KrYounger

Yep. The Kindle from Amazon is one of the most amazing pieces of technology ever produced. I’ve had mine for just over 6 months now, and feel generally able to describe and review the impact of this quirky little device on me.

First of all, one of the key things that caught me when I was considering the purchase, was Jeff Bezos’ assertion that the Kindle “disappeared in your hands” - that you would stop noticing that you were in fact reading on a machine, not with a bundle of paper. This was always the problem with reclining with a laptop in the hammock and trying to make a go of it. (Or using the Way Back machine ™ - trying to read on an early palm pilot.) Not matter what I did, how dim or bright the laptop screen, the combination made my eyes tired, couldn’t be done in sun light, ran out after 2-5 hours, was bulky and was just simply uncomfortable.

I do realize that many people, much harder-core than I, have been reading books on machines for a long time. But then, there are also people I know who can dance. I cannot do either. (Much less sing).
But the Kindle arrived, and I went hog wild, and loaded it up with free stuff, bought stuff, and emailed a bunch stuff I thought I would look at and use.

I read a little. I liked it. More on that in a minute, and the real reason for the review.

I spent several days trying to understand the meaning of web surfing on the Kindle, checking email, etc. - feeling like I was getting away with something as I was taking advantage of Amazon’s short-sightedness of allowing me free, unlimited access over their spiffy new WhisperNet. I was going to be a Ought-Eight-new-world-surfer-dude.

But I ran head long into an inconvenient truth about the Kindle: the screen is just too slow. Too slow for interaction via a keyboard. Too slow for reasonable web surfing. Honestly, and I have long experience of this, it was like surfing over a 28.8kbaud modem - internet via dialup. So that disappointed me a little. It’s not an internet slate/tablet/palmtop. As much as I would like it to be.

So, I was slightly disappointed for about 2-3 days.
But I started reading.
That’s right. Reading.

And I’ll be damned, Bezos was right. The Kindle engineers were right. It disappears in your hands. You can go hours - hours - without remembering that “Hey, I’m reading on a machine!”. I can take it outside, or use it bedside, or inside or upside or other there, on the train, plane, automobile and it disappears in my hands, I just read like always and never really notice the device.

There a couple things I wish it did. I guess I never really knew how much I depended on the “thick tome” factor in my self-administered congratulations on my reading conquests. My Kindle was 5 weeks old, and I was in a line at the airport getting on a plane. I saw Drew Faust’s This Republic of Suffering in someone’s hands. I had just finished reading it on the Kindle. I was both impressed with how thick the actual book was and immediately struck by a faint disappointment that I had read it on the Kindle but hadn’t gotten my usual dose of “Nice thick book, Kristofer, good boy for reading it all!” I’m not sure how Amazon could represent the “thick tome” factor better, Kindle does try, but it doesn’t quite have the same ‘heft’.

I also wish its enclosing binder held the Kindle differently. I worry that the way the battery cover pops off sometimes, that it’ll make the grey panel less able to grip the Kindle from behind and I’ll get stuck (like I have with too many TV remotes) taping the battery cover back on to it with duct tape or something.

The Kindle is really sweet as a reading machine. I use it most often with the network radio turned off, which helps with battery life. (Besides, I have not really started using it with the subscriptions options from the Kindle Store, the battery life isn’t really good enough.) I would though, if the following idea were available in the device’s settings… “Turn radio on if and only if ac adaptor plugged in” …I plug in almost every night (like a cell phone that way) but the turning on and off of the radio is kind of a pain. So this way I could plugin, and the radio comes on automagic like, and it works on syncing with the new sub’d stuff, and then in the AM, when I take off ac, it turns off the radio, and I have the lovely device to follow me around on my day.

So I’ve been bitchin, but here’s the deal.
Usually when I have a new piece of tech, and I’m kinda using it in public, kinda hoping people in the know see it and I get some questions, and I kinda feel good about that.

With Kindle, nope.

Leave me alone, I’m reading. Do I bug you when you’re reading? Nope. NO, I don’t want to answer your questions, I’m reading, probably something that is taking my whole attention, and I’m engaged and thinking and coasting and completely zen’d by the words I’m consuming. I really don’t have time to disengage and chatter with you.
So that’s it - reading technology that disappears in your hands and allows you to read. What an amazing piece of technology.

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