[Julia Pearce]

Hi, I received a Nexus 7 from my partner for Christmas - lucky me I am not all that good with technology but can use a laptop for emails, surfing the web, facebook,scrabble and have internet access on my phone but like to learn new things. (I am in my mid-50's so bit harder for me to keep up!) Anyway I digress. I want to use it mainly for downloading and reading books and maybe the odd movie. I downloaded one book last night on a google app (google play I think) it only cost $1 so I just wanted to try and see if I could manage it. I would appreciate info from other readers here on the easiest and cheapest way to do the above. I have noticed that some books are as expensive as a "real book" and I thought they would be cheaper to read on the tablet. Any ideas to help the novice here? I would appreciate any tips to help me use this gadget to its best advantage. Thanks to all who reply.

[trainplane]

You can get many ebooks cheap or free if you look for it.

1. Google Play has many popular public domain books.

2. The Kindle for Android app let's you get books from Amazon which offers many free books not in public domain. Plus it gives you an addition source to compare prices with the Google Play store.

3. Nook for Android. I haven't used this much but it is another virtual bookstore from Barnes and Noble.

4. Overdrive Media Player. Do a search for it in the Google Play store. If you are a member of your local library, you can borrow books to your Nexus 7. I found that many popular titles have long wait lists though, some more than 20 people. But this is a way to read more recent free ebooks.

Many choices for getting ebooks. It could seem overwhelming but once you get used to the different interfaces, you can find a lot of bargains.