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I have posted a few times in the last little while around my challenges in buying ebooks from Kalahari, then on converting ebooks for use on the Kindle, and more generally on buying ebooks in South Africa.

In response to one of these posts I received a question from Henriet van Rhyn, covering the most obvious question which I hadn’t covered : “Please advise which Kindle to buy, seeing that there are so many versions available on Amazon these days. ”

I answered in the the comments to the post where Henriet posted the question, and after some thought decided it makes more sense to convert this into a full blown post. So below I repeat what I had put into the comments, with a few minor adjustments and ammendments.

Looking at Amazon on  29 June 2011 (Updated 25 May 2012)  (as a South African), there are 5 (were 3) different Kindles to choose from. I don’t bother listed local re-sellers as I haven’t found any of them to be competitive and Amazon just make it so easy to order from them.

• Kindle (WiFi) = $109  (6″ screen) (was $139)
• Kindle Touch (WiFi) = $139 (6″ screen) (newly available)
• Kindle Touch 3G = $189 (6″ screen) (newly available)
• Kindle Keyboard (3G+WiFi) = $189 (6″ screen) (unchanged price)
• Kindle DX (3G+WiFi) = $379 (9.7″ screen)
• Kindle Fire is still not available in South Africa

As a USA resident you would also have the option of buying an advert subsidised Kindle for $114. This model is pretty much the same as the WiFi version ($139) but with adverts displayed at various points. Since this is not an international version and can’t be purchased here in SA I don’t cover this any further.

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