E-Readers

I bought a Kindle a couple weeks ago. I spent two full days researching it, asking other people's opinions, reading reviews and debating internally if I wanted it. There were plenty of arguments both for and against it. It's portable, easy to get books, built in Whispernet for Wikipedia and downloading books, e-ink is comfortable on the eyes, multitudes of books in my hand. Or I lose the sight of a book on a bookshelf, the feel from turning pages, and the cover art. Finally, I heard one opinion say that the Kindle is merely a reader to make reading a lot of books easier. If I like a book so much, I can still buy a used copy for cheap and display it prominently. This is no different from renting movies through Netflix and purchasing my favorite DVDs.

After using the Kindle for two weeks I am confidently happy with my purchase. I'm reading three different books right now, and they're all contained in a small white device with their own bookmarks. I can download books at the drop of a hat and email them directly to the Kindle.

And the user experience is fantastic. I attribute this partly to good design, and partly to the highly helpful Amazon store backing it. E-ink is very easy on the eyes. After a day or so, I forgot I wasn't reading paper. My favorite feature is the built-in dictionary where I can highlight a word on the page and get an instant definition. I've actually found myself wanting to highlight a word in a real book, only to laugh in frustration.

The buttons on the side are well designed, though I wish they were slightly higher to accommodate my larger hands. There is a keyboard at the bottom that I have never had the need to use, but it feels more than adequate.

One of my very few complaints is that there's no clock on the page. Ideally that would be next to the battery indicator in the top right. To be fair though, this was a complaint I read before purchasing and it's been in my head ever since.

Overall, this was a satisfying purchase, and I'm excited for the prospect of reading so many more books that are now available to me.

UPDATE 2/1/10: To manage all my e-books I downloaded an open-source program called Calibre, that will manage the books, convert them to the right format for different readers, and even send them to the device via email. I came across a snag this morning though when I wanted to upload a .doc file I had downloaded. Calibre was incapable of converting it, but fortunately Amazon has a great service already in place for this situation. All I had to do was send an email with the .doc to myamazonname@free.kindle.com and within 3 minutes I had a converted .azw file that rendered perfectly on my Kindle. Amazon would have even sent this file directly to the Kindle itself for small fee, but it's hard to complain when this is free. This is a very thoughtful service Amazon provides, and I'm grateful for it.