Amazon Kindle

by on Sep.29, 2010, under Books

I’ve had my Kindle for a little while  now so feel I can say what I think of it. I think its brilliant, the latest version (the one in the picture) is about the size of a paper back book and with a Kindle Cover it pretty much is the size of a paper back. Pretty much the ideal size.

The cover’s a cover, its leather and fits the kindle, not really much to say about it really, I got mine because it’ll protect the screen if I take it anywhere. You can also get different colours and a version with a light for those that want to read in the dark.

Back to the Kindle, I’ve already said its just the right size for me, the screen as you can see in the picture takes up most of the device with a keyboard at the bottom, which is used for taking notes, shopping and any other use for text entry.
The screen displays 16 colours or more accurately 16 shades of grey, the text is clear and the images it shows are surprisingly good quality. The screen has quite a slow refresh so I wont be watching any movies on it, apparently page turns are 60% quieter than the previous generations, but it seems silent to me apart from maybe the click of the next page button, its not exactly loud but that’s all that makes a noise.

Reading books on the Kindle is much like reading a real paper book, if the book was in a frame and you pressed a button to change the page, but other than that its the same. You select your book from your library on the home page then sit and read, there being no back light isn’t a problem, if you could read a paper book you can read a kindle book, obviously if it gets to dark to read you can always turn a light on, like you would have had to do with a normal book.

The battery life, I can’t really comment on as its not ran out yet, and I’m on my 4th book, but I’d say its lasting roughly what its advertised as. –EDIT– The battery ran out last night, so its lasted just over 2 weeks, but that’s half way through my 4th book, with some web browsing as well.

The Kindle comes with a few extras its not just a book reader, it also comes with a web browser that’s pretty good, good enough for facebook, twitter or a tv guide. It works pretty well so its a nice extra, useful if you need a quick search but a browser on a PC/laptop would be more use if they’re available. I did say when I fist looked at it that I wouldn’t use the web browser much, but I have used it quite a bit instead of using my phone or powering up my laptop.
There’s also an MP3 player built in that I’ve not tried, and it is able to read your books to you again I’ve not tried this as I’m not really interested in the feature.

Improvements that would be nice to see. A faster screen refresh so animations on the web browser work better,  a full colour screen would be nice and maybe making the screen full size making it a touch screen and removing the keyboard. Obviously I wont get them even if it was in the next release, maybe if it was a couple of generations down, but by then I might be switching to one of the many tablets that are being released, or just sticking with this one as it does all I need and does it perfectly fine.

If you like to read replacing the paper books with a book reader, Kindle or some other reader, seems to me like a good idea, the device takes up less space than a book collection and can hold loads of books, and with a library manager you can store even more on your computer and just transfer them when you want to read them.

I like my Kindle and I probably wouldn’t read some of the classics that are available for free if it wasn’t for getting one as it either involves borrowing from a library or buying a printed copy to read comfortably, rather than on my pc or laptop. There’s loads of free books available and many of the none free are available for less than the printed version.


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