My first hours with my Amazon Kindle

William — Thu, 29 May 2008 04:32:23 GMT

I decided to order an Amazon Kindle. As patience is not something I am overly endowed with, I paid the extra money for the expedited shipping. Along with it I bought a backup battery, another case, a car charger, home charger and storage cards (wow are they cheap on Amazon). It arrived exactly at 3:00 PM today.

The packaging is quite elegant although it borders on overdone. It took me about 5 minutes to get it out of the box. There's a plastic sticker on the front of it telling you obvious things like "It needs charged" and the like. I charged it and after 2 hours, couldn't wait any longer.

I had already bought a few books, so I was waiting to see what it was going to be like pulling them down. It's noteworthy that as much as I love T-Mobile, I get no coverage in my office building. The EVDO connection registers full strength irrespective of where I walked around. In somewhere around 1 minute or two, I saw my books available. It probably took 5 minutes total to get all of them - there were 8 in total.

I was really worried about the screen. At first Ann seemed to indicate the liked the overall experience but then she posted this rather harsh critique perfectly timed to make me worry it'd be a dud. I don't always agree with her on gadget issues so I hoped she was wrong. Besides, much of her critique seemed to be a cross between curmudgeonry and Book related Ludditeness (or whatever the adjective form of Luddite is). And based on my heretofore experiences with e-books, i certainly understand where she's coming from. In short, her comments seemed to speak more to e-book readers in general than the Kindle, but she was speaking about the Kindle overall. When i got mine, I quickly wanted to see what the screen was like and well, there's plenty of contrast. It's plenty bright and amazingly easy on the eyes. Compared to her iPhone the display might be a little lame, but it's a heck of a lot easier to read IMHO than even her attempt at subtlety on her page ;-) . So the reviews are out. If you're me you'll find it great. But not everyone shares that viewpoint. The good news is that it's all pretty much either love it or hate it so you've got a 50/50 chance.

I think there are two areas that no one can disagree with. The speed/responsiveness is so impressive I almost started to yearn for the old DOS days and browsing with LINX. Yes, it's relatively plain (as Ann says, it's very etch-a-sketch like) but it's very fast. There's a tiny delay which is intentional when you flip pages, but there's none of the painful annoying hangs that we've come to get used to ever since the world mandated that every web page should have Ajax in it somewhere and every UI form needs to pretend it's a MAC. Fast fast fast and responsive.

Ease of use is another are that it really excels in. There are several ways to navigate and it lends itself well to left handed people (for instance, you can page forward or back with your left hand). It's light as h3ll and you can easily hold it in one hand. I often try to read while I'm on the elliptical machine and it's a nightmare - it was wonderfully easy using the Kindle.

So far, I've logged about 3 hours of use on it and I have yet to see the power bar drop at all. That alone makes it infinitely better than my UMPC for e-book reading.

I also tried to buy a few more books using the Kindle and bought a few blog feeds. Once your account is set up, it's about as easy as can be. you search for what you want, select it and buy it with one-click.

So the only thing that I've seen that could make the Kindle suck is if it was really fragile or if there weren't many titles. Every single non-programming book I looked for was available and 85% of the programming books I searched for were available. I don't plan on bouncing it off the ground but I'm sure I will (although I have to say the included carrying case is pretty clever and gets the job done well. I'm not sure I needed the other cover I bought).

Only having had it a day, I couldn't be more pleased. Let me use it some more and I'll see if something comes out that I don't like, there's got to be something although I sure haven't found it yet.

Bill gets an Amazon Kindle

William — Wed, 28 May 2008 14:19:27 GMT

Well, almost. I bought it Sunday night and it's almost here although it's not in my hands yet. I have been trying to find a good e-book solution for a long time now. I got the Sony. I've went through a few tablets (although they weren't exclusively for e-books) and I broke down and got a Samsung Q1 Ultra UMPC. None of them cut it. Although the problem was multi-faceted. There weren't many books for them so the hardware didn't much matter. Although the hardware was an issue. Most tablets I've had, even the UMPC can get 4-6 hours of battery life tops. On a typical flight to Seattle, I spend almost that much time in the air and power is at a premium and frequently unavailable. So in short, the experience sucked. Now I see the Amazon Kindle. I was worried b/c I mainly read computer books, so I searched around. Here's an example of what I found. Here's some more. And here are a few more.

So clearly the books are there. the other feature I find pretty amazing is that you get a EVDO service which you use to pull down the books. you pay for it once and that's it. You don't need monthly charges and you don't have to worry about any other charges (unless I've read it all wrong and I don't think I have). The screen has a few complaints but there's plenty of people saying it rocks.

At the moment, I can't really tell although I'm optimistic. In about 2 hours it will be here. Even though I have many of the books I bought in hardback, I'm pretty stoked to see how they compare. I'll post details once I get it.

/bill's House O Insomnia : Amazon Kindle

My first hours with my Amazon Kindle

Bill gets an Amazon Kindle