Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Kindle

I bought one of these things.

It is called Kindle and comes from Amazon.com.

It was back in November when I ordered it. I've tried reading e-books before and didn't really like the experience. But those were all books that I was reading on my computer. I never did buy the Sony e-reader. It never excited me. I think mainly because it required a computer.

I decided this one might be just the ticket to get me back into reading. No computer needed. And it lets me annotate and bookmark and so on with the built-in keyboard. I like that.

So far it is great!!! Except for the cost which is expensive at $399. The books aren't so bad. I paid $9.99 or something for the one I've purchased so far.

As soon as I got it I unpacked it and turned it on. Immediately it received the rest of the instruction booklet as a download. Next I browsed around and familiarized myself with the navigation and functions. At first it was a little cumbersome but I notice that I'm much better at it now and things that seemed a little weird at first now seem quite normal. The little slider deal on the right actually is quite nice although I disliked it at first.

I decided to buy an actual book and really read it. So I chose Obsession: An Alex Delaware Novel by Jonathan Kellerman. He's one of my favorites and this volume came out last year in about March I think. I was a little busy back then so I missed it. It took about 2 minutes for the book to appear on my Kindle from the time I ordered it from Amazon. 2 minutes!!!!

I had to meet some guys over at the new house so I took my Kindle with me and read it while I was waiting. No problem with the sun glare either. And no problem with polarized lenses.

I can store a couple hundred books on it and more if I get a SanDisk. Battery life is great. It is a good size and very lightweight. Easy on the eyes, too.

I'm reading through it now. I really like this thing.

9 comments:

Lori1955 said...

Wow, I never heard of anything like that. I love gadgets. Enjoy it!

nancy said...

i must say i am unfamiliar with it as well, guess i'm out of the loop with all the new technological advances and toys. hope you continue to enjoy it!

~Betsy said...

I'm not so sure how I could adjust to a book without pages, but I'm glad you are enjoying your kindle. New gadgets amaze me!

rilera said...

I too have been intrigued by the Kindle. It's great to read your review of it. Thanks for sharing your opinion.

Unknown said...

I've now stored 4 Word docs on the Kindle. They are legal documents and quite lengthy. The Kindle has an email address and the Word docs were simply sent as attachments to that address for conversion. They show up on the Kindle as near to instant as you can get. There's a small charge of $.25 I think for each.

I actually find it is faster for me to read the legalese from the Kindle. It is also really nice that I can highlight (which means make a box around the text) and add my own notes to the document.

I don't know if I can get the word doc back to a computer or not though.

I took just the Kindle with me yesterday to read while my car was serviced. So the small Kindle replaced an entire briefcase of paper and was easier for me to sit there and read and actually use.

Battery life is fantastic as long as you keep the network connection off. Also, if there is no activity for a bit then it has a screen saver function that comes up.

I'm pretty good now at the navigation and using the functions. Better than I expected in fact.

There is a certain crudeness about it. The QWERTY keyboard is not very friendly and typing is a bit slow.

One big problem I see right now is that it is way too easy to buy books with this thing. I've already bought another. Going to have to impose some self-discipline here.

Joanne said...

I've never heard of it, Terry, but I'm glad you're enjoying it. I'm terrible at learning new techy things and I love the smell of a printed book. Sounds like it would come in handy for taking work back and forth though. Good luck with it.

Unknown said...

Joanne,

I think it may have an impact on publishing and writing. It should make it easier for any author to publish an electronic version.

I don't like the protection stuff very much but I do understand it. I would have passed on the Kellerman novel to my daughter and she would have passed it on to someone else. The Kindle copy stops with me. On the other hand I will move it to my SanDisk rather than delete it so I will probably have it longer than I would a real book.

Two people so far have seen mine and said they were getting one.

Interesting to see what happens.

Joanne said...

You may be right, Terry. Wonder how the royalty thing works with these newfangled electronic versions? Makes me wonder if they only place traditionally published books on the electronic system. It certainly could open up a whole new avenue otherwise.

Unknown said...

Joanne - See http://dtp.amazon.com/ - which I've briefly skimmed. As I understand it you establish an Amazon DTP Account. Then you can add your content to the store and you set the price between $.99 and $200. Most of the Kindle books seem to me to be about $9.99 but they do vary. You get 35% of the price. I don't know enough about the industry to know if this is fair or not.

At least one author has used this method to "test market" a new book and ask readers for comments before final real book publication. I thought that was interesting.

Quite a few authors are tying this method.

I like my Kindle more now than when I started. I carry it around with me. I've had to kind of get used to the navigation buttons as it has been pretty easy to accidentally "next page" when I didn't really intend to. But I'm pretty good at it now.