Its been a couple of weeks since I got the Kindle DX. I thought I would pass on my observations of the device, and my recommendations of how I think it could get better. Like most things in life, its not 100% great nor 100% bad-it has things to like and things to dislike.
The Good:
I like the screen size and the ability to change the type font size. I really think it allows me to read a book at a faster rate than I would with a regular book. I’m not sure why. I don’t know if it allows me to scan more of a paragraph-or if I am just glancing at a paragraph and not really retaining its contents. Nonetheless, the little voice in me that says, "turn the page" appears to be working faster.
It’s great to travel with on an airplane.
The side buttons to select pages, table of contents, and to turn the electronic pages are well placed and easy to use. The biggest difficulty I have found so far is remembering to use the "mouse" button to select links and specific books and not the "next page" button for that. However the transition time is so quick-its not a big deal.
The size of the device. I paid more money and bought the DX model with a 9" screen. I am glad I did. It allows me to see the list of content I am subscribed to easily-and select what I want to read.
The Kindle allows me access and the ability to absorb a lot of news content each day. Subscriptions to newspapers and magazines (real news magazines with thoughtful content-not sheer Fox News types of rubbish) are easy to group together and scan through over a 30 minute cup of coffee. ( Or a few beers at a bar on the way home from work.). However the subscriptions are a two edged sword as I’ll explain later. It’s a great news aggregator-especially if you want to understand content, not just hear stupid headlines that reinforce already held opinions like Fox news, Townhall Harlot, and Drudge readers do.
The fact that it updates with the latest editions of the newspapers and magazines and blogs every time I turn it on is cool. I like that-it reminds me of what I think the "Newspad" of 2001 A Space Odyssey Fame would be like.
Kindle books are significantly cheaper than hard back books. And really old books, like Machiavelli’s The Prince, are free.
The Bad:
The DX comes with a web browser. I have to be honest-its not that great. Sure it will display web pages, but it takes longer to load than on my cell phone-even though it is using the same network. You can tell why in an instant-the bastards at Amazon want you to buy blogs et all through their paid content. The paid content I have subscribed to loads a lot faster than when I put my blog in the URL reader. I object to having to pay for content I should be able to get for free.
Speaking of content-there is preciouos little foreign newspaper content available through Kindle/ Amazon. I have e-mail subscriptions to the Straits Times, Japan Times,and the South China Morning Post. It would be nice to have them on the Kindle.
The Keyboard SUX! If you read a blog you want to be able to dash off a snarky comment or two, when you read something that gets your dander up. However, the way it does special characters like quotations and caps-leaves a lot to be desired.
If you are not careful, the screen changes from portrait to landscape and back again.
The device has a PDF reader that works just fine, and you can e-mail PDF documents to. It would be better if it had a Powerpoint feature, so that you could do the same with power point presentations. The larger screen makes it more effective than a Blackberry.
And speaking of a Blackberry, having an Outlook function on the device-e.g read only would be nice.
My recommendation? Its useful-but only if you are really an avid reader like me. Or you travel a lot. However its still a lot of money to shell out-and it does not pay itself back right away unless you read a lot of books. Oh and the subscription fees for newspapers etc-should be tossed out the window. This idea that paid content is the only good content is crap. Make money through advertising if you must-but don’t charge me for content I can get free elsewhere.
On the whole, for me-who is a voracious reader-its a good buy.
Skippy,
You know someone else that could get some serious usage out of a Kindle and if either the AAFES/NEX and Amazon were smart they would look at doing this, is the servicemember. Think about it, space is limited in everyones locker space. With a kindle you can carry a ton of books to read while laying out on the rack. Plus if the Navy (or DoD) was smart they would issue these out to people and have them front loaded NRTC’s, War College study guides, find a way to rig it so that some of the auto-download materials are such things as the plan of the week, the base/region paper, ITT/MWR spam. We might finally be able to work our way to becoming a less paper wasting department of the government.
Sincerely,
AT1 B
My co-worker bought one for his son-who is a Sailor on a DDG, for exactly that reason. I think that is a great idea about manuals etc…which is why the Navy won’t think about it.