country and adding this selection every day. Check the Kindle Store to see available titles. Low Book Prices: New York Times® Best Sellers and New Releases are $11.99, unless marked otherwise. You'll also find many books for less - over 135,000 titles are priced under $5.99" I don't think it's that any particular publishing house won't allow any of its books to be sold to Canada (or any country other than the USA), but it's more on a book-by-book basis. It's just a matter of time before all books available in the USA will be available in other countries. But, as it says on the Amazon web site, you can check the availability of books at any time, so if you're thinking of getting a Kindle, look to see if books you'd want are available. Nooks cannot be sold to anyone outside of the USA, so even with limited e-book availability, the Kindle is obviously the better choice. Nook owners keep mentioning the ability to get library books on their Nooks. I've searched for information on the Barnes and Noble web site, but cannot find anything about this. So, the only comment I can make is that if you have to go to the library to "borrow" the book onto your Nook, I don't see any advantage to that at all. It's so nice, with the Kindle, to be able to download books wherever you are at any time of the day or night. And I would imagine that you only get to have the library book for a specific period of time, and I don't like that at all. When you buy a Kindle book (or download a free Kindle book), it's yours forever. Even if you delete it from your Kindle, you can still download it again for free because it's in your Amazon Kindle account. Kindles in the USA have a one-year warranty. Kindles sold to folks in Canada have a one-year warranty. Canadians would have to send their Kindle to the USA for warranty service. I'm in California, and I'd have to send my Kindle elsewhere in the USA for warranty service, so we're even on that one. :-) Murray's Mom -- LOL! We have at least 800 physical books here in the house (hardbound and paperbacks; and, no, we haven't read all of them), but that didn't stop us from getting Kindles! We have the 2nd generation Kindles, so ours hold approximately 1,500 books each. The latest generation Kindles hold at approximately 3,500 books each. It's a heck of a lot easier to carry 100 books with you on a Kindle than it is to haul 100 physical books around with you! In fact, that's one of the driving reasons when I bought a Kindle for my husband. We both love to read, and when we go on vacation, we both always take books with us. But Hubs pretty much only buys hardbound books, and he tends to buy HUGE (thick) books. Try hauling four big, heavy, hardbound books in a carryon when you're flying somewhere. Ouch. Carrying a Kindle is a breeze. You can pretty much always have the Kindle with you, so you can read whenever you have a few minutes free - like waiting for a meeting to start, or while waiting for a bridge to "do its thing." We have two bridges in Sacramento - the Tower Bridge is a vertical lift bridge, and the I Street Bridge is a metal truss swing bridge. If you get stopped at the I Street Bridge as it begins "its thing," you're going to be there for at least 15 minutes. The Tower Bridge takes about 7-8 minutes. Many medical offices don't have magazines in waiting rooms now because of the risk/potential of passing germs, so if you have your Kindle with you, you get to read what you want to read while you're waiting. :-)