I have spent the last two nights reading off the Amazon Kindle, so figured it was a good time to get down some of my first impressions. For my first download/e-book, I decided to go with the current Kindle (and overall Amazon) #1 bestseller - Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope. It seemed like a good book to do a try-out on since it didn't require keeping track of characters or a plot. But alas, this is not about the book but the Kindle, so here are my very random thoughts (as they would say on Dancing With the Stars) in no particular order...
Liked the cost savings, $4.39. Granted that was the same discounted price (from a full retail of $7.99) that Amazon was selling the mass-market paperback edition for, but no shipping cost... and Amazon promises you'll have your book in "less than a minute" ... and I am guessing it was 20-30 seconds for this one.
Amazon promotes the Kindle's "revolutionary" electronic paper -- and I have to say it does very much reads like a real book/paper. The image is very "flat" and since there is no lighting involved there is none of that brightness adjustment of say a computer screen.
The Kindle comes with a book cover of sorts, with the Kindle sliding into it (somewhat unsuccessfully at times), but speaking of lighting.. the cover has dealt with my clip-on book light far easier than a book - and the light has to only focus on one "page" (about the size of a trade paperback). With a regular book, I would often have to shift the light around for the left/right or top/bottom of the page.
Speaking of pages, it is very difficult adjust to no pages in a book! But the Kindle still tracks where you are by "location" - but there are lots of them! Audacity is 384 pages in print, but on the Kindle it was 5452 locations. I am reading at a font size of 3 (another great thing - adjustable font sizes from 1=small to 6=very large) and there are 5-6 "locations" per screen... and geekily, I figured out that a little over 3 Kindle screens (at this font size) is the equivalent of 1 page of the printed book. At the bottom of the screen it tells you what location(s) you are at and also a status/thermometer type bar that tells you how far along you are... but again, a different experience. So no flipping ahead to see how many pages are left in the chapter! Well, you can but given that 3 screens=1 page that could take a while... but on the other hand that particular ratio of screens-to-pages gives one a real sense of accomplishment!
Speaking of flipping pages, obviously you don't do that - but click bars on the sides of the Kindle to go forward or back. But there is this odd flash as the page refreshes, that almost does kind of give the impression of a page flip. I don't know if that was done purposely - or if anyone else feels that way, but I do! While it is nice to have "page forward" bars on each side of the Kindle, one thing that I don't really like is that the take up complete left and right edge of the device... so find myself clicking forward or back unintentionally. When I "close" the book for the night (the Kindle automatically "bookmarks" where you left off), I am now going back to the home screen so I don't flip the page.
Speaking of (and yes, I'm doing the "speaking of" segues on purpose), in addition to these accidental page forward/back hits due to the location of the bars - the on/off buttons for the power and also the wireless device (the Kindles uses cell-phone type technology for communication) are on the back of the device. So in order to turn on/off things, you have to slip the Kindle in and out of its cover... which again, I am not finding to be a really good/snug fit. Would have been nice to have these on/off switches at the top edge vs. the back of the device.
The graphics are not great, so if you are going to judge a book by its cover it is best not to do it on the Kindle. And in this age of touch-screen gizmos, it is a bit odd to have a navigational/click wheel be the way to move around... and grey-scale/no color too. So while this is really cool technology, the Kindle has this odd throw-back, somewhat archaic feel to it. But then again, the main purpose is to use the device to read - and once again, the "print" quality is very good.
I have probably rambled on enough, but so far I am liking it more than I would have thought... granted it is all new and shiny, so we'll see. Once again, I don't see it as a replacement for physical books but just another option... and it has certainly has opened a whole bunch of new books to consider reading (not that I needed that!), while I read the occasional hardcover, usually I wait until they hit paperback... but with Kindle prices for hardcovers often less than a paperback, I definitely see myself reading more new releases.
Ok, if you have questions let me know. I am sure the Kindle reading experience is something that I will re-visit from time to time.
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